Book review: Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality, written by Dick Houtman and Brigit Meyer

EXCHANGE 43 (2014) 89-105 'Tf„-- EXCHANGE BRILL brill.com/exch Book Reviews Dick Houtman and Brigit Meyer (eds.) Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality, New York: Fordham University Press 2012,496 p., ISBN 978-0-8232-946-7, price us $ 35.00. Against the political wisdom of modem democracies that treat religion as spiritual stuff to be kept out of public sight—except for its well-guarded and subsidised artefacts—the 21 papers of the 2007 conference gathered here firmly argue that religious matter 'matters'. As part of a research project. The Future of the Religious Past, led by Hent de Vries, this sizable book—skilfully introduced by the editors and supported by over 75-pages of endnotes—tackles its thorny theme via what may seem a disparate list of heterogeneous topics, tentatively grouped in six parts. There is no way for me, here, to render adequately the rich harvest or engage the authors more than by some questions aimed at raising further perspectives. Peter Pelt sets the stage by a study of Protestant anti-materialism, backed by Ernst van den Hemel looking at the philosophy behind Calvin's critique of Eucharistie practices in medieval piety and his drive to a spiritualist piety. The challenge emerges, though, when Matthew Engelke reports on African Protestant churches using objects as powerful carriers of Jesus' blessing and when the West's spiritualising inkling is exposed by David Lopez, showing how Buddhism came to rank as 'inspiring', when, after ages of disdain of its worship of a semi-god's statue, a 19th-century scholar 'unearthed' the ethical side, thereby shining its aura in white eyes. Confiicts round the fledgling Sacred Heart-devotion analysed by David Morgan show that spiritualisation was an issue that troubled Catholicism too. And W.J.T. Mitchell and Freddie Rokem examine related disputes affecting the theatrical and pictorial arts. The first two parts' defining of the central theme ends with Irene Stengs' study of a royal image being venerated in Thailand. Part III examines the role of objects in Jewish, Muslim, and Latin-American Catholic religions. José van Santem's critique of her own work is telling, as she confesses having previously ignored the role played by prayer beads to mark Sufi-membership in Cameroon. Galit Hasan-Rokem explains how the Jewish Sukkah allows a feast that roots in the exile-experience, to be related back to exodus-times, thus proving that faith focuses religion's core by using matter. © KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2014 | DOI 10.1 l<i3/I572543X-I23413n4 90 BOOK REVIEWS Equally, Marian cult objects allow Bolivians to recall lost popular traditions, as shown by Sane Derks, Willy Jansen, and Catrien Notermans. Part IV deals with body fluids—mainly blood—in religious context. Their anthropological ambiguity is stressed by Willy Jansen and Grietje Dresen, while Elisabeth Castelli examines a frank usage of blood in a ritual protest against the us' Iraq war and Miranda Klaver reports on the Pentecostal adulation of Christ's redeeming blood being braced by Gibson's bloody Passion film. But this emotion-laden 'matter' tends to blur analytic accuracy, for instance when Catholics are said to drink blood and decree menstrual blood to render women inapt to 'perform tbe sacrament of transubstantiation' (p. 231). For, there is no such sacrament and menstruation is not the issue blocking feminine priestbood. Parts V and vi deal with religion as a feature of social space, physical as well as virtual Michiel Leezenberg's study of an old Muslim venue for social gatherings that proved religiously neutral, and Annelies Moors's report on the public disputes over Muslim veils are followed by Brigit Meyer, a conference convenor, discussing the prominence of Christ-images in the 'pentecostalizing' Ghanian landscape, notwithstanding its paradox and clash with Protestant tenets. Marie José de Abreu also shows how Brazil's charismatic Catholicism fills both the physical and virtual space with religious images. The three studies on religious entry into virtual space, in Part vi, by Stef Aupers, Dorien Zandbergen, Inneke Noomen, and Dick Houtman may seem again to 'immaterialise' the thing-aspect. But Aupers thematically returns to Pelt's article by quoting Max Weber's premonition that the disenchantment may actually falter. Here, the book's abundant data trigger a few questions. Weber's idea of a causal link between Calvinist asceticism and the rise of capitalism raises doubts about the anti-material sermons that eventually favoured a materialist spirit, with rivalling hunts for colonial wealth, and ignored its dismal effects marring the devout discourses of missionary groups. This inverse logic merits a social-political study, as the anti-materialist talk bred materialism rather than disenchantment. It also led to symbolic revolts, as surfaced in the Sacred Heart piety, which a 1961-study on the human body by the Leiden metableticist, Johan van der Berg proved to coincide with and protest against Harvey's instrumentalisation of the body reducing the heart to a pump. To note failing references of this type is not a criticism, but a hint for the way-ahead of this valuable research project, which might consider topics like sound (music), dance, and the sacrificial use of matter. Given the growing non-Western impact on a religion that took a curious turn in the Biblical times and in 2000 years of Christendom, new analytic tools such as Girard's mimetic views of religion may prove useful. Indeed, how to explain that the message {bar) of God's bliss EXCHANGE 43 (2014) 89-105 BOOK REVIEWS 9I came to be diverted away from a patriarchal hope of fieshy {bsr) 'prosperous posterity' to its spiritual other-worldly ideal? Should the present shift to a new 'thingification' (p. 60) be dubbed a return to its origin? Such questions, some of which I raised before in this journal, make us await eagerly any further instalment of this timely project to supplement this first rich harvest. Wiel Eggen Amsterdam, The Netherlands EXCHANGE 43 (2014) 89-105 Copyright of Exchange is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. 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