Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

To Light a Candle

Author:
Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

Publisher:
TOR

Date of Publication:
2004

ISBN:
0765302209

Rating:
8

Summary:
This is the second book in The Obsidian Trilogy. I read the first book during the summer last year (review here). The first book must have been better than I thought, or maybe I just long to spend time in fantasy worlds every so often to escape from everyday life, but I actually found myself wondering over the last year what came of Kellen Tavadon, the protagonist of the book. In the first book Kellen is kicked out of Armetheliah – the Golden City of Mages who practice the High Magic – when it is revealed that he is a Wild Mage who practices Wild Magic (a different form of magic that is a threat to the hierarchy of the High Mages). Upon leaving Armetheliah, he runs into his sister, Idalia, another Wild Mage, he helps him understand what has happened to him and how to use his magic. They eventually leave the Wild Lands and arrive in the Elven Lands where they are called upon to use their magic to end a drought caused by the magic of The Endarkened (a.k.a. demons). They succeed. In the process, Kellen discovers why he sucks at both Wild Magic and High Magick – he’s actually a Knight Mage, meaning his magic facilitates his fighting ability – making him an amazing fighter with virtually no training.

The second book picks up where the first left off. Kellen has just destroyed the obelisk created by The Endarkened that was disrupting the weather patterns causing the drought in Elven Lands. He destroyed it with the help of Jermayan, an elven knight who is in love with his sister, Shalkan, a unicorn that Kellen rides and to whom Kellen owes a mage debt as Shalkan saved his life after he was kicked out of Armetheliah, and Vestakia, a young woman who looks like a demon (red skin, horns), but who is actually human and good on the inside. Kellen nearly died in the process, but eventually returns to Sentarshadeen (one of the Elven cities) and is reunited with his sister who is able to heal him.

Once back in Sentarshadeen Kellen begins planning with the elven leaders how they are going to respond to the growing strength of The Endarkened. The elves decide they are going to send their children (elves live about a thousand years in this world and don’t have many children) to their most well-protected stronghold, the Fortress of the Crowned Horns, until they are able to conquer the demons once again. While the elves arrange to send their children to the stronghold, Kellen begins training as a knight with Belesharon, the oldest and best elven knight in the House of Sword and Shield. Also, Idalia finally decides that she is going to pursue a relationship with Jermayan, who has wanted to pursue one for quite some time.

Once the elves in Sentarshadeen finally send their kids (all 5 of them) to the stronghold, The Endarkened attack again. They attack the well-protected caravan with coldwarg (big nasty wolve-like creatures), frost giants, and shadow elves (a cross between goblins and elves). All of the caravan’s defenders are killed except one unicorn, which manages to escape and make it back to Sentarshadeen. All of the children are captured by the shadow elves and tucked away in a cave. Once the unicorn returns with the bad news, Kellen puts together a quick party to go out to find them. It’s at this point that Vestakia becomes vital to the story as her demonic father has given her a special power – she can detect demon taint. As creations of the demons, the shadow elves are tainted and Vestakia is able to detect them. She tracks them to their caves where they have hidden the children.

Idalia uses an invisibility cloak to sneak into the cave and eventually rescue the children, but the last trip out is with the one nurse to the children who survived and the cloak isn’t big enough for the two of them. The shadow elves see them. Idalia gives the cloak to the nurse and runs deeper into the caves to distract the shadow elves. In the process, she falls off a cliff, nearly killing herself. She wakes long enough to use the wild magic to send for help. The wild magic calls upon a dragon, Ancaladar, who has been hiding in the caves for thousands of years (dragons used to be prevalent but many were killed during the last major battle with the Endarkened). Ancaladar helps Kellen rescue Idalia. Once the rescue is complete, Ancaladar meets Jermayan and they realize that they are meant to bond as a dragon and dragon mage. This adds a new, very powerful ally to the elven army.

With the children safe, the elves muster an army and attack the shadow elves, eventually cleaning out the first cave system they find. They then use Vestakia’s power to find two additional caves. They set up camp near those caves and eventually empty that cave system as well, though not without numerous incidents along the way. Throughout, Kellen grows more confident in his abilities, as do Jermayan and Ancaladar.

A subplot that sets the stage for the third and final book takes place at the same time as all of the above involves another human in Armetheliah. Back in Armetheliah, Cilarnen, a young man about Kellen’s age and a highly accomplished high magic apprentice, is conned into engaging in treason by Anigrel, a servant of the Endarkened who has deceived the High Mage Council, including Kellen and Idalia’s father, Lycaelon. Anigrel uses Cilarnen’s treason to remove his father, High Mage Volpiril, from the Council, opening a spot for himself. Cilarnen is banished from the city as a result, but is allowed to keep his magical abilities, which normally does not happen. Anigrel uses his position of power and his influence over Lycaelon Tavadon to slowly begin to release the magical wards that keep the Endarkened from entering Armetheliah. He also uses his position to make the High Mages increasingly afraid of Wild Mages and to turn them against all the other “lesser races” (i.e., elves, unicorns, centaurs, etc.). Cilarnen eventually meets up with Kellen as the elven army is mopping up the last of the shadow elves. Once he arrives, Kellen and Idalia begin to put together what is happening in Armetheliah. The climax of the book occurs when Idalia discovers Anigrel’s treachery but nearly dies in the process, only to be saved by the combined efforts of Cilarnen, Kellen, and Jermayan when the Queen of the Endarkened attacks her while she is casting the spell.

This climactic event sets up what must be the plot for the final book – the efforts of Kellen, Idalia, Jermayan, Cilarnen, and Vestakia to stop the plans of the Endarkened to take the city of Armetheliah and vanquish them back to the pits from where they came.

Review:
My only major complaint with the book is an element I left out in the summary above, which probably accounts for about 50 pages of the 650+ page book – tea. While the numerous instances of everyone drinking tea – before battle, after battle, in the morning, at night, at every meal, at every official meeting, at every unofficial meeting, whenever you have a spare moment, whenever you say something, etc. – add detail the story and make it seem like a more developed world, it was a bit over-the-top. The authors have created at least a dozen different types of tea with corresponding flavors and descriptions, all of which are recounted in excruciating detail by one character or another at some point. It gets old after a while.

I would have much rather seen the authors use those 50 or so pages to describe in greater detail Kellen’s battles. They do a decent job with his battle sequences, but given his knight mage abilities, his battles warrant greater detail then they are given in the book. The few sequences where they do go into detail were some of my favorite parts. For example, his first test after training with Belesharon against a dozen shadow elves in the pitch black of the caves (where they can see and he can’t) while tracking down the injured Idalia was beautifully described and made me smile while reading it.

Other subplots that could have used more detail include the relationship developing between Idalia and Jermayan, which seems to have been sidetracked once Jermayan bonded with Ancaladar and what Vestakia and Shalkan spend all their time doing when they are not accompanying Kellen. These minor complaints aside, it’s a compelling book and a well-developed fantasy world. It provided me with hours of enjoyable reading and leaves me wanting to know what ultimately happens. I guess I’ll find out when I read the final book… Hopefully that won’t be in a year.

Christotainment: Selling Jesus through Popular Culture

Author:
Shirley R. Steinberg, Joe L. Kincheloe

Publisher:
Westview Press

Date of Publication:
2009

ISBN:
978-0813344058

Rating:
1/10

Summary:
The book purports to be an analysis of how Christianity and Christ have become part of popular culture in the US. I guess, in a sense, it is, but only in the sense that it’s a book that mentions Christ and popular culture, not because the arguments are coherent or even provocative.

Review:
Usually, when I start a book, I finish it. There’s just something about starting a book that makes me feel like I have an obligation to the author to see the book through to the end. There have been a few books over the years that I opened and, just a few pages into them I said, “Wow, this is so bad I’m not going to read it.” Alas, Christotainment can now be added to that list. So, this is a review of the Introduction and the 8 pages or so I read before I put the book down, never to be taken back up again.

What is so problematic about a book that you’d think would be ideally suited for someone like me who is critical of religion, but particularly critical of religions that seem money hungry and greedy? Well, it’s not scientific. It seems to suggest that it is, but only because most of the authors are academics (mostly education and communications professors) and they use references. When you check the references you see that the authors cite “publications” that range from (1) their own books, (2) some journal articles from education and communications journals (scary!), to (3) blogs (including the Daily Kos). Um, there are a few blogs that I might reference for non-scientific purposes, but never as a scientific source. So, first off, the book is not really an academic book. It’s, well, a pseudo-academic book.

Second, in line with the first problem, the authors make wildly unfounded statements. Here’s one from page 5, “At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, you can’t turn on the radio or TV, go to the movie theater, listen to contemporary music, or attend on- and off-Broadway musicals without encountering Jesus.” I immediately asked myself after reading this line, “When was the last time I “encountered” Jesus? The answer: About two weeks ago when I was discussing an independent study with a student next semester. And in the conversation, Jesus was not the focus. We were talking about Bible manuscripts and Bart Ehrman’s work. So, I was talking specifically about religion and Jesus came up since he’s kind of the focus of the Bible (the New Testament at least). That’s two weeks without any “Jesus encounters.” I’ve read plenty of news, watched TV, and spent time with a lot of people since then, and Jesus hasn’t come up a single time. Granted, I’m not religious and most of the people I surround myself with are not either, but still… Maybe I’m just completely disconnected from popular culture in the US…

Okay, I figure you could chalk something like this up to hyperbole – the author is just trying to make a statement about the pervasiveness of religion, Christianity in particular, in the US (ironically, the editors are Canadian – go figure!). So, let’s try a few other choice quotes. Here’s another one from the same paragraph, “This book wants to understand this merging of popular culture and Christian fundamentalism. In this context, we use a bricolage of methods to understand religious marketing, what such theotainment looks like, and its theological, cultural, social, and political effects. Our assertion is that such dynamics are changing the world in a dangerous and frightening manner.” Well, they admit that they are critical theorists (meaning they reveal their biases). Okay, fine with me. But what’s their evidence that it is dangerous and frightening? They don’t mention the shooting of doctors who perform abortions. They don’t mention Timothy McVeigh (even though his actions were mostly political, just inspired by Christianity). They don’t mention any of the real threats of fundamentalist Christianity, just that it is around – on TV, in music, and sports. Scary!

What’s more, there is quite a bit of evidence suggesting that religion is on the decline in the US. In fact, I’d submit that the very fact that there are a lot of “Jesus encounters” (at least for some people) is evidence of this. Jesus has been so watered-down that he gets thrown around frequently, but not to convert people. It’s basically a marketing gimmick; Jesus has been commercialized (he makes for a pretty good celebrity promoter). There is plenty of evidence to support this, including the pharmacy across the street from my house that advertises with a sign out front that says, “Abortion Kills” and the chiropractor a few blocks away that advertises as a “Christian Chiropractor.” This isn’t the infusion of fundamentalist Christianity with popular culture – which is the central thesis of the book – but rather the commercialization and commodification of Christianity for capitalistic ends. That doesn’t suggest the growing influence of religion but the declining orthodoxy and authority of religion. Religion is now just one more thing people use to sell you stuff. If that is what religion has come to, how big of a step is it to simply dismiss religion altogether? In short, the fundamental premise of the book – that fundamentalist Christianity (which the author of the first chapter can’t actually define) is growing increasingly pervasive in popular culture – reflects exactly the opposite of what the authors claim.

To top that off, the authors simply get their facts wrong (not to mention don’t cite sources). Here’s my favorite from page 7, “Dominionists [who the author clearly thinks are all people who say they are Christian] have carefully engaged in their surreptitious political activities – sometimes successfully, sometimes not – in the process putting together mass communications complexes. Indeed, at the end of this decade, they own six TV networks and two thousand Christian radio stations, and they control the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States.” First off, Dominionists are people who want to replace our secular government with a Christian theocracy. While there are plenty of Dominionists out there, the majority of Christians in the US don’t think that way. To then assume that just because a radio station or TV network is owned by Christians that it must be Dominionist is patently absurd. There is a huge variation in theology among Christians in the US, ranging from ultra-liberal to ultra-conservative and these stations are owned by a variety of groups. This is misleading. Finally, the Southern Baptist Convention recently elected a more moderate leader, which didn’t get front page press, but was noteworthy in the circles I travel. The new leader is no Michael Moore, but he is being touted as a moderate. So, two factual errors and one misleading statement. Not bad for a single sentence.

My last complaint – the writing is atrocious. Here’s an example of wholly disjointed thinking from page 6, “Thus, in this new cultural atmosphere, the Bakkers merged Disneyland with the orgasmic [not a typo] delights of the camp meeting. With the sexual and financial scandals that beset the couple, their version of Heritage USA fell apart. Evangelicals knew they had a good marketing idea, and numerous efforts to reconstitute the fundamentalist theme park continue into the twenty-first century. Suffice it to say that the Jesus marketed at Heritage USA was an American patriot.” So, the author called camp meetings “orgasmic” and then, out of the blue, says that the Jesus of Heritage USA was an American patriot. Maybe he’s drawing a connection between USA and patriotism, but that line was completely unrelated to the collapse of Heritage USA. Bizarre…

So, about 10 pages in, I decided I’d had enough. I wasn’t going to learn anything from this book, and I don’t think you will either. If you want good books on the marketing of religion and how religions have become pseudo-corporations, ask me. This is not the book I will recommend.

Title:
Zuckerman, Phil. 2008. Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment. NYU Press.

Rating:
9/10

Review:
The correlation between societal secularism and societal health is an issue that has not received much attention in the sociology of religion. Paul (2005) asserted that societal secularism leads to healthier societies (i.e., one in which poverty is not widespread, crime rates are low, and there is a social safety net of government programs that prevent serious hardship). Norris and Inglehart (2004) show quite convincingly that a sense of existential security, which is derived primarily from living in healthy societies, leads to decreases in religiosity. Thus, some scholars suggest secularism leads to societal health while other suggest the opposite, societal health leads to secularism. Which is it?

• societal health ? existential security ? secularism
• secularism ? existential security ? societal health

The problem here is an issue of causality. Of course, it is possible that we are dealing with a non-recursive relationship: as one increases, it causes the other to increase and vice versa. That may not be the case as not all secular countries have high levels of societal health (though for generally obvious reasons like religion was forcibly removed, e.g., communist countries). But this is a legitimate question that has not been carefully explored in the sociological literature.

In light of the above problem of causality between secularism and societal health, I approached Zuckerman’s book with some hesitation. I thought Zuckerman might try to suggest secularism leads to healthy societies given the subtitle of the book “What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment.” As it turns out, Zuckerman carefully sidesteps my concerns and the causal quandary and instead focuses on a slightly different issue: Is it possible that people can be secular and happy? This question is related to a question that has come up regularly in the sociology of religion and is therefore a topic of interest to sociologists: Are there some people who do not turn to religion when facing death?

Why is this of interest? Stark and Finke’s (2001) formulation of rational choice theory takes as its starting point the assumption that all people have a need for “supernatural compensators” in order to deal with the mystery of death. This formulation of rational choice theory is not alone in asserting this fundamental need for religion. Andrew Greeley has argued that religious needs are “inherent in the human condition” and Christian Smith has suggested that humans are simply driven to faith in religious ideas (p. 55). If it can be shown that not all people need religion to compensate for the mystery of death and that not all people feel a “need” for religion, this foundational assumption is unsound. Theories that rely on it are, therefore, also unsound. Thus, Zuckerman, smartly tackles a less problematic issue than that of causality. Intentionally avoiding the bigger question (p. 29), Zuckerman’s topic is actually quite foundational considering its role in so many prominent theories of religion.

So, how does Zuckerman propose to test this assumption? Zuckerman moved to a secular country, Denmark, for a year with his family (p. 3). During that year, he formally interviewed close to 150 Danes and Swedes and informally spoke with hundreds more. He observed and read extensively about the countries. His interviews and research allowed him to paint a picture of Danish religiosity and social life.

Denmark is, of course, one of the most secular countries on the planet, though what that means has to be qualified. Most Danes consider themselves Christian, many are members of the state church of Denmark (which is Lutheran), and many pay 1% of their income in taxes to the state church. That would seem to make them religious. But not many Danes actually believe in god (less than 30%). What’s more, most of them don’t believe in Jesus, let alone that he atoned for sins (only 21% even believe in sin). Danes are unlikely to believe in heaven (18% do) or hell (10% do). Only 7% of Danes believe the Bible to be inerrant. And most Danes never go to church (only 12% go once a month or more). In fact, those who do believe in god in Denmark are kind of like those who don’t in America – they are the oddballs and deviants (p. 12). So, what do Danes mean when they say they are “Christian”? Two things: (1) it is part of Danish culture to be so and (2) they find it important to treat others as they would like to be treated. Thus, Danes are only religious in a cultural sense: it’s part of their culture to belong to the state church and say you’re Christian (p. 150), but they don’t believe in the supernatural aspects of religion and almost never go to church (the exception being cultural rituals like weddings).

So, Denmark is secular. What about societal health? Well, there is virtually no poverty, crime rates are relatively low, social safety nets are secure (i.e., universal health care and employment benefits are generous), the economy is healthy, and the people are the happiest on the planet (literally, they are ranked #1). This clearly illustrates that religion is not a pre-requisite of societal health or general levels of happiness. But it doesn’t directly address the question of interest: Do Danes draw on religion when it comes to death? And what about meaning in life? Do Danes derive meaning for their lives from religion?

Zuckerman deals with these questions directly by asking many of the 150 people he interviewed how they deal with death and whether they consider meaning in life. Generally he found that death was not something Danes considered on a regular basis, but even when they did, they were not afraid of it (p. 65). In fact, one interviewee, a hospice nurse, suggested that it was religious Danes who had the hardest time dealing with death as they were worried about their eternal fate (pp. 4-5). Atheists and agnostics, on the other hand, believed it was the end and didn’t worry themselves about it. On the specific question of whether religion is required to deal with death, Zuckerman’s data suggests the answer is a resounding NO! This finding, in my opinion, is the primary contribution of Zuckerman’s book. It should lead social scientists who study religion to rethink their theories and assumptions. No longer can a scholar claim that religion is an innate need or a fundamental drive. It is not. People do not need and, in fact, live quite happily without it. People are religious for social and cultural reasons. There is no biological imperative toward religiosity. End of debate.

In addition to finding that Danes do not require religion to deal with death, Zuckerman also finds that most Danes don’t think too much about the meaning of life, and when they do, they do not draw upon religion (p. 73). Once again, a classic argument of many scholars that religion fulfills an innate need to understand the meaning of life is rebuffed. Religion may serve this function for some, but it is not required. End of debate.

An additional contribution of this book is the overall picture of (ir-)religiosity in Denmark and Sweden. Zuckerman actually struggles with how to study the “absence of something” (p. 76), that something being religion. What he finds is that Danes and Swedes just don’t give much thought to religion. It’s not important to them, which is what secularization theorists suggest is the end result of secularization. To be an atheist you have to care about religion. Not many Danes are atheists; they simply don’t think about these issues because they are irrelevant to them. For most Scandinavians, religion and god are things you toy with when you are young, then you forget about them when you get older and move on with your life (p. 94). Religion is a non-issue in Denmark and Sweden not because it is a private issue but because people simply don’t care about religion (p. 102).

A final issue Zuckerman addresses in the book is why some countries are religious and others are not. Zuckerman doesn’t really break new ground theoretically on this front. Instead, he draws on multiple theories and offers those as explanations. For the low levels of religiosity in Denmark, Zuckerman suggests: (1) the lack of competition (due to lazy monopoly state churches), (2) the high levels of existential security, and (3) the gender egalitarianism. All of these are probably part of the explanation. As for the higher levels of religiosity in the US, Zuckerman suggests the opposites are all true (competition leading to marketable religions, lower levels of security, and higher levels of gender inequality) plus: (1) the US was settled by religious Europeans (after the Native Americans, of course); (2) we are a nation of immigrants and immigrants tend to cling to their cultural traditions, which include religion; and (3) we are diverse, which makes religion useful as a tool of identity formation – it makes you part of a group. What’s novel about this approach is that Zuckerman doesn’t argue for one theory over another but instead suggests that many theories help explain higher and lower levels of religiosity. He is probably right.

Lest you think there are no problems with the book, I will point out two. First, the sampling method is not random. Zuckerman admits this. He uses a snowball sampling technique – he met someone, interviewed him, then asked him for references and so on. This is a legitimate problem, but a relatively minor one considering that the findings from the interviews align quite well with the large scale surveys of Danes and Swedes he draws upon. That doesn’t completely overcome the problem of representativeness, but it does suggest that his interview data is useful for answering the questions he asks.

The second problem is also minor: Zuckerman is biased. As a secular Jew, Zuckerman describes living in Denmark as a “breath of secular fresh air” (p. 8). This may be exactly what Zuckerman hoped to find. But there is no indication that what Zuckerman hoped to find influenced what he actually did find. Thus, despite the bias of the author, the book’s findings hold.

Overall, this modest book undermines many of the widely accepted theories in the sociology of religion today by illustrating that the assumption of an innate need for religion is unsound. People do not need religion. In fact, many of those who are not religious get along quite well without it. Zuckerman skirts the causality issue between secularism and societal health, but he compellingly illustrates that you can be happy and not religious. This is a must read for anyone who thinks religion is required for people to be happy.

Bonus Quotes:
p. 30 “It is a great socio-religious irony-for lack of a better term-that when we consider the fundamental values and moral imperatives contained within the world’s great religions, such as caring for the sick, the infirm, the elderly, the poor, the orphaned, the vulnerable; practicing mercy, charity, and goodwill toward one’s fellow human beings; and fostering generosity, humility, honesty, and communal concern over individual egotism-these traditionally religious values are most successfully established, institutionalized, and put into practice at the societal level in the most irreligious nations in the world today.”

p. 32 “The United States is arguably the most religious Western democracy. Denmark and Sweden are arguably the least religious Western democracies. Isn’t it strange and rather noteworthy, then, that it is in proudly religious America that guns are plentiful (especially handguns and semiautomatic assault weapons), the penal system is harsh and punitive, the death penalty is meted out on a weekly basis, drug addicts are treated like criminals, millions of children and pregnant mothers lack basic health insurance, millions of elderly people go without proper care, social workers are underpaid and overworked, people suffering from mental illness are left festering on city streets, and the highest levels of poverty of all the industrialized democracies is here. But in relatively irreligious Denmark and Sweden-two nations that most Americans would consider fairly “godless”-guns are nowhere to be found; the penal system is admirably humane, merciful, and rehabilitative; the death penalty has long been abolished; drug addicts are treated as human beings in need of medical and/or psychological treatment; every man, woman, and child has access to excellent health care; the elderly receive the finest care; social workers are well-paid and given manageable case loads; people suffering from mental illness are given first-class treatment; and the country boasts the lowest levels of poverty of all the industrialized democracies. I wondered how and why this is so.”

Title:
McKnight, Scot, and Hauna Ondrey. 2008. Finding Faith, Losing Faith: Stories of Conversion and Apostasy. Baylor University Press.

Rating:
1/10

Review:
I was asked to review this book by one of the academic organizations to which I belong. I’m not sure they understood what the book was when they sent it out for review. Had they known, it is unlikely it ever would have been sent out for review for this particular organization.

The basic premise of Finding Faith, Losing Faith is that the authors have realized there are patterns to conversion stories Yet, it’s not like they have noticed this on their own. Instead, they simply steal Lewis R. Rambo’s understanding of conversion (Rambo is a professor of psychology and religion at the Graduate Theological Union) and apply it to four groups: individuals who leave Christianity and become religious independents (i.e., no affiliation), Jews who become Messianic Jews (i.e., they believe Jesus is their savior but they remain Jewish in identity and practice), Roman Catholics who convert to evangelical Christianity, and evangelical Christians who convert to Roman Catholicism. They then analyze a bunch of stories of people who have followed these paths for patterns, finding reasons why people leave one group for another.

The book doesn’t actually add anything theoretically, making it pretty useless for sociologists. Instead, it takes what is already known about conversion and applies it to these cases. As a result, you get four repetitions of: (1) people start in a specific context, (2) they have a crisis of faith, (3) they seek out a resolution, (4) they find something or someone to resolve their crisis, (5) they adopt a new identity, and (6) become somewhat critical of their previous identity in the process. This understanding of conversion was outlined by numerous scholars in the 1980s (e.g., Wright and Ebaugh both come to mind), but it is not all that different from the outlines of conversion from much earlier (e.g., William James).

So, what do the authors have to contribute? Substantively, nothing. The reason why is because their methodology is flawed. To analyze these conversion paths, the authors search around on the internet for peoples’ stories and combine those with published biographies of people who have experienced these identity changes. They then analyze this non-random sample for patterns. There is no clear sampling frame for choosing specific stories and no attempt to gather a representative sample of conversion stories. In fact, the methodology is only loosely described, but is basically, “We found a bunch of stories here and there and are going to analyze them as though we have a representative sample.” You might be saying that I’m not really being fair to the authors. After all, did they really say that they had a representative sample? No. They did not. But they generalize from their sample to the respective populations as though they do, which is a lethal flaw. For instance, the authors claim that the “most common” reason people “abandon” Christianity is because of “scientific evidence” (p. 27). In order to claim that this is the “most common” reason, you would need a representative sample of novel independents, which the authors don’t have. They cannot actually claim any frequencies in the respective populations based on what they find in their sample. If they had limited their frequency claims to their sample, that would have been fine, but they do not. Here’s another example from the conversions of Roman Catholics to evangelical Christianity, “Once at college, campus-based ministries abound… and are frequently the context in which RCEs first encounter evangelicalism and through it the Bible. The high occurrence of college RCE conversions causes Shea to refer to college Campuses as the “trenches of the proselytizing wars” between Evangelicals and Catholics” (pp. 148-149). This pattern of generalizing beyond what their data can tell them is repeated often. For instance, they claim: the majority of Jews who become Messianic Jews do so because of psychological and pathological problems (p. 89), that most Messianic Jews have some mystical experience that facilitates conversion (p. 92), and most evangelical Christians convert to Roman Catholicism because of a “special relationship” with someone and not because of the theology (p. 200). In short, while the authors have some interesting data, they don’t have the data they need to make the claims they do.

The reason I was asked to review the book was because it deals with people leaving religions, which is my area of expertise. I was initially hopeful that the authors were on to something when they said, “Theoretically speaking, all conversions are apostasies and all apostasies are therefore conversions” (p. 7). This was the one potential contribution of the book, to recognize that people who leave religion are experiencing a conversion just as much as those who are joining a religion. Claiming these are distinct reflects a bias in the sociological literature, favoring those who join religions over those who leave. But my hope was short-lived, as they immediately revert back to calling religious exiters “apostates,” singling them out as a distinct class of conversion, and suggesting that they convert for different reasons than other people. This is just one of many places (see below) where the authors begin revealing their biases by latching on to the fact that many religious independents love their new found freedom outside the confines of religion. This freedom is transformed into ‘they are sinners’ (usually sexual sin) and ‘they couldn’t cut it inside Christianity’ (not exact quotes; p. 11). “Guilt drove Christine Wicker, a journalist who covers the religious scene in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from the faith” (p. 10). The authors also latch onto John Loftus, a famed religious exiter who is critical of religion. Turns out, according to McKnight and Ondrey, the primary reason Loftus left Christianity wasn’t because the Christian claim that we need a savior is absurd or there is no evidence for a god, both things he specifically mentions, but because he was seduced by a former stripper and had an affair (p. 13). The authors go so far as to say that, despite the fact most of the conversion stories of exiters don’t mention sin, they know it is there, “My own intuition, and I did not find anyone speak in this way, is that the demand put on one’s life by Jesus, by the orthodox faith and by a local church’s expectations can provoke a crisis on the part of the person who wants to go her or his own way. I am suggesting that behind some of the stories is a desire to live as one wants, to break certain moral codes that are experienced as confining, and that were either forgotten when telling the story or were an un-acknowledged dimension of the experience” (pp. 45-46). So, even though exiters don’t usually claim sin as the cause, the authors know better: religious exiters are just sinners and can’t live righteously, so they leave!

Religious exiters are also different, according to the authors, because they are not characterized by what they are gaining but what they are leaving, “Conversions to the Christian faith are nearly always shaped by what one is gaining-forgiveness, heaven, moral transformation, meaning, peace, a new community, or joy. Conversions from the Christian faith are nearly always shaped by what one is leaving instead of what one is gaining” (pp. 46-47). So, secular humanists, who embrace a worldview that values humans and the human experience, are really just bitter losers who have given up all that is good in life, even though none of the accounts analyzed indicated as much. Additionally, while there is no discussion of Messianic Jews turning back to Judaism or Roman Catholic converts returning to evangelical Christianity or evangelical converts returning to Catholicism, the author has to mention that some who leave religions return, “It would be unfair to the evidence to suggest that all who walk away from the faith flourish in the land” (p. 61). According to the authors, secular individuals can’t be happy, so they end up turning back to religion quite frequently (remember, they don’t have the data to indicate frequencies), despite the fact none of the accounts they analyzed indicated as much.

In case you haven’t quite gotten the point that religious exiters just aren’t as good of people as are converts to religion and that, despite what the authors claimed at the beginning of the book that all conversions are apostasies and vice versa, the authors go out of their way to make sure you understand that “apostates” are different from “converts,” “Christian conversion is a spiritual phenomenon, and so the sacred stories of converts must be handled with the gloves of reverence. Ultimately, conversion is what happens between a whole person and the whole God. As such, conversion to Jesus is best defined as the transformation of identity in Christ, the conversion of a person in his deepest being; conversion means the transformation of an “I am who I am” to an “I am who I am in Christ” identity” (pp. 73-74). The implicit message here: “conversion” to religious independent doesn’t warrant treatment with reverence and it isn’t a “deepest being” conversion. It’s superficial and easily reversed.

This leads to another major problem with the book, in case you have already noticed it: Bias! I have to applaud the authors for at least trying to be understanding of people who don’t share their liberal evangelical Christian views (they don’t mention they are evangelical Christians explicitly until the last chapter, but it’s pretty obvious early on), “If mapping conversion theory shows anything… it shows the need for grace, humility, and openness to one another as we listen to and learn from one another’s stories. The sincerity of each converts’ (often opposite) experience underscores the need to learn from one another’s experience rather than denounce the other’s experience. Listening to the critique of those who leave our faith teaches us about our faith. Both converts and apostates shed light on faith” (p. 236). The authors try to be open-minded and objective, but that is clearly beyond their level of tolerance. Throughout the book the authors use parentheticals and short barbs to rail against everyone who is not a liberal evangelical Christian. They call the writings of atheists “tirades against the Christian faith” (p. 14), but don’t label similar criticisms of other religions tirades. They also call atheists “fundamentalists,” (p. 23), which is simply name calling without warrant. They dismiss creationism as a dogma (p. 21), illustrating their liberal tendencies and suggesting their doctrinal superiority. They claim evangelical churches are “saturated with former Roman Catholics” (p. 123), which does have some merit, but they overstate the case. According to recent Pew data, 10% of American adults are former Catholics, but 2.6% of the American population has converted to Roman Catholicism, including many evangelical Christians. The authors also claim Roman Catholicism doesn’t really teach doctrine or allow people to “know” Jesus (p. 139), which I’m sure Roman Catholics will find appealing. They even level their vitriol at the World Council of Churches, claiming it is seeking “unity at the expense of theological articulation” (p. 214). Basically, if you aren’t a liberal evangelical Christian who thinks exactly how the authors do, this book will find a way to criticize you. But it’s done with an ecumenical spirit, so don’t take offense.

It isn’t until the very end of the book that the authors admit they have an aim other than objective scientific research: advocacy, “We believe that pastors and church workers, to apply this to our own context of faith, need to become much more aware of conversion theory for this reason alone: conversions occur for a variety of reasons and, until ministers are aware of the amazing variety of those reasons, they will be unable to minister adequately to those with contexts and stories unlike the typical context and story at work in their own location of ministry” (pp. 234-235). In short, the authors want pastors and church leaders to be the go-to resources for people who are doubting (pp. 22-23). They wrote this book to serve as a resource for such people so they can help their acolytes stay evangelical Christians. In a sense, this is commendable: the authors are criticizing their own community by noting that among evangelical Christians, “Doubts cannot often be nursed in public without censure and without questions about one’s integrity” (p.54). In short, the book is designed to inform pastors of why people might leave religions with the hope that the pastors will be more understanding and hopefully be able to stop them.

From a social scientific standpoint, the book really has nothing to offer. The methodology is flawed, there are no contributions to theory (in fact, I don’t think the authors really understand what theory is; see p. 231), the book is in no way objective, and the ultimate goal is to keep people religious. If you are in a position to try to keep evangelical Christians part of the fold, you might find this book useful in that it will help you understand why some people want to leave. But I can’t think of another context where this book would be useful.

Title:
Wicklund, Susan, and Alan Kesselheim. 2007. This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor. PublicAffairs.

Rating:
8/10

Review:
In the fight over abortion in the U.S., two voices are not regularly heard: (1) The voices of the hundreds of women who died from botched illegal abortions prior to 1973. (2) The voices of the women whose lives were saved as a result of not having to have an illegal abortion since the procedure was legalized in 1973. And (3) the voices of the doctors who perform these abortions and save so many lives. This Common Secret, by Susan Wicklund, brings to the debate two of these voices. Dr. Wicklund is a doctor who has performed abortions for women for over 20 years. In this book she tells her story, but also tells the stories of many of the women whose lives she saved.

But she starts the book talking about a life lost in what is probably the most compelling story of the book. In the 1990s, Dr. Wicklund appeared on 60 Minutes to talk about how she was being persecuted by anti-choice/anti-abortion activists. Before her interview aired, she decided she had to tell her grandmother what it was she did for a living. As she was explaining her job, her grandmother stopped her and told her a story. When her grandmother was sixteen, her best friend got pregnant, possibly incestuously from her father. Not knowing what to do, she turned to Dr. Wicklund’s grandmother for help. They had heard that if you stick something sharp in a pregnant woman’s vagina it can abort the fetus. Dr. Wicklund’s grandmother, with the help of her sister, tried to help, “We closed ourselves, the three of us, in one of the bedrooms late one morning. We didn’t talk much, and she didn’t ever cry out in pain. It took a few tries to make the blood come. None of us spoke. We didn’t know what to expect next, or what to do when the blood kept coming. It was all over the sheets. All over us. So bright red. It was awful. It just wouldn’t stop… We stayed there together, unable to move, even after she was dead. Her father found us, all three of us, in the bed. He stood in the doorway, staring. No words for a long time. When he did speak, he told my sister and me to leave and that we were never, ever to speak of this. We were not to tell anyone, ever. Ever” (pp. 7-8). Dr. Wicklund’s grandmother had played a direct role in the death of her best friend at 16. Now imagine this scenario playing out about 7,200 times a year in the U.S. alone. That’s about how many women would die every year in the U.S. from botched illegal abortions if abortion were illegal.

The book talks about Dr. Wicklund’s journey from young, single mother (who underwent a very cold abortion herself (p. 15), motivating her to improve abortion provision) to medical student to abortion provider. Along the way she tells many stories. There are too many to recount here, but a few should illustrate the power of these stories. Dr. Wicklund helped a father and daughter overcome the emotional distance that had built up between them as a result of the daughter being raped while walking home from a night out with friends. She became pregnant as a result, but didn’t feel like she could tell her parents. Her father felt like he had failed his daughter because she couldn’t tell him about the rape and he couldn’t protect her. Dr. Wicklund’s extensive counseling prior to the abortion helped them overcome the barrier and reconcile. There’s also the anti-choice protester who just weeks before had chained herself together with other protesters outside Dr. Wicklund’s clinic who was now in the clinic hoping to get an abortion herself (pp. 178-179). Turns out she had come to the clinic once before but the protesters prevailed, promising they would help her with her child the first time she got pregnant. She had the child, but all they gave her was some diapers and a layette set. She was pregnant again, but now she had a 5-month old and needed help. The protesters were nowhere to be found. Dr. Wicklund performed the abortion, educating the woman about the procedure in the process and helping another person see the importance of legal abortions in the U.S.

A major contribution to the abortion debate is the factual information the book includes. First, Dr. Wicklund is not pro-abortion (no one is). She decided early on that she would not perform abortions after 14 weeks as it was just too hard for her to do (pp. 28-29). She recognizes the importance of such abortions, but she chooses not to perform them. She also regularly dissuaded women from having abortions when they were pressured into it for the wrong reasons. The goal of all abortion doctors isn’t to abort children; it’s to save the lives of women and children and give women some control over their lives. Safe, legal abortions do that. Deciding to have an abortion is not a small decision, “Never once did these decisions seem easy or casual. Every one was the product of tremendous personal struggle. Anyone who claims otherwise is either very ignorant or unkind or both. Anyone who says that women use abortion as a method of birth control or as a simple matter of convenience should spend a day in a clinic where abortions are performed. No honest person would ever make that statement again” (pp. 28-29).

The book notes that women from all social groups get abortions: rich, poor, white, black, highly religious, not religious. However, poor women are four times more likely to have unwanted pregnancies and three times more likely to have an abortion. Making abortion illegal is just one more way the wealthy disenfranchise the poor. The book also notes that nearly 40% of women will have an abortion at some point in their lifetime. The book actually follows an entire procedure from start to finish as she talked it through with a patient, illustrating exactly how the procedure is done. It’s quick and safe. If done right, more time is spent on counseling and making sure the patient is making the right decision for her then on the actual procedure. Dr. Wicklund also allows the women to see the tissue removed if they would like. One young girl, whose uncle was on his way to the clinic to stop the abortion, saw the tissue and summarized the whole debate in one sentence, “How can it be that my uncle believes I am less important than that tiny bit of tissue you just took out of me?” (p. 140). This is what it is all about: women controlling their own lives (p. 161).

Perhaps one of the greatest contributions of this book to the abortion debate is the depiction of anti-choice protesters by someone who suffered horribly at their hands for decades. Dr. Wicklund first encountered them when she went for her own abortion. She remembered them as “an annoyance, a hassle” (p. 15). But she would later come to see them quite differently. Anti-choice activists have killed 7 people, tried to kill 17 more, bombed 52 buildings, burned another 180, invaded thousands of homes and offices, kidnapped people, threatened people with death and violence, thrown acid on people, robbed clinics, and stalked hundreds of doctors (p. 44). In many locales, anti-choice activists were not punished for their crimes (p. 53) as local authorities refused to prosecute them. Dr. Wicklund was threatened with violence and death through the mail for years before federal prosecutors caught wind of what was happening and finally took action. She used disguises to travel to and from clinics to avoid the protesters (p. 59), but that was not enough: she was physically assaulted on several occasions. The protesters barricaded her in her home and harassed her, her daughter, and her husband (p. 63). They broke into her home and regularly picketed her clinics. Until they were ordered to stop by the courts, the anti-choice activists maintained a pseudo-hit list of abortion providers online, checking off those that were shot or killed (pp. 190-191). They run deceptive “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” that pretend to be staffed by doctors but are designed only to misinform women and prevent them from getting the help they need, feeding them lies about abortion (p. 130). Anti-choice protesters are misogynistic power mongers, or as Dr. Wicklund put it, “For the black-and-white protesters, women are reduced to little more than incubators. Their role is to produce babies, no matter what the circumstances” (p. 238).

There are a couple minor issues with the book. First, the writing is fine, no major grammar or spelling issues, but it’s simplistic. It’s not captivating; the descriptions throughout are a bit dry. Additionally, the way the book plays out and is organized is a bit hard to follow. Stories seem detached from when they occurred; they simply pop into the otherwise chronological narrative of Dr. Wicklund’s life whenever and wherever without a clear sense of organization. These are very minor issues, admittedly, but they do make the book a bit harder to read then it should be.

Overall, I think this book should be required reading in 8th or 9th grade. Everyone should have access to accurate information about abortion and realize that abortions are not only necessary, but that they save lives: the lives of women and children. Anti-choice activists have one major goal in mind: the subordination of women. This is fundamentally an issue of women’s rights. Read the book and see for yourself.

(UPDATE: I originally accepted the claim made in the book that there were about 5,000 deaths due to botched illegal abortions every year in the U.S. alone prior to 1973. Turns out, that claim is just wildly inaccurate. First, we don’t know how many there really were as they were not reported. Second, the CDC does have data on 1972, the year just before abortions became legal. The number: 39. That did plummet quite rapidly and is no at about a constant 0, but it wasn’t in the thousands. Sorry, this is a new criticism of the book – she uses misleading numbers. It makes me wonder about some of the other numbers.)