Reviews of Stone Speaker: Medieval Tombs, Landscape, and Bosnian Identity in the Poetry of Mak Dizdar and The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran

The compilation is a good introduction to issues and controversies. There are very detailed case studies, which give us a view of the socio- logical theories and debates operating in the academic research focusing on present and past religious experience in various parts of the world. The whole work can be viewed through a frame- work of theological contextualization (or adaptation and indigenization). As seen in these essays, evangelical/pentecostal Christians, Soka Gakkai Buddhists and Tablighi Jamaat Muslims-the cases examined-are readily adapting to various cultures, to varying extents, whether authoritatively sanctioned or not. There is one major shortcoming. While A. Walker has rightly seen some of the positive contributions of the Charismatic movement, he leaves an acceptable level of scholarly objectivity and uses language which ends in subtle, but unmistakable, judgments and generalizations about the Charismatic movement with little or no evidence as support, based mostly on his self-professed “sober out- sider’s’’ opinion. Happily, the volume contains the work of other authors who deal with their particular movements in a much more sensitive and scholarly fashion, each using theoretical frameworks that help to illuminate various facets of those movements.