Religious Reading: The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion Book

I both love and hate this book. I love the fact that he is taking religious reading seriously and trying to characterize it. His idea of religion as an account is interesting inasmuch as he talks about giving an account as a practice and a disposition, but his criteria of comprehensive, unsurpassable and central seem overwhelmingly slanted towards 'orthodoxy'. The centrality of memorization for religious reading is certainly important especially for the kind of relationship it creates between text and reader. Most of all, his characterization of religious reading as something traditional that has been lost or in decline in the modern era is problematic. Ultimately I would have found it more interesting to see him talk about modern examples of religious reading and they would have forced more diversity into his account. Also, his comparand, 'consumerist' reading in the academy is a straw person...there is much diversity in academic reading and the fact that he doesn't even treat 'secular' aesthetic reading is a problem.