Synopses & Reviews
How is knowledge about religion and religions produced, and how is that knowledge authenticated and circulated? David Chidester seeks to answer these questions in
Empire of Religion, documenting and analyzing the emergence of a science of comparative religion in Great Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century and its complex relations to the colonial situation in southern Africa. In the process, Chidester provides a counterhistory of the academic study of religion, an alternative to standard accounts that have failed to link the field of comparative religion with either the power relations or the historical contingencies of the imperial project.
In developing a material history of the study of religion, Chidester documents the importance of African religion, the persistence of the divide between savagery and civilization, and the salience of mediationsimperial, colonial, and indigenousin which knowledge about religions was produced. He then identifies the recurrence of these mediations in a number of case studies, including Friedrich Max Müllers dependence on colonial experts, H. Rider Haggard and John Buchans fictional accounts of African religion, and W. E. B. Du Boiss studies of African religion. By reclaiming these theorists for this history, Chidester shows that race, rather than theology, was formative in the emerging study of religion in Europe and North America. Sure to be controversial, Empire of Religion is a major contribution to the field of comparative religious studies.
Review
“Chidesters book will simultaneously entertain and educate.”
Review
“Chidester renders highly original readings of major figures like Max Müller, Charles Darwin, James Frazer, Herbert Spencer, E. B. Tylor, and W. E. B. Du Bois. . . . By foregrounding the complex apparatuses of imperialism, racialization histories, and the imbrication of racial knowledge with colonial power, Chidester offers a game-changing volume that will shift scholarly understanding of empire and religion. . . . Essential.”
Review
“There is a growing body of scholarship that explores the complex relations between European imperialism and the modern field of comparative religion, but Empire of Religion is the first to really interrogate the relations between colonial Africa and the modern study of religion in a comprehensive and sophisticated way. Elegantly pairing key themes and authors in each section, Chidesters lucid and powerful book will be of central importance to specialists in African religions and history, and the larger genealogy of religion as a modern category.”
Review
“Here, for perhaps the first time, is a genuinely empirical study of the empire of religion. Chidester doesnt merely name a genealogy and geography of power, he proves it in the form of triple mediations that spin out from a very specific place, South Africa. Moving restlessly between the accounts of local actors, colonial officials and, most importantly, metropolitan theoreticians, Chidester ‘doggedly (see the book!) disentangles the dubious series of transactions and translations that generated the fetish called theory, and exposes its imperial encumbrances.”
Review
“Chidester makes vivid his story by focusing on important figures in the discipline, including Friedrich Max Müller, E.B. Tyler, Andrew Lang, James Frazer, and W.E.B. DuBois. Even H. Rider Haggard and Mohandas Gandhi also figure in this genealogy. . . . Chidester’s critical analysis of how the early scholars navigated their cultural heritage suggest lessons modern scholars might consider.”
Synopsis
"In this dazzling book, Chidester moves effortlessly and insightfully between the serious and solemn and the playful and humorous. The case studies are so very fresh and interesting, and he brings a wonderfully nuanced eye to the material."Edward T. Linenthal, author of
The Unfinished Bombing"Chidester's analysis of popular religion and culture is the most extensive and penetrating that exists."Wade Clark Roof, author of Spiritual Marketplace
"This book is impressively wide-ranging in the scope of its discussion, adding a global dimension for a vantage point that makes it quite unique."Bruce Forbes, coeditor of Religion and Popular Culture in America
Synopsis
Authentic Fakes explores the religious dimensions of American popular culture in unexpected places: baseball, the Human Genome Project, Coca-Cola, rock 'n' roll, the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, the charisma of Jim Jones, Tupperware, and the free market, to name a few. Chidester travels through the cultural landscape and discovers the role that fakeryin the guise of frauds, charlatans, inventions, and simulationsplays in creating religious experience. His book is at once an incisive analysis of the relationship between religion and popular culture and a celebration of the myriad ways in which invention can stimulate the religious imagination.
Moving beyond American borders, Chidester considers the religion of McDonalds and Disney, the discourse of W.E.B. Du Bois and the American movement in Southern Africa, the messianic promise of Nelson Mandelas 1990 tour to America, and more. He also looks at the creative possibilities of the Internet in such phenomena as Discordianism, the Holy Order of the Cheeseburger, and a range of similar inventions. Arguing throughout that religious fakes can do authentic religious work, and that American popular culture is the space of that creative labor, Chidester looks toward a future pregnant with the possibilities of new kinds of authenticity.”
About the Author
David Chidester is Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, author of Christianity: A Global History (2000), Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (1996), and Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and Jonestown (revised edition, 2003), and coeditor of American Sacred Space (1995). Savage Systems and Salvation and Suicide are winners of the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in Religious Studies.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
1. Planet Hollywood
2. Popular Religion
3. Plastic Religion
4. Embodied Religion
5. Sacrificial Religion
6. Monetary Religion
7. Global Religion
8. Transatlantic Religion
9. Shamanic Religion
10. Virtual Religion
11. Planet America
Notes
Index