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120 Recent Books
accompanied by a shift towards the quest for the historical Jesus that has
so dominated Christian thought in more recent times, and many Christians
will feel that this latter quest constitutes a more meaningful approach for
them. It is worth pointing out, though, that this book is not necessarily
directed at the mainstream Christian believer. Those who describe themselves
as ‘spiritual but not religious’ will find much that is intriguing and
challenging here—precisely because of the even-handed and sympathetic
way in which various alternative beliefs and therapies are considered.
Speaking personally, I find the author most illuminating in the areas of
music, dance and liturgy, for here one can really appreciate the power of
an analysis that is centred on a cosmic cross, stretching out in six, rather
than four, directions: past and future, above and below, in the dimensions
of the earth itself, and in the network of human societies. The symbolism
of musical tones and ritual movement really does take on a new
significance when seen in this light, and one feels that the author is
correct in characterizing the loss of this cosmic knowledge as a loss of
Wisdom. One tiny, but telling, example of such a loss is the way that the
boy-dancers of the Blessed Sacrament in Seville (the so-called ‘Seises’)
exchanged the angel costumes that they wore in medieval times for the
garb of conquistadors at the start of the seventeenth century. A whole
cosmological, spiritual and even ecological shift is implied in this change.
This is a timely book because, confronted by what many mainstream
Christians might see as an infuriating syncretism in contemporary spiritualities,
Dominic White plunges in with infectious enthusiasm, dismissing nothing
out of hand, but seeking to understand and integrate them within a wider
Christian knowledge. Such enthusiasm bears two fruits in particular: a
more serious consideration of the arts at the centre of Christian life and
worship, and a deeper engagement with what it is really to know Christ.
Ian Coleman
William James and the Transatlantic Conversation: Pragmatism, Pluralism,
and Philosophy of Religion, edited by Martin Halliwell and Joel D. S.
Rasmussen (Oxford: OUP, 2014). 978 0 1996 8751 0, pp.256, £69.00.
William James was the first professor of psychology at Harvard University
and is widely credited with taking an innovative approach to religion—in
particular in his landmark study The Varieties of Religions Experience, which
offered a systematic but non-reductive examination of religious experience.