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Bruce Lincoln. Holy Terrors: Thinking About Religion After September 11. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. xi + 142 p.
Holy Terrors is a provocative work that merits attention from students of religion. In six short chapters, all but one of which are revised versions of previously published material, Lincoln introduces readers to a conflict model of the relations between religion and culture. The first three chapters develop a definition of religion in terms of four fundamental domains-discourse, practice, community and institution-by way of several texts surrounding the events of September 11-the final instructions to the hijackers found in the luggage of Mohamed Atta, speeches of Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush, and a transcript of a Jerry Falwell interview on Pat Robertson's 700 Club. These short texts, conveniently printed as appendices, also allow L. to begin discussing an approach to religion based on its relation to social conflict, a model that is further developed in the second half of the book. The remaining chapters deal with the diminished role given to religion in shaping cultural discourses and practices during the Enlightenment, the exporting of the personalized and "minimalist" Enlightenment model of religion during the colonial period, and the subsequent reaction to this model in the period of decolonization. A valuable set of endnotes and an index round out the volume.
More than a study of the religious dimensions of September 11 and its aftermath, Holy Terrors is a book about how to think about religion, and L.'s positioning in this ongoing debate (a representative of the 'theory and method school' and strongly informed by critical theory) is one deserving of consideration. L. rejects any approach to the study of religion that ignores social, political and historical contexts. What interests L. about religion is the way it functions in relation to moral and aesthetic preferences within and across cultures. Culture is "the prime instrument through which groups mobilize themselves, construct collective identities, and effect their solidarity by excluding those whom they identify as outsiders, while simultaneously establishing their own internal hierarchy..." Religion is that typical element of culture with the "unique capacity to stabilize and buttress the others.... invest[ing] specific human preferences with transcendent status..." so that a "community's characteristic preferences...