Religious Studies Review • VOLUME 39 • NUMBER 2
dehumanizing reality as something undeserved and unjus-
tifiable and also inspires defiance and compassion. Along-
side tragedy, Tallon offers horror as a more “nihilistic way
of understanding evil” as inexplicable, ugly, violating, and
chaotic. Horror forces (or allows) one to confront the
vileness of evil and answer with moral and restorative
action. This thoughtful and pioneering work is ideal for a
seminary or graduate class grappling with the problem of
evil or exploring the potentials of aesthetics for contempo-
rary theology. It is a welcome addition to theodicy litera-
ture, as it confronts the problem of evil as demanding
response rather than explanation, and as it utilizes the
resources of art and aesthetics to offer a method of con-
structive response.
Caroline Hamilton-Arnold
Claremont School of Theology
POP CULT: RELIGION AND POPULAR MUSIC. By
Rupert Till. New York: Continuum, 2010. Pp. 215. $34.95.
Although I am not the only one to observe this, a
sizable number of members of Generation X of my acquain-
tance have clearly disavowed a traditional religious affilia-
tion and filled the spiritual void left in their lives by
devoting themselves to an interest in the arts, music,
sports, movies, or a multimedia science fiction narrative
and joining a community of likeminded and similarly
obsessed fans as a replacement for “going to church.” In
response, members of traditional, establishment religions
have demonized members of newer faiths as cultists,
whether they have embraced Scientology, the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Star Trek, or popular
music. The bizarre public persona of Tom Cruise and the
sight of grown men dressed as Klingons (and sometimes
speaking Klingon) have gone a ways toward validating
these negative stereotypes. But these stereotypes are never
the full story, and many, if not all, of these faiths deserve a
fair representation in the popular media and in academic
scholarship. Sometimes what it takes to respond to these
stereotypes and represent “cults” in a more thoughtful and
fair way is a former and/or current member of a “cult” with
a strong sense of self-awareness and an understanding of
academic standards capable of writing a thorough and
engaging treatise about what these New Religious Move-
ments (NRMs) are like. Rupert Till is a member of the
popular music NRM, and the ideal person to write a book
about the subject. Demonstrating encyclopedic knowledge
of music, theology, and existing scholarship on cults, reli-
gion, and the music industry, Till strikes just the right
tone, takes a balanced and fascinating approach to his
material, and has written an incisive and accessible book
on the subject. This book is highly recommended, not just
for scholars of music and popular culture, but for under-
graduates and casual readers as well.
Marc DiPaolo
Oklahoma City University
• JUNE 2013
Religion in Culture
HOW SHOULD A PERSON BE?: A NOVEL FROM
LIFE. Fiction. By Sheila Heti. New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 2012. Pp. 320. Hardcover, $25.00.
“Do not hide at the top of Mount Carmel or at the bottom
of the sea with the tropical fish and a heavy tank of oxygen
on your back, for I will find you even there,” declares a
divine voice in Sheila Heti’s novel. Distinctly Judaic and
phallocentric—puns throughout the text accentuate this
point—God functions here as a metaphor for the ways we
warp our actions according to the desires of others. Thus,
jettisoning our concern for this “Godience” is one path
toward a kind of authentic being that relates to our narrator’s
quest “to be the human ideal.” This book, a haphazard medi-
tation upon what an ideal might be—and how such an ideal
might relate to artistic production—focuses on authenticity
in part because artists are expected to be “authentic” accord-
ing to some preconceived audience notions of authenticity.
In contrast to this notion, Heti offers authentically authentic
action as simultaneously solipsistic/“natural”—a reflex, like
smashing a spider—and cathartic/ecstatic. To act neither “in
the hopes of being admired” nor to please nor “to win some-
one’s regard”—to act in a way that simply does not take
other people into account—leads the narrator to the experi-
ence of “floating upward to the heavens.” “Nature” offers a
nonjudgmental (and personally pleasing, “beautiful”) substi-
tute for God, but it is one devoid of ethical concerns of
constraints. Indeed, “righteousness” and “benevolence” are
suspect terms, linked here with attempts to please others, a
charge one character levels at the Buddha. In an age where
social media has rendered “fame” ubiquitous, making
“exile” from attention a constant threat, the relevance of
Heti’s reflections cannot be discarded. This fascinating, trou-
bling text will surely provoke discussion in a range of the-
ology and philosophy courses.
Spencer Dew
Centenary College of Louisiana
ATTA. Fiction. By Jarett Kobek. Seimiotext(e), intervention
series, 9. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e), 2011. Distributed
by The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Pp. 200. Paper, $12.95.
Standing in New York, “the greatest sinkhole of urban
depravity,” Mohamed Atta describes his own horror at the
skyline—“buildings surrounding the Towers like acolytes
encircle a false messiah”—in this fictionalized account of the
road to 9/11 from the perspective of the pilot of the plane
which hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Kobek
offers a psychological portrait of an individual obsessed with
the decadence and decay of “American-Zionist” materialistic
culture. The most riveting sections include Atta’s critique of
Disney’s cartoon film The Jungle Book—“a spectacular mar-
riage of 2 cultural imperialists, inspiration via Queen
Victoria’s eunuch, Rudyard Kipling, and images by the
American zealot, Walt Disney”—analyses of slasher films,
and a visit to Disney World. Atta’s “inner voice” speaks to him
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 Religious Studies Review • VOLUME 39
through buildings, and his rage centers on modern architec-
ture, where skyscrapers threaten to blot out the sky and
obscure the earth and stone of unspoiled humanity. Building
on biographical facts such as Atta’s academic training in
engineering and architecture at Cairo University, and urban
development and planning at the Technical University
Hamburg-Harburg, Kobek’s portrait of this infamous charac-
ter at once humanizes Atta (who declares, at one point, that he
will “not build concrete and steel abominations that haunt the
sky. I will not block the sun with my arrogance”), deciphering
the terrorist’s possible motivations, while refusing to explain
away or reduce the violence of the 9/11 events. At once
disturbing and thought-provoking, this book would be of use
in classes touching on topics such as terrorism, representa-
tions of Islamic identity and theology, global fundamental-
isms, and general courses on religion and literature.
Chad Fulwider
Centenary College of Louisiana
DRIFTING HOUSE. Fiction. By Krys Lee. New York:
Penguin Books, 2012. Pp. 224, $15.00.
These stories span a range of locales, from North and
South Korea to the Korean diaspora in America, from cities
to borderlands, from bedrooms to “the queue of minorities,
single parents, and bulky men and women” at a McDonald’s,
wherein, “beyond the fun house decor and forced cheer of
the Happy Meal box, someone was committing suicide,
someone was grieving the murder of their son or daughter,
someone was enduring God’s endless tests.” The ubiquitous
oppression of a totalitarian regime is echoed in the constant
ache of an unfaithful marriage. A liberating instance of vio-
lence is mirrored in the chronicles of those left behind by
madness. The tenuous relationship dynamic of an illegal
(so-called paper) marriage collides against human desire. In
another story, incest unfolds as an attempt at expiation for a
mother’s sin, a salve for her absence. The father, here, is
related to the idea of God for a seminarian daughter, though
not in any lastingly satisfying way. The wilderness of Sinai
becomes so much rain on a windshield, a veil of tears,
obscuring the view. Positing a “vast web of strangers,” all
connected, at least in part through “confusion and hurt,” Lee
employs religious language, symbolism, and ritual as means
of exploring moments of awareness of such connection and
moments of shared suffering. Religion’s consolations and
discontents mingle here. The shaman summoned to seek
forgiveness from beyond this world contrasts with the “sad
. . . plastic Jesus souvenirs” to which a ward for the crimi-
nally insane is compared. The icon of Ronald McDonald, hair
permanently coifed, clashes with an abstract and incompre-
hensible concept of deity, sometimes inspiring, sometimes
empty. Such varied portraits of religious engagement make
this collection valuable for classes in religion and literature,
as well as those treating American religions, diaspora
studies, and Asian religions.
Spencer Dew
Centenary College of Lousiana
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• NUMBER 2 • JUNE 2013
APOSTLE ISLANDS. Fiction. By Tommy Zurhellen.
Kensington, MD: Atticus Books, 2012. Pp. 240, $1495.
Concepts of the miraculous morph with innovations in
technology, from faith healing via radio waves to the ubiq-
uitous interconnectedness and instant “posting” of images
and opinions that characterizes our present moment.
Zurhellen’s engaging, clever novel—a sequel to his 2011
Nazareth, North Dakota—not only re-engages the narratives
and forms of the NT, it also wrestles with the tenuousness of
the miraculous in relation to Youtube clips and cottage
industry cures. Thus, email epistles, free-verse apocalyptic
visions, a biker gang of zealous Sicarii, and a Midwestern
Christ who turns a lake to wine just to keep his mother
pacified blend in a text at once comic and deeply serious,
treating religion under media and governmental surveil-
lance as well as the assemblage that is the Christian scrip-
tures. The result is as a work rich in sorrow, hope,
desperation, and holy terror. Zurhellen folds references to
hair bands and get-well casseroles against re-imagined
parables and desert quarantines, the humble musings of a
man bearing the weight of the messianic and the mind-
blown rantings of the resurrected, warning of a god of “No,
No, No,”—the “original God of salt and blood who told
Abraham to slit his own kid’s throat/and drowned 144 000
species in a heartbeat/like brontosaurs and those cute little
horses.” For it is not only the metaphysically spectacular
that exists in tension with contemporary mindsets, but revo-
lutionary moral teachings, radical communitarianism, and
stark rejection of the authority of the cultural or political
status quo as well. Apostle Islands renders such issues
immediate and accessible. Equally page-turning and
discussion-provoking, this book would be suitable not only
for courses in religion and literature, but also for classes
treating early Christian communities (and religious commu-
nities more generally); representations of Jesus; and religion
in the modern world.
Spencer Dew
Centenary College of Louisiana
FRANCIS BACON: PAINTING IN A GODLESS
WORLD. By Rina Arya. Farnham, UK: Lund Humphries,
2012. Pp. 176. $80.00.
This lavishly illustrated book sets out to address “an area
of continued neglect in Bacon studies,” namely, “the reli-
gious aspect of [Bacon’s] work.” One of the most influential
painters of mid- to late-twentieth century, Bacon is known
especially for his grotesque distortions of human figures, and
his harrowing evocation of viscera through the thick appli-
cation of paint. Among his iconic canvases are those featur-
ing obsessively revisited religious imagery, especially the
crucifixion and images of popes. Though “unequivocally
atheist,” Bacon was fascinated by the possibilities of such
imagery for continued revision and formal experimentation.
In this book, Arya argues that the “preponderance of
Christian symbols” in Bacon’s work is best understood as a
 Religious Studies Review • VOLUME 39
rejection of any “formalized conception of religion and the
institutions of religion”—a rejection that, “paradoxically, is
dependent on the very tradition that he denounces.” Bacon’s
paintings—to which Arya attributes the “dualistic power” of
attraction and repulsion often associated with the
sacred—provoke an experience of the death of God, a “state
of Godlessness where eschatology . . . leads us to the body of
flesh with its appetites and urges.” Arya makes her case by
setting out the grounds of Bacon’s “godless world” before
moving into chapters treating major themes and structures
of Bacon’s work: the crucifixion, the Pope, the triptych, the
body, and the sacred and the profane. Arya’s readings of
Baconian imagery are observant and highly suggestive, pro-
viding biographical context and some theological back-
ground for approaching the work. Although at times the
thesis that Bacon reaffirms what he critically distorts seems
a bit forced (Do his screaming Popes really “ironically
[emphasize] the unique status of the Pope”? Does Bacon
ultimately “[crucify] religion, only to redeem it”? And is this
the same as “depending” on the tradition he “renounces”?),
this study should be consulted by art historians interested in
uses of religious imagery in modern art, while scholars of
religion engaging visual art should take Arya’s study as an
invitation toward further examination of Bacon as an (anti)
religious thinker, as well as an occasion for formulating
thicker theological contextualization for Bacon’s work.
Jeremy Biles
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
JOEL-PETER WITKIN: VANITAS. By Joel-Peter Witkin,
with an introduction by Otto M. Urban. Revnice, Czech
Republic: Arbor Vitae, 2011. Pp. 164. $40.00.
Joel-Peter Witkin remarks that “photography would be
the means to bring God down to earth—to exist for me in
the photographic images I would create.” Whether or not a
coherent, fully fledged theological vision could be articu-
lated to support this idea, what seems apparent from
Vanitas as well as Witkin’s wider body of photographic
work and writings is that Witkin’s practice proceeds from a
deeply held religious sensibility. Frequently featuring gro-
tesque or disturbing subject matter—corpses in various
stages of decomposition or fragmentation populate many of
his photographs—Witkin’s photos are also gorgeously ren-
dered and masterfully executed. The images are thus both
shocking and alluring. In his introductory essay, Otto
Urban interprets the ambivalence of Witkin’s photos both
through and against the concept of “decadence.” Witkin
himself resists the label of “decadent,” professing a
desire to “struggle for light,” and yet, as Urban remarks,
Witkin’s photos of corpses and “people who are considered
by society to be damaged, unclean, dysfunctional, or
wretched and unhappy” reveal the “reverse side of human
existence”: isolation, alienation, and suffering. Witkin’s
self-understanding, as numerous quotes interleaved
throughout the excellently reproduced images make clear,
is religious, and his work makes frequent use of religious
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• NUMBER 2 • JUNE 2013
imagery. Though many find the images offensive, Witkin
describes his photographs in pious terms, as “sacred work,
since what I make are my prayers.” Witkin’s oeuvre is
prominent and distinctive, and highly worthy of further
examination by those working in religion and visual art,
who have thus far largely ignored it. Vanitas is therefore
valuable not only for the breadth and quality of its repro-
ductions, but also for highlighting some of the religious
ideas animating Witkin’s work.
Jeremy Biles
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
THE MASTER. Film. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
Produced by Annapurna Pictures and Ghoulardi Film
Company and distributed by the Weinstein Company. DVD,
$29.98.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 movie There Will Be
Blood pitted two zealots—an oil-drilling capitalist and an
ambitious Christian preacher—in a harrowing confronta-
tion that revealed both to be “false prophets.” In his
extraordinary follow-up, The Master, Anderson continues
his investigation of the line between religious authenticity
and fraudulence through the portrayal of Lancaster Dodd
(Philip Seymour Hoffman)—the founder of a religion
known as “The Cause”—and his disciple, Freddie Quell, an
oversexed alcoholic World War II veteran played by
Joaquin Phoenix in an astonishing turn. Based on the life of
L. Ron Hubbard and the story of Scientology’s emergence,
The Master examines the dynamics of mastery and disciple-
ship, charismatic authority, and questions of religious
authenticity, while also asking into how one’s past shapes
one’s present. Resolutely ambiguous, The Master does not
pronounce on its subject so much as evoke the social and
psychological complexities of spiritual formation, dis-
cipleship, and resistance. Psychologists and sociologists of
religion will therefore appreciate how matters of faith,
loyalty, spiritual exercises, and carnal desire are depicted,
as well as the portrayal of how personal and collective reli-
gious identity are constantly negotiated through the build-
ing and burgeoning of a religious culture industry.
Scholars of religion and film should take interest not only
in the movie’s subject matter, but how Anderson deftly
uses his medium to evoke ethical and spiritual vicissitudes
and ambiguities.
Jeremy Biles
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
THE CABIN IN THE WOODS. Film. Directed by Drew
Goddard. Lionsgate, 2012. DVD, $19.98.
The Cabin in the Woods is a meta-slasher movie in the
tradition of Wes Craven’s Scream (1996), knowingly
playing with the genre’s conventions as laid bare in
Carol J. Clover’s seminal 1992 work, Men, Women, and
Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. But while
the characters in Scream know and manipulate these
 Religious Studies Review • VOLUME 39
conventions, The Cabin in the Woods is set in a world where
a shadowy government agency deliberately orchestrates
the entire slasher movie mise-en-scène from behind the
scenes. The agency manipulates a group of teenagers into
spending a weekend in a remote cabin, uses drugs to
impose on each teenager one of the victim “types” (a jock,
a nerd, a clown, a slut, and a virgin), and then allows them
to stumble onto some evil thing (zombies, in this case) that
will bring their doom. The teenagers, we learn, are victims
in a ritual to appease the wrath of ancient gods, but to the
world outside the agency (including the victims); their
deaths appear as something they have brought on them-
selves. The important part of the ritual is that the victims
are being “punished.” Ultimately the film is about sacrifice,
almost as if consciously following the theories of René
Girard, in which sacrifice is the superstitiously repeated
killing of an innocent victim whose innocence mythology
tries to suppress, all in order to control the community’s
potential for cataclysmic violence. Those interested in
Girard’s work will appreciate the ending, in which the
innocence of the victim is revealed and the protagonists
bring on the apocalypse by consciously rejecting the sacri-
ficial system and its mythology. This movie will be of inter-
est to ritual theorists as well as those teaching courses on
religion, movies, and popular culture.
Brian Collins
Ohio University
THE FOLLOWING. Television. Created by Kevin
Williamson. Fox Broadcasting Company, 2013.
Fox’s drama series The Following focuses on Ryan
Hardy, a former FBI agent played gamely by Kevin Bacon,
who is called back to duty when Joe Carroll, a brilliant
serial killer Ryan had once helped apprehend, begins
orchestrating murders carried out by adherents to a
cybercult he has established from behind bars. The show
suffers from flaws that seem almost endemic to TV crime-
thriller genre, melodramatic acting and occasionally ham-
fisted writing among them. Some viewers will also be
turned off by the abundant violence and gore. (The pilot
features, for example, a series of murders culminating in
ocular enucleations.) Additionally, the program traffics in
certain clichés: Ryan is the fundamentally good but
damaged agent—flawed (an alcoholic prone to over-
identification with crime victims) and suffering from a lit-
erally broken heart (he relies on a pacemaker as a result of
a violent encounter with Carroll, but clearly his heart has
been broken by his love affair—with the killer’s wife!).
Ryan’s homicidal nemesis is a former college literature pro-
fessor who reveres Edgar Allan Poe, taking literary Roman-
ticism as his “religion,” and admonishing his students to
create their own individual moral codes. The show features
copious bloody writing on walls, secret hideouts, obscure
passageways, masks, and killings in the form of quasi-
religious performance art that stir the news media into a
frenzy. Meanwhile, Ryan’s colleague, an agent who heads
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• NUMBER 2 • JUNE 2013
the Bureau’s Alternative Religion Unit, may herself be
under the influence of the killer. Such elements make this
show of interest to teachers and psychologists of religion,
for it not only illustrates the mass media’s construction of
“cults,” but self-reflexively plays on those constructions,
imaginatively evoking and hypothesizing about the
complex problems of our digital age, in which religions
arise through the internet and cults can form through inno-
vative use of social media by charismatic personalities.
Jeremy Biles
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
TEACH ME TO WALK IN THE LIGHT AND OTHER
CHILDHOOD FAVORITES. Musical recording. By the
Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Mormon Tabernacle Recordings,
2012. Audio CD, $14.99; MP3 music, $8.99.
Scholars of American religious culture will find the
latest release from the singing group nicknamed “America’s
Choir,” 2012’s Teach Me to Walk in the Light and Other Child-
hood Favorites, to be interesting musical evidence of a recent
trend in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, away
from the presentation of an accessible, pan-Christian theol-
ogy to one that is more distinctively Mormon. These fifteen
songs comprise the first Mormon Tabernacle Choir (MTC)
recording in years that does not include several songs that
will be familiar to the non-Mormon listener. Not only the
group’s wildly successful Christmas albums, but several of
their nonholiday recordings as well have featured greatest
hits of classical music, movie themes, American folk songs,
and, especially, hymns dear to the hearts of non-Mormon
Christians. Yet even at the high point of the “Mormon
Moment,” and just after Billboard (to the tops of whose charts
their recordings typically soar) named the MTC the top Tra-
ditional Classical Album Artist of 2012, Teach Me to Walk in
the Light heads in a different direction. The MTC website
promises that this release of childhood hymns and teaching
songs will “provide the perfect dose of nostalgia and fond-
ness for listeners of any age.” The songs are meant to be
familiar, evocative of childhood and its fundamental faith
lessons—but not just anyone’s childhood, not just anyone’s
lessons. Overwhelmingly, these are songs known and loved
by Mormons. With this release, the church’s preeminent
cultural ambassadors seem to say, we may be America’s
choir, but we are still very much our own, as well.
Kristen Tobey
University of Pittsburgh
RECOMPOSED BY MAX RICHTER: VIVALDI, THE
FOUR SEASONS. Musical recording. By Max Richter (com-
poser), Daniel Hope (violin), Antonio Vivaldi (composer),
Andre de Ridder (Conductor), Konzerthaus Kammeror-
chester Berlin (orchestra). Deutsche Grammophon, 2012.
Audio CD, $15.41.
Richter’s play on Vivaldi’s perennial classic is
mesmerizing, stirring to the point of ecstasy. This album
 Religious Studies Review • VOLUME 39
recommends itself to contemporary classical music lovers as
well as to scholars of religion in modernity. It also inspires
meditation on (and perhaps a reformulation of) the usual
distinction between sacred and profane. For Vivaldi, the dis-
tinction was generic and programmatic. Some music was
sacred, some profane: masses or madrigals. “La quattro
stagioni” was profane, originally a setting of sonnets written
in celebration of the year’s changing weather: spring blos-
soms, summers storms, etc. Yet today, when “nothing is
sacred,” if anything is sacred it is a classic work such as “The
Four Seasons.” To “profane” such a work of high culture is
easy; one hears Vivaldi in elevators and in countless tepid
contemporary renditions. A contemporary composer might
just as easily have profaned Vivaldi with post modern pas-
tiche. Thankfully, this is not Richter’s tack. As with his
minimalist elder Philip Glass, adaptation and collaboration
seem to inspire ingenuity in Richter, whose “seasons” track
changes in popular modern music. Spring opens, before the
familiar Vivaldi melody emerges, with ambient electronica.
Richter credits Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham for the
relentless pulse of Summer. The harpsichord of Autumn
recalls the Beach Boys and the Beatles. Winter, to my ear,
conjures the maniacally scratching strings of Hitchcock’s
“Psycho” before Daniel Hope’s romantic violin, lovely
throughout, erupts in a mad rush. So Richter’s post-
minimalist post-pop work, lucidly intelligible and melodi-
cally lush, is also hauntingly familiar—both traditional and
popular, sacred and profane.
Christian Sheppard
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
IT STANDS TO CONCEAL. Musical recording. By
Vatican Shadow. Hospital Productions, 2012. Triple vinyl LP,
£45.99.
Recording since 2001, Vatican Shadow is Dominick
Fernow, an avant-garde electronic noise musician who has
also been performing since the late 1990s under the name
Prurient. As Prurient, he has used sheets of layered feedback
and suggestive images to explore the Sadean themes of
lustmord, sadomasochism, and violent excess. As Vatican
Shadow, Fernow uses simple keyboard and drum machine
loops to create minimal, hypnotic, and rhythmic music
evocative of a cheap movie soundtrack. The songs are instru-
mental, so the only interpretive text accompanying them are
their titles, often excerpted from discourse on the War on
Terror, e.g., “Wahhabi Money Flows” and “Once This Fire
Gathers Strength.” Titles are stripped of context, leaving
open the question whether Fernow is critiquing American
foreign policy or Islamist violence. The references to 9/11
are clear, but the event that seems most central to Fernow’s
project is the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood. (The mild, smiling
face of Nidal Malik Hasan adorns the cover of Vatican Shad-
ow’s 2011 release Kneel Before Religious Icons.) As the name
Vatican Shadow and the album’s title imply, Fernow poses
the question of what the shadows of authorized politico-
religious images and language conceal. And what he finds
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• NUMBER 2 • JUNE 2013
there, he then evokes in the space created between the
album’s bland titles and images, the cool, unsettling music,
and the context of Fernow’s long-running fascination with
extremity. It Stands to Conceal exemplifies a new post-9/11
engagement with Islam that neither defends nor attacks, but
uses the polyvalent idea of Islam as one more lens through
which to examine the transformative-destructive elements
of culture, a development that should be of great interest to
scholars who study Western images of Islam.
Brian Collins
Ohio University
“THE BOOK OF MORMON.” Musical. Book, lyrics, and
music by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone.
“Against unintelligible propositions” such as religion,
Thomas Jefferson said, “the only weapon” is “ridicule.”
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s incredibly
popular musical “The Book of Mormon,” a tale of two mis-
sionaries to a grotesque caricature of today’s Uganda,
employs crass, juvenile, blasphemous, and obscene ridicule,
hilariously, against all religion and spirituality. Their satire
is not aimed solely at the Church of Latter Day Saints. They
take on fuzzy New Age sentimentality with their send-up of
“Hakuna Matata” (“No Worries!”) from Disney’s The Lion
King with “ “Hasa Diga Eebowai”: “We’ve had no rain in
several days (Hasa Diga Eebowai!)/And eighty percent of us
have AIDS (Hasa Diga Eebowai!)” Like new atheists such as
Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Bill Maher,
they ridicule all religion: “Hasa Diga Eebowai!” means “Fuck
you, God!” Interestingly, the Church of Latter Day Saints has
purchased swathes of ad-space in Playbill during “The Book
of Mormon” ’s long run: ostensibly hip but certainly clean-
cut, good-looking, earnest believers smile beneath the
slogan, “You’ve seen the play. Now read the book.” Scholars
of contemporary religion ought to note this fascinating
episode in postmodern evangelism, which, albeit ironic, is
self-consciously so, and so tries to turn pointed ridicule into
merely poking fun. After all, the musical’s missionaries are
not portrayed as hypocrites but as deluded by idealism.
Moreover, the musical offers a fair overview of canonical
Mormon history, its faith’s tenets, and affirms the stereo-
type the Playbill ads play upon, namely that Mormons them-
selves tend to be honest, upright, and well-intentioned
Americans. Indeed, “The Book of Mormon” attacks all
religion—the Mormon faith is merely one particular but rep-
resentative “unintelligible proposition”—but it also offers
pleasures beyond ridicule: catchy songs and amazing dance.
Its final scenes dramatize the inception and spread of an
alternative materialist secular humanist faith, a faith based
not on revelation nor on respect for tradition, but on respect
for human dignity, personal creativity, popular culture (as
much Star Wars as Lord of the Rings) and, most of all, good
humor.
Christian Sheppard
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
 Religious Studies Review • VOLUME 39
SUPERGODS: WHAT MASKED VIGILANTES,
MIRACULOUS MUTANTS, AND A SUN GOD FROM
SMALLVILLE CAN TEACH US ABOUT BEING
HUMAN. By Grant Morrison. New York: Spiegel & Grau,
2012. Pp. 454. $16.00.
Grant Morrison’s Supergods is an exhilarating read, not
least for the sheer scope of its ambitions. The book is a history
of comics from one of the industry’s most acclaimed and
innovative writers. A “definitive guide to the world of
superheroes—what they are, where they came from, and how
they can help us change the way we think about ourselves,
our environment, and the multiverse of possibilities that
surround us”—the volume is also a spiritual autobiography
(and self-hagiography) whose account brims with tales of
supernatural occurrences, Gnostic illuminations, uncanny
coincidences, and the efficacious use of magical spells.
However skeptical some may be of certain points in
Morrison’s reportage, the force and value of Morrison’s subtle
exegeses of comics, and his astute observations concerning
the craft and cosmic implications of storytelling, are undeni-
able. Morrison offers brilliant observations concerning
the problems and nigh-infinite possibilities of the comics
medium, seeing in superheroes serious and sophisticated
imaginings of our “best selves.” Supergods deserves to be read
not only by comic-book geeks, but by students of religion, who
should be convinced that “low-brow,” popular forms of
culture may contain as much wisdom, provocation, ethical
acumen, aesthetic innovation, and metaphysical import as
the most elevated forms of art. Taken as a whole, Morrison’s
book is a call to readers to shake off the shackles of organized
“dad religions,” and to embrace the possibilities of enhanced
consciousness stimulated by the evolving portrayals of
superheroes. Productively read in conjunction with Jeffrey J.
Kripal’s 2011 Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero
Comics, and the Paranormal, Morrison’s book makes the case
that the human imagination contains the resources for real-
izing the divinity in ourselves—as supergods.
Jeremy Biles
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Ancient Near East
JEREMIAH. By Leslie C. Allen. The Old Testament Library.
Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008. Pp. xxix +
546. $60.00.
In keeping with the aims of the series, Allen’s commen-
tary is an extensive treatment of Jeremiah geared toward
scholars and advanced students, but also valuable for edu-
cated ministers and laypeople. The volume features exten-
sive interaction with classic and contemporary scholarship
and offers a fresh translation of Jeremiah that is more literal
and often preserves Hebrew word order and focus. The
introduction thoroughly covers the basic critical issues of
Jeremiah, especially genre, setting, style, redaction, and
divergent text traditions (MT and LXX). Allen reads Jeremiah
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primarily as a representation of the prophet’s message for
Jews in the Babylonian exile and sees much of the book as an
attempt at theodicy for exilic readers that provide an “under-
standing of God’s comprehensive will for Israel in the past
and future.” Hence, the text centers on the period around the
final capture of Jerusalem but also gathers the broader con-
cerns of the Deuteronomistic tradition. Allen focuses on
the final form as a well-planned, communicative literary
product, largely eschewing contemporary application, but
also provides numerous insights concerning text-critical
issues, redactional developments, and stages of literary
growth. One notices the absence of sustained engagement
with important new dimensions of Jeremiah study such as
trauma theory, gender issues, and postcolonial perspectives.
Still, the volume’s thorough interaction with up-to-date
scholarship and comprehensive treatment of the major inter-
pretive issues should make it standard reading for all those
working with Jeremiah.
Brad E. Kelle
Point Loma Nazarene University
A LITURGY OF GRIEF: A PASTORAL COMMEN-
TARY ON LAMENTATIONS. By Leslie C. Allen. Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011. Pp. xi + 195. $22.00.
Allen successfully writes a pastoral commentary deep
enough to engage the historicity of the text, cautious enough
not to be supersessionistic with this Christian background,
and reflective enough upon his own experiences as a chaplain
to offer pastors the breadth and depth of wisdom that can be
gleaned from the book of Lamentations. As an OT scholar,
Allen gives enough scholarly background and setting appli-
cable to pastors without overwhelming them with philologi-
cal or textual intricacies. His book moves chronologically
through the book of Lamentations, one chapter devoted to
each chapter of the poem, articulating his position that Lam-
entations is best understood as a liturgy intended as a thera-
peutic ritual. Although he stays within the dominant tradition
portraying the geber of Chapter 3 as a wounded healer or the
co-sufferer as counselor, he maintains the ambiguity of the
final message of the book read in Chapter 5. By not allowing
the third poem to assuage the ambivalence of the fifth poem,
Allen provides appropriate links between how he believes
this ancient text functioned within the exilic community and
how this text can function for present day individuals and
communities suffering their own grief, guilt, and grievances.
I commend this book to all pastors working to acknowledge,
and not marginalize, real pain within the life of their worship-
ing communities.
Tiffany Houck-Loomis
Union Theological Seminary
EZEKIEL, DANIEL: REFORMATION COMMEN-
TARY ON SCRIPTURE, OLD TESTAMENT XII. Edited
by Carl L. Beckwith. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic,
2012. Pp. lx + 452. $50.00.
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