Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian...

The Americas: Central and SouthAmericaMEXICAN AMERICAN RELIGIONS: SPIRITUAL-ITY, ACTIVISM, AND CULTURE. Edited by GastónEspinosa and Mario T. García. Durham, NC: Duke UniversityPress, 2008. Pp. ix + 443. Cloth, $94.95; paper, $25.95.

This edited volume utilizes multidisciplinaryapproaches to explore the infusion of Mexican Americanreligions in political activism, literature, healing practices,and popular culture. Specifically, this work’s application ofpoly-methodic approaches emphasizes social scientific ori-entations without marginalizing traditional methodologiessuch as liberation theology and church studies. As a resultof taking a “nonnormative” hermeneutical stance, each ofthe fifteen chapters illustrates the ways in which religionoperates in the everyday activities and practices of MexicanAmericans. While K. Turner argues that home altars serveas vehicles of personal/familial agency for Mexican Ameri-can Altaristas, L. Pérez establishes a correlation between“hybrid spiritualities” of Chicana altar-based art and politi-cal protest against acts of dehumanization against MexicanAmericans. In addition, intersections between religiouscommitments, capitalism, and healing as displayed curand-erismo; mysticism and politics as seen in the activities ofCésar Chávez; and redemption, resistance, and pop cultureas expressed in the symbolic positioning of Selena are alsocontained within this volume. While this text highlightsdiversity among Mexican American religious experiences,this diversity falls within the categories of class, gender,and race. Hence, sexual orientation, both as a subject ofdehumanization and as a methodology (queer theory), is nottaken into consideration. Despite this concern, this textaffords an expansion of interpretative lenses in which toexamine the diverse religious experiences of MexicanAmericans.

Margarita Simon GuilloryRice University

BLACK ATLANTIC RELIGION: TRADITION, TRANS-NATIONALISM, AND MATRIARCHY IN THEAFRO-BRAZILIAN CANDOMBLÉ. By J. Lorand Matory.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.Pp. 376. Cloth $28.95.

With this book Matory challenges much of our commonknowledge about the tradition of Candomblé as well as itssister traditions of Santeria and Vodou. At the same time healso confronts our understanding of transnationalism as anew and uniquely modern phenomenon. In a carefullycrafted and documented argument, he shows how Candom-blé developed through the focused work of Africans andAfro-Brazilians over several centuries and how identities onboth sides of the Atlantic were shaped by actors from boththe Americas and Africa. He convincingly argues that Can-domblé and the other African-based traditions are not

African “survivals” as Herskovits and his students have sug-gested but purposeful developments on the part of Africans,Afro-Brazilians and others. Intertwined with this argumentis the supporting argument that transnationalism, ratherthan being a recent phenomenon dependent on and chal-lenging to modern national structures, has been character-istic of all but the most isolated societies. Because of hiswork in both Brazil and Nigeria Matory is uniquely placed tosee and analyze the historical connections between thesesocieties. This text is a challenging read, not for the style butfor the content. Few of us will come away with our funda-mental understandings of the interactions of Africans in theAmericas unscathed. Thus this book is highly recommendednot only to libraries, scholars, and graduate students ofAfrican-based traditions but others interested in how trans-national migration and trade can affect communities in boththe “homeland” and its diasporas.

Mary Ann ClarkYavapai College

The Americas: USAJOSEPH PRIESTLEY AND ENGLISH UNITARIAN-ISM IN AMERICA. By J. D. Bowers. University Park, PA:Penn State University Press, 2007. Pp. xii + 282. $50.00.

This book is about the contested nature of Unitarianismin America, but a contest that comes from within, and fromtwo directions. J. D. Bowers has written a sparkling narra-tive of the important role that Joseph Priestley and EnglishUnitarianism played in the development of a self-consciously “American” form of anti-Trinitarian Christian-ity. He explores the reasons for the vigorous rejection ofPriestley’s Socinian theology and his religious movement onthe part of the New England Arian liberalism culminating inW. E. Channing, and offers an important revisionist readingof the historiography of American Unitarianism, which hasbeen inclined to accept its rejection of any connectionsto Priestleyism as historical fact rather than ideologicalpolemic. Bowers argues that American Unitarianism,emerging as it did from Congregationalism, sought to main-tain its standing within the broader American churchculture by emphasizing the biblical origins of its doctrine ofGod and its doctrinal continuity with Christianity on the roleof Jesus, while denying its similarity to the radical thoughtof Priestley. Bowers, to the contrary, demonstrates theimportance of Priestley’s activism and writings to thegeneral growth of Unitarianism in America in both itsdenominational (AUA) and intellectual forms, a contributioneventually recognized by Unitarians themselves. This workfills an important lacuna in studies of Priestley and in thehistoriography of Unitarianism, complementing and extend-ing works such as Robert Schofield’s The Enlightened JosephPriestley.

Robert E. BrownJames Madison University

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