Varieties of African-American Religious Experience. By Anthony B. Pinn. Fortress Press: Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1998. 242 pages. $20.00, paper.

Anthony B. Pinn, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, has set an ambitious task for his first book, Varieties of African American Religious Experience. The two-hundred and forty two pages, divided into Introduction, 5 Chapters, Notes, Bibliography and Index, are proposed as a challenge to scholars of religion and the theological enterprise to engage the full spectrum of religious experience and practice of those of African descent who reside in the Americas. Unfortunately, Pinn employs the term "African American" in an ethnocentric reference to blacks in the United States rather than as descriptor for people of African descent throughout the Atlantic Diaspora. This error from a scholar with such high and correct aspirations can only repeat and perpetuate the paradigmatic arrogance of western European American hegemonic attitudes.

Nevertheless, Anthony Pinn is correct to be troubled by "the narrow agenda and resource base of contemporary African American theological reflection." African American theologians of the United States, as well as Latin America and African theologians who follow pronouncements of Black U.S. theologians against the Euro-centricity of Christianity, have almost eliminated from critical reflection and considerations non-Christian traditions and practices. In effect, theologians have relegated as something less than legitimate the religious lives of millions of African descendants living throughout the Americas. As Pinn accurately contends, African American theological reflection "limits itself to Christianity in ways that establish Christian doctrine and concerns as normative for all African Americans" (1). Nothing could be further from an accurate picture of our realities. Non-Christian religious traditions among U.S. and other African Americans are practiced with great integrity and have extensive histories in the Americas and elsewhere. Varieties is Professor Pinn's attempt to introduce and explore the diversity of religious experiences that exist among descendants of the African continent who now reside across the Atlantic Ocean; or at least I think he is referring to all of us.

Pinn says that Varieties is his first of two volumes on the topic and he intends that the combination will "provide an initial exploration of four traditions; Voodoo, Yoruba religion, the Nation of Islam, and Humanism. He proposes that these traditions are but a few of the religions alive in the contemporary African American (U.S.?) community. He also sees a common linkage between the cosmological structure of the four selected traditions, which in turn has produced their social marginality among those who do theological reflection and writing. Pinn further suggests that within African American communities there is a common historical link in the U.S./Americas existence of the selected traditions.

From this premise and within the parameters of the traditions, Pinn proceeds to his exploratory descriptions. Chapter 1 covers "Serving the Loa: Vodou, Voodoo, and the Voodoo Spiritual Temple." Chapter 2 describes "Ashe!: Santeria, Orisha-Voodoo, and Oyotunji African Village," located in South Carolina. Chapter 3 presents descriptions under the title of "The Great Mahdi Has Come!: Islam, Nation of Islam, and the Minneapolis Study Group." "What if God Were One of Us?: and; Humanism and African Americans for Humanism" is the focus of Chapter 4. In the final Chapter 5, "How Do We Talk about Religion?: Religious Experience, Cultural Memory, and Theological Method," Pinn takes less than ten pages to discuss those issues he considers important that are raised when one seriously engages the alternative perspectives of African based and other non-Christian religious traditions of African Americans. Sub-headings for this chapter are; "African American Theology and Cultural Production;" "Fragile Cultural Memory and Cultural Production;" "Theological Ramifications" and; "On Theology and Archaeology." If I counted correctly, the book also has nine Figures and eleven black and white photos but the photos are not listed or numbered.

There is integrity to Anthony Pinn's challenge to the academic community. We definitely need to break the hegemonic nature of the Christian paradigm in order to more fully comprehend religious experiences and practices of African peoples worldwide. However, this book falls victim to the autho'rs stated task and may not serve us as well as even he might wish. Pinn has synthesized a vast amount of literature on an important group of religious traditions practiced by African Americans throughout the hemisphere, many with names different than those used by the author. This bird's-eye view could be helpful in a fashion. Students who need a serious outline of the selected traditions will now have an accessible reference. But Pinn falls prey to the obvious difficulty when the task includes synthesizing to compare complex religious practices that are from different traditions and which have complicating differential histories that regularly overlap. Even though the number of selected traditions may appear small, and the author explicates some with commendable clarity, readers will not gain depthful insights into any one of the communities, their origins, belief systems or practices, even as carried out in the United States. More important, for his discussion and description of practices Pinn uses secondary and tertiary source materials, some of whose commercialization of ritual information must be questioned, particularly those derived from the Yoruba.

A central difficulty that arises with Varieties is Pinn's look at traditions commonly incorporated into a single group and known as Santeria. On this topic he takes the reader from the African continental origins of Yoruba practices, to their transformation and establishment in the Americas (Cuba and Brazil) and then into contemporary U.S. practices in the Oyotunji African Village of South Carolina produced from variations of these. This is a huge geographic, historical, cultural, and religious hurdle that he does not clarify. Professor Pinn devotes more than twenty pages to these Yoruba based traditions but a fundamental reality from my ten-year field research in Cuba is that the traditions are separate. They are religious traditions distinctly of the Americas and in need of complimentary but separate exploration and analysis, not to mention definitional language that distinguishes between them. By comparison, we would never think of collapsing Wesleyan, Methodist, and Holiness or Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Episcopal traditions even though they are all Christian. After completing Professor Pinns book, I was puzzled as to why he chose to try and cover so much. I've always been under guidance that says, do one thing well rather than bespatter many. At the end of the day however, Anthony Pinn is to be commended for even opening the door to broader conceptualization of African American religions and religious practices. I look forward to his next volume and hope he will help us break through the paradigmatic blinders of normative Christianity as definitive for all black communities of the U.S. or the Americas.

Jualynne E. Dodson, African Atlantic Research Team, University of Colorado Boulder