Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America.

Colleen McDannell, author of the widely praised The Christian Home in Victorian America and co-author of the very popular Heaven: A History, has produced a largely successful introduction to American Christian material culture. In her exciting and provocative new work, McDannell starts from the premise that "[t]hroughout American history, Christians have explored the meaning of the divine, the nature of death, the power of healing, and the experience of the body by interacting with a created world of images and shapes." (p. 1) She builds from this foundation an argument that historians of American Christianity, and Protestantism especially, have emphasized the written word over material objects. They have privileged only the spoken or written "text" in their work, rather than the multitude of other cultural artifacts that Christians have used to shape their experience of religion. Much of her work attempts to persuade scholars of American Christianity that the study of material culture is both reasonable and necessary if we want to fully understand religion in America. McDannell makes this argument formally in the opening chapter and the epilogue, and then moves through a handful of specific examples in the remaining chapters both to bolster her position and to provide exploratory paths into this fruitful realm. I expect that social historians will find her work largely persuasive, certainly engaging, and likely to spur future studies in the areas she has charted. At the same time, they may worry about this kind of study's limits for discerning ordinary people's experiences or collective mentality.

McDannell opens her work with an explanation of Christian materialism and the reasons scholars have neglected it until recently. Academicians from a broad range of fields have examined other areas of material culture, which McDannell defines as evidence in the form of artifacts, landscapes, architecture, and art. But those who study religion have long neglected this rich material culture literature because they continue to employ a dualistic thinking that separates the sacred from the profane. This insistence on keeping the realms apart derives from impressive origins (Jewish and Christian theological tradition, Emil Durkheim's conception of religion) but blinds us to so much of what people do when they act religiously. People experience their religion through interaction with material objects, and we keep ourselves in the dark if we refuse to accept this.

But even if we acknowledge this to be true, we still need models to show us how to use Christian material culture wisely. McDannell therefore provides a handful of examples of her own work in Christian materialism both to tell us about those specific objects and their meanings, and to begin to forge a path that we might follow when studying other material objects. She examines the Protestant family Bible, an exclusive Philadelphia cemetery, Lourdes water, Christian kitsch, Mormon garments, and the Christian retail industry. These six chapters stand independently very well, and need not be read in the sequence in which McDannell has placed them (though they do follow a rough chronological order). They do not constitute a comprehensive history of Christian materialism in America, nor do they represent an attempt to lay the outlines of general historical developments in American religious material culture.

Social historians will appreciate McDannell's focus upon popular cultural artifacts in her attempt to understand the "religious lives of average people," (p. 163) especially in those chapters where McDannell can find actual testimony from these average people about their Christianity. (Ironically, the chapter with the fullest testimony from average folks succeeds least because it contains no image of the material object itself. The examination of Mormon garments reads a bit like a literary critical analysis of a text we may not read, or an explication of a painting kept from view. The Church sanction against displaying the garments renders the examination of their meaning less compelling than the rich chapters preceding.) In most of the chapters, though, McDannell must rely upon her own reading of the objects' likely meaning for folks because the average people left only the objects themselves to interpret. We cannot see average people interacting with the material objects, but rather must interpret from the objects' properties the way Christians probably interacted with them, or how the objects likely shaped Christians' experiences. McDannell reads the material culture astutely and subtly, so her interpretations seem always plausible and often persuasive. But fuller testimony from those who used the objects in their lives would be more satisfying still.

McDannell is able to access some participants' discussions (debates even) about how they use objects. These richest, most compelling chapters focus on Catholic material culture, in part no doubt because Catholics more frankly acknowledged the role of sacred images and objects in their religious lives. But these debates almost always take place among theologians, clergy, or other non-average folks. Social historians will no doubt seek fuller testimony from average Christians about their use of religious materialism.

Finally, Material Christianity succeeds to a great degree because of the extraordinary images that accompany, supplement, and often constitute the focus of McDannell's text. McDannell includes 153 images within her 276-page study. They vividly and sometimes dramatically assist McDannell's analysis of Christian materialism, and render the book itself a compelling and stimulating material object. The review copy contains no indication of the book's price, but glossy pages and high quality reproductions make me fearful that it will be out of reach to students in American religious history courses. This would be unfortunate, because McDannell's work merits a wider audience than professional academicians. Material Christianity persuasively argues for a more central role for material culture studies in our efforts to understand the religious experiences of average Americans, and provides a fine model for those who wish to heed the call.

Timothy Kelly St. Vincent College