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neilrcoulter's review against another edition
4.0
I read John Wilson's high recommendation of The Slain God in the Books & Culture look at 2014's best books. I put it on my high-priority to-read list, and then last week when a friend was talking about a book he was reviewing, I guessed from the details he gave that it was The Slain God. And even better: he loaned me the book right away. Whether it's one of the best books of the year is impossible to say, but I did enjoy it quite a lot. Coming from ethnomusicology, which tends to trace its lineage back through Franz Boas and the American anthropology tradition, I didn't know nearly as much about the British tradition(s). I found Timothy Larsen's overview very helpful and informative. Larsen structures each chapter as a biography of one British anthropologist (or, in the case of Victor and Edith Turner, two anthropologists in one chapter). This kind of book--a "Lives of the ______s"--used to be more common, and it's a shame that there aren't more of this kind of pithy, biographical (and, in this case, thematically-related) book for general readers. Larsen's kind of "Lives of the Anthropologists" is very engaging and pleasant to read.
The theme that unifies all of the chapters is Larsen's exploration of how anthropologists have wrestled with Christianity and personal faith. As he concludes in the final chapter, in anthropology we see an ongoing story that includes deconversions and conversions. Though early anthropologists Tylor and Frazer (the title The Slain God comes from the preface to Frazer's Golden Bough) saw the disappearance of religious faith as an inevitable (and welcome) consequence of modern scientific (including anthropological) progress, the faith journeys of more recent scholars, such as Mary Douglas and the Turners, affirm that science most certainly does not lead to the end of religion. Christianity, in the field and in anthropologists' personal lives, is a continually fresh, challenging, perplexing, and inspiring topic--and, for the scholars in Larsen's book, especially the Roman Catholic tradition of Christianity comes to stand for the "ideal" Christianity, whether viewed positively or negatively.
Though I sometimes found Larsen's prose just a touch too informal and casual, I admire his research very much. I found the chapter on Mary Douglas especially excellent. Larsen brings together the biography from all of Douglas's writing, other biographical writing about her, personal papers and letters, and interviews. By looking particularly (but not exclusively) for information regarding Douglas's Catholic faith, Larsen creates a fascinating portrait of the whole person, as well as of major trends and changes in anthropology throughout Douglas's long life.
A brief summary of The Slain God might give the impression that the book is an apologetic text, defending Christian faith, or that it presents some kind of "agenda" to push anthropology to become something that it currently isn't. This is not the case at all. Larsen's personal bias (as Mary Douglas didn't mean that in a negative sense, neither do I) toward Christian faith is most evident from the fact that he chose this book project at all; it is mildly evident throughout the text, but not in any distracting way. Instead of arguing for or against one or another point of view, Larsen simply presents his material, and the reader is invited to make of it what he or she will. Which chapter or personality most resonates with any reader likely depends most upon the reader's experience and background. Taken altogether, I believe Larsen convincingly demonstrates that religion generally and Christianity specifically will remain current topics for anthropologists for a long, long time--and that this is not something to fear, but rather to accept and interact with. He doesn't intend his biographical sketches to be the final word on any aspect of any of his subjects, but each chapter is a very good contribution to the history of the personalities and the academic discipline. He invites other researchers to fill in the gaps that he has left, and I hope they will do so, finding even more new directions on this topic.
I'll mention one more benefit I received from this book, which is really only a tangential, personal thing. I've long been a fan of the Inklings--Tolkien, Lewis, Charles Williams, and others--and so I've read quite a bit about Oxford and Cambridge during those mid-20th century years as I've learned more about those authors. Some parts of Larsen's book interested me for the way they fill in the borders of the Inkling story with information about anthropology departments in the same time and place. Tolkien and Lewis make cameo appearances in The Slain God (though Larsen mistakenly lists 1978 as Tolkien's death date (p. 93); it's actually 1973; kind of a painful error to see in an Oxford University Press publication!).
bridgetmay's review
5.0