Title: Between heaven and earth: the religious worlds people make and the scholars who study them. Author: Orsi, Robert A Between heaven and earth 256 p. Publisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton Univ Pr, 2005

Smith, Sherry Angela

English

Wilfrid Laurier University

ConsensusVolume 32Issue 1 Cultural Reception of the Gospel Article 195-1-2007Between heaven and earth: the religious worldspeople make and the scholars who study themSherry Angela SmithFollow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensusThis Book Reviews is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended CitationSmith, Sherry Angela (2007) "Between heaven and earth: the religious worlds people make and the scholars who study them,"Consensus: Vol. 32 : Iss. 1 , Article 19.Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol32/iss1/19Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds PeopleMake and the Scholars Who Study ThemRobert A. OrsiPrinceton: Princeton University Press, 2005245 pages, $39.90 hardcover; 264 pages, $22.50 softcoverThis book offers an engaging examination of twentieth-centuryAmerican Catholicism as well as a critique of themethodologies/approaches utilized in religious studies. Orsi beginshis book by exploring the complex relationships that form betweenhumans and holy figures and the consequences of these bonds foreveryday life. One theme that permeates the book is “religion asrelationship,” emphasizing both practitioners’ relationships betweenheaven and earth, and the relationship between scholars andpractitioners.In Chapter One, “Mildred, Is it Fun to be a Cripple?,” Orsiincorporates the memories of his Uncle Sally’s experiences withcerebral palsy and Saint Margaret to explore the heaven and earthrelationship, while discussing Catholic notions of pain and suffering.Overall, Orsi suggests that these relationships are ambivalent. Heposits that pain or physical distress was central to the AmericanCatholic ethos – it was an opportunity for spiritual growth. However,despite this culture’s view, there was also a “deeply resentful andsuspicious” perception of sick persons (23). Further, Orsi suggeststhat ill individuals were able to identify their experiences with asaint’s story, which gave their illness meaning. In Chapter Two, “The Many Names of the Mother of God,” Orsiexamines the relationship between American Catholics and the VirginMary. He suggests that devotional images are media of presence,which are efficacious, serving as points of encounter between humansand sacred figures. For believers, Mary’s presence and power areactually present in her images – not merely represented in thoseimages. He states that “Mary was also the clearest sign of Catholicdifference in the United States” (64). For example, the possession ofa rosary immediately indicated one’s Catholic identity. However, henotes that Mary has also been a complicated symbol of unity amongAmerican Catholics, especially since various immigrant and migrantgroups brought regional and national representations of Mary withthem to the ethnic enclaves of American cities.Book Reviews 153Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2007In Chapter Three, “Material Children,” Orsi postulates thatpresence is central to the study of lived Catholic experience. Hesuggests that religious cultures offer multiple media for materializingthe sacred, including what he calls a process of “corporalization.”This corporalization of the sacred was shaped in the formation ofchildren, i.e., the “realness and presence of the sacred in the bodiesand imagination of children” (76).Orsi proposes that AmericanCatholics created a distinctive culture of childhood in the twentieth-century. He advances that what was being formed was “not children’sreligious experience but the distinctive quality of modern AmericanCatholicism” (109). In Chapter Four, “Two Aspects of One Life,” Orsi examineswhether “meaning-making” is the best way to understand religions.He suggests that when “the transcendent breaks into time,” it is much“more confounding and unsettling – socially, culturally,psychologically –than ‘meaning making’” (111). Reflecting on thestories of his grandmother and Saint Gemma, Orsi perceives that it isprecisely the place where the two lives touch in the narrative that heis able to understand his grandmother’s devotion and the meaning ofthe communion of saints. He notes that if meaning is made out of painand blood, then, the meanings made with religious media can bedreadful and painful. When Orsi thinks about both lives, meaning isnot the first word that comes to mind. Instead, he posits that“meaning making begins in wounding, and the process of meaningmaking is wounding” (145).  In Chapter Five, “Have You Ever Prayed to Saint Jude?,” Orsiexamines his own experiences of fieldwork. He explores some of theproblems facing scholars who work within their own religious culture,including the issue of subjectivity. Picking up on Sartre, Orsi assertsthat “research is a relationship” between people (174). Moreover, hesuggests that as scholars of religion become preoccupied withthemselves as interpreters of meanings, they forget that they alsoparticipate in the network of relationships between heaven and earth. In Chapter Six, “Snakes Alive,” Orsi considers some of theproblems that form between scholars and practitioners. He proposesthat theorizing about religion has emerged according to embeddedmoral assumptions. He notes that the “mother of all religiousdichotomies – us/them – has regularly been constituted as moraldistinction – good/bad religion” (183). This, he claims, is the product154 Consensushttp://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol32/iss1/19of the development of religious studies in the United States. Further,he asserts that scholars must move beyond “otherizing” (198). Hestates: “The point is not to make the other world radically andirrevocably other, but to render one’s own world other to oneself asprelude to a new understanding of the two worlds in relationship toeach other” (202). Orsi’s Between Heaven and Earth is a masterful scholarlyachievement that is pleasure to read. It is an interesting mixture ofethnographic fieldwork and Orsi’s own family stories. His bookprovides a useful, informative and insightful examination of popularAmerican Catholicism as well as pertinent issues related to studyingone’s own religious culture. It will be of interest to both laity andscholars who are interested in North American Catholicism, religioushealing, and the academic study of religion.  Sherry Angela SmithMcMaster UniversityThe Gospel of Justification in Christ: Where Does theChurch Stand Today?Wayne C. Stumme, editor.Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006182 pages. $26.75 SoftcoverThose interested in finding an ecumenical dialogue about what thegospel of justification by grace through faith might mean today willfind willing conversation partners in Wayne Stumme’s editedvolume. Although the various perspectives contained therein comefrom Lutheran, Roman Catholic (including one Canadian),Episcopal, and Reformed theologians, they represent for the mostpart studied responses to the Joint Declaration on Justification (JD),signed in 1999 by the Lutheran World Federation and the RomanCatholic Church. While other ecumenical documents are also takenup in the book, the impetus is clearly the momentous ecumenicalagreement that is the Joint Declaration.One strong point of this edited volume is its inclusion ofdissenting voices. Persons familiar with the difficulties of concludingBook Reviews 155Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2007

Between heaven and earth: the religious worlds people make and the scholars who study them

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