One nation under God? Book

This book is difficult to rate. In places, this book is smart and insightful four star quality, but in others it is of a muddled and arcane two star quality. Taken as a whole, three stars seems about right.

It's argument is unevenly executed so that it ranges from the invigorating to the frustrating from one section to the next. The book's structure and scope are commendable, though I suspect some of the text's unevenness results from this, as the author moves back and forth from areas with which he is quite confident into areas he has to stretch to discuss, and back again. Oftentimes, the author moves from a discussion of concrete people, events, and practices, to sweeping theological claims without providing the interpretive tissue required to join those two dimensions.

This is especially problematic given the author's aim to formulate a meaningful theological place for conjure work. His conjure ends up feeling like a sock puppet for fairly standard liberation theology views. He does extract some meaningful praxis from conjure, but he does so largely by eliding actual conjure and transforming its methods into metaphors.

I *like* liberation theology and believe that it could be enriched by conjure, but for that to happen, I think we need to see conjure more clearly 'in itself,' separate from liberation theology's concerns. In part, because I think a 'conjure' theology could exert some meaningful critical force on the tendency toward abstraction in lot of liberation theology discourse. However, here, that abstraction remains.