BOOK REVIEWS

Offkial and Popular Religion. Analysis of a Theme for Religious Studies. ed. Pieter Hendrik Vrijhof and Jacques \J.aardenhurg (= Religion and Society 19) (The Hague: Mouton. 1979). pp. 739. DM 95,OU.

This volume deals in an imaginative and constructive way with a theme which has attracted increasmp attention in the history and sociology of religion. The editors began by positing an opposition between ‘official’ and ‘popular’ religion: the former the religion of codified belief. of religious specialists. of the elite: the latter the religion of common folk. of the masses. religion as practice. These terms were presented to eighteen scholars - historians. sociologists. anthropologists. psychologists - work- ing on Christian and non-Christian religions. who were asked to explore in individual essays the usefulness of the given dichotomy in their field of expertise. The editors devoted a nineteenth chapter to summarisinp the findings. making some interesting comparisons of individual contributions. and in a final chapter they attempted to draw some conclusions about the value of the two concepts and about the enterprise as a whole. This procedure alone makes the volume a valuable example of what can be achieved through interdisciplinary cooperation. espectally when assisted by editonal initiative and thoroughness. It was also particularly, far-sighted to make the work available to a wider audience by publishq it in English. rather than in the original Dutch.

It is impossible. even in a lonpish revieu. to do justice to individual contributions in what 1s a rich and varied collection. Essentiallv. the essays can be divided into those which found the dichotomy offlclal popular useful and those vv hich did not. Stgniii cantly. the latter included almost all the contributions on non-Christian religions. These covered a wide range: Judaism (J. W. Doeve). Islam (J. D. J. U’aardenhurg). Chmese and Japanese relyon (R. Ransdorp. J. H. Kamstra respectiveI\,). Hinduism (D. J. Hoens). Sinhalese Buddhism (M.A.G.T. Kioppenhorg). African traditional religlon (M‘. E. A. van Beck). Akan rehgion in South Ghana (J. G. Platv,oet). and a general anthropological ov er\,ieu b!, J. van Baa1 The clear conclusion of the studies of non-Christian religions uas that the two terms uere not real]! suitable to analvse or to understand less codified or less mstltutionalised religons such as Hinduism. Buddhism. Japanese. Chinese or African religion. leaving onl! Islam as a marginal case. dnd Judaism where the terms could be applied onl! b\ considerable stretchmg. One or two authors in this group tried to produce better categories: ‘cognitive’ and ‘affective’ for traditional Afrtcan religion (Rloppenborg). or ‘normative’ and ‘aherna- tive’ for Islam (R-aardenhurg). Others preferred to work with the concept of ‘folk rehgon (Kamstra. van Baa]). and three repudiated the stasis impllcit m the given dichotomy and concentrated on a concept of ‘rellglous change’ as their operative analytical category.

TWO trends were noticeable in the studies of Christianity. First. the! concentrated unnecessarily on b’estern Christiamt! - that there \sas no discussion of Orthodox ChristIanit! OJ of religion in Latin .4merica is an unfortunate omisston Second. a group of essay’s on modern ChrIstianit> all seemed to attest a concern with a crisis of post-industrial Christtanit!. expressed m the feeling that the leaders of Christian churches were somehou our of touch with then followers. Thus. all these essays found the dichotomy to be in some na\ or other relevant: E. J. M. G. Roebroeck on

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problems in contemporary Dutch Catholicism. A. J. Withers on religion in affluent. welfare-state society. P. Staples on ecumenism. and C. J. M. Donders on modern religious psychology. P. H. Vrijhof summarised many of these concerns in a percep- tive and stimulating essay on twentieth-century Christianity. only slightly marred (as was Withers’s essay) bq’ Jargon and neologism.

The four essays devoted to the histor! of Christianity took a slight]! different approach. exploring how the Christian church at various stages of its development assimilated elements of non-Christian belief. R. van den Broek discussed the diversit\ (and divergence) of church policy and religious practices in the early church: J. A. Huisman the confrontation of Christianity and Germanic religion: W. Th. M. Frijhoff the interplay between official and popular religion in the medieval and early modern period and G. J. F. Bouritius some case studies of nineteenth-century Christianit! (popular Catholicism and Methodism). All treated this development as a process of ‘christianisation’. and Huisman and Frijhoff saw it as a process of ‘acculturation’. essentially the assimilation of one society and culture by another (this concept was also used by Vrijhof). The assumptions behind such concepts passed largely unreflected: name]!,. that religious change is predominantly shaped by social and cultural change. and that the nature of the shaping process is largely a one-way flow. The concept of ‘acculturation’ has received some heavy criticism recently in its applications to earl! modern Europe. although these essays were prepared too long ago to take account of it. It is clear that uncrittcal reliance on such concepts can serious]! distort analysis at the outset. For example. Vrijhof proposes studying the development of Christianit\ as an ‘officialisationprocess’ (sic!). without reflecting that the interplay between codlfled religion and popular belief might be more complex and variable.

Indeed. the major criticism of many of these essays is that they make too man! untenable assumptions about what ‘official’ and ‘popular’ religion are: for example. that ‘official’ equals ‘Clite’. ‘popular‘ equals *the masses’: rhat popular religion pro- vldes a ‘base line’ for religiousness. thus establishmg its ‘priorit!,’ (cf. Vrijhof. p. 225): or that elite religion represents a ‘more complex‘ understanding of religion than the popular. The pleas of scholars such as John Bossy or Natalie Da\,is for a more subtle understanding of religion in its social setting seem to have gone unheeded here. A curious omission. incomprehensible given the emphasis placed on social and cultural shaping of religious belief. was dlscussion of power and control of power. The interpla!, between social and economic power and the developing character of Christianity deserved detailed attention. as did the uses to which spiritual power could put. both as political weapon and as a form of symbolic capital.

Too man! other themes found no mention or were touched only lightI>. mysticism. prophecy and millennialism: the importance of gender differences - despite some references to ‘patriarchal societies’ there was little about the religous role and image of women. nor about the cult of the Virgin. nor about that peculiarly ChristIan phe- nomenon of witch persecution (except for Frijhof). Two other topics were touched upon. bur never explored: the problem of dualism. the contest between God and the Devil as the two major sacred powers contesting control over the natural world: and the associated problem of rhe shrinkage of the realm of the ‘sacred’ before a growing sense of a ‘secular‘ world. In a book alread! so full of good things. it seems overdemanding to expect special attention to such topics. Yet all of these themes cur inconveniently across the line ‘officlal’“popular‘ and contain other more thought- provoking pan-s of polar opposites.

in the long run. the most useful suggestions were offered b> the anthropologists who suggested studymg religion as a total belief s!‘stem. and exploring both the interdepen- dent parts and the changes withm the system. Scholars less concerned with the study of

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Christianity called attention to the dangers of ethnocentrism. Kloppenborg and van Baa] especially seeing the terms ‘official’ and ‘popular’ as more illuminating about the historians using them than about the religious believers they described. At the end, the editors produce a qualified judgment about the value of the exercise. It has called attention to the need for more thorough studies of ‘popular’ religion and for more careful definition. One cannot share their view that the terms ‘official’ and ‘popular’ could be replaced by ‘official’ and ‘non-official’ - these beg the real questions just as much as the original dichotomy. It seems to me that there is nothing to be gained or lost by continuing to use ‘official’ and ‘popular‘ (or indeed other variants: centre and periphery, form and style. proposed by Donders). as long as these are genuinely heuristic terms which can be modified by feedback from openminded assessment of the data. Thus. much could be discovered by studying. as Vrijhof suggests. a process of ‘officialisation’. as long as it is not detached from a view of the way in which codified belief was shaped by the experience of the ordinary believer. The reviewer’s final judgement of the enterprise must be that it opens up stimulating and exciting perspec- tives. that make this book essential reading for any serious student of the history or sociology of religion.

Glare College, Cambridge Bob Scribner

RCsistants, Vichysois et autres. L’bolution de I’opinion et des comportements dans le Lot de 1939 P 1944. Pierre Laborie (C.N.R.S.. 1980).

The history of French Resistance is still universally respected in France. but it is not unusual to find former Resisters who are fearful of what the future mav sav. The\ point with concern to the continuing pressure for a rehabilitation of Marshai Petain and a re-evaluation of the Vich! Regime: they watch with incomprehension the spate of films and popular articles which indulge the motiv,es and personalities of collabor- ators. and they are worried that their own first-hand accounts of the period will cease to be treated as serious historical evidence. For all these reasons they look vvith ambivalence on the slow, but growing availability of official Vich!, archi\,es. knowing that scholars of the next generation will ha\e a mountain of material on which to base an internal history of \‘ich! and that this ma! well encourage the re\rsionist aproach which lies at the centre of the historian’s craft.

Other Resisters are optimistic. believing that only the full a\,ailabilit!, of the \‘ich! archives will reveal the extent of collaboration and Justify the necessity of even the most controversial acts of Resistance. Between the two attitudes. researchers and doctoral students must tread with a good deal of sensitivity. for the arguments about France under German occupation do not diminish with time. In their patient sifting of the new evidence they can easily, reanimate the antagonisms which lie on. as well a> underneath. the surface of French political hfe.

With these perspectives in mind. the scholarly use of certain nea material b!, Pierre Laborie is undoubtedly an important indication of possible trends. He was not gt\‘en access to the full complement of local archives in the Lot. far from it. but he was one of the first to be allowed to examine the vast number of postal interceptions on uhtch the reports of police and prefects to the Ministr!, of the Interior were largely based. Extending a censorship which predated the Regime. a secret commission appointed b! Vichy regularly opened thousands of letters in every dtfparrernent. extracted interest- ing sentences on a wide v,ariety, of sensitive subjects. sealed up the letters and sent them on. The intercepted opinions. or information. were then classified. and the