Fighting words

Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11.
By Bruce Lincoln. University of Chicago Press, 142 pp., $25.00.

Modernity has ended twice: in its Marxist form in 1989 Berlin, and in its liberal form on September 11, 2001. In order to understand such major historical changes we need both large-scale and focused analyses--a combination seldom to be found in one volume. But in his brief new book, Bruce Lincoln, Caroline E. Haskell Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago, has given us just such a mix of discrete and large-picture analysis. In addition to the six essays collected here, the appendices of relevant primary texts and the ample and learned endnotes merit careful attention.

Lincoln's first three essays were written in the immediate aftermath of September 11. Each advances his general theory of religion--a theory that follows from and is supported by a close, analytical reading of "primary texts": the chilling "Final Instructions to the Hijackers of September 11" found in Mohamed Atta's luggage, George Bush's equally chilling national address immediately after the attack, Osama bin Laden's carefully scripted October 7 reply, and the transcript of Pat Robertson's notorious interview with Jerry Falwell on September 13. (All are included in the book's appendices.)

Working against the current tide of scholarship, Lincoln theorizes that "religion" denotes something real that can be defined. It consists of four domains: discourse (talk and texts about transcendence), practice (what human beings are enjoined to do religiously), community (with whom they do it) and institution (the structure within which they do it). All religions can be expressed in either a maximalist or minimalist fashion. In the former, religion reorders all dimensions of life and culture, often in absolutist terms. In the latter, any given religion is but one dimension of a culture that allows a wide berth to both secular achievement and other religions.