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Edited by David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1995. 320 pp. $39.95.
It's about space. American sacred space. But don't expect descriptions of houses of worship or analyses of Graceland. This collection of essays focuses on contests involving American civil religion. This focus makes for a book narrower than its title implies, less "exploratory" than the editors claim. Yet, this very focus provides thematic unity and should interest readers of the Journal of Church and State.
In the past, editors Chidester and Linenthal have shown a marked interest in violence, writing on the People's Temple suicides, struggles against apartheid, battlefields, the symbolism of nuclear weapons, and Holocaust memory. Not surprisingly, in their theoretical introduction to this book, they emphasize conflict, highlighting the constructed, contested character of sacred space.
In the first three essays, Robert S. Michaelsen, Bron Taylor, and Matthew Glass deal with legal, environmental, and symbolic contests waged by American Indians and others seeking to reverse colonialism.
Colleen McDannell's essay describes white evangelical Christian parents who fear the public realm and seek to make religion "a total way of ...