other-directed behaviour ' (p. 24). Merkur characterises phenomenology from Otto to Van der Leeuw as 'a secularisation of doing Protestant theology' (p. 77): from 'an act of homage to its god(s)', it has become 'autopsies done on corpses' (p. 78). He defines religion as 'the living of a numinously virtuous life' (p. 82) and accords a central place to religious pedagogy in the academic analysis of religion and to a study of 'extrinsic' and 'intrinsic religiosity' in the vein of Allport. Finally, Wilson proposes a framework of formal categories for doing the history of the definition of religion by distinguishing four kinds of definition. The first is between lexical and precising definitions, and between precising definitions of the descriptive, or analytic, and explanatory, or synthetic, kinds. The second is between nominal and real definitions. The third is between substantive and functional definitions. The fourth is between monothetic and polythetic definitions of religion itself. He also provides a brief overview of the history to exemplify it. I find this essay the most stimulating of the collection.
Ordering these essays in this way brings out the transformation of North American scholarship in religions in the last two decades. Those opting for an exclusively hermeneutical approach and its solid integration into Christian theology are dwindling. Those opting for a hardnosed social scientific approach are few but vociferous. The majority would seem to opt for a softer Religious Studies, secular in character and including hermeneutics as well as explanation, studying the Christian religion, but without any privileges. The value of this collection lies primarily in the fact that it documents this process. The study of religions needs to be contextualised as much as the religions it studies. The editors show a failure of nerve in not contextualising these essays.