Jay R. FEIERMAN and Lluis OVIEDO, eds. The Evolution of Religion, Religiosity, and Theology: A Multilevel and Multidisciplinary Approach. N.Y.: Routledge, 2020. Pp. 301. $145 (!) [Kindle rental $11.] ISBN 978-0-367-25026-3. Reviewed by Michael H. BARNES, Religious Studies Dept. University of Dayton.

This book is quite difficult to review, for a reason that appears in the subtitle: its 16 articles are indeed multilevel and multidisciplinary.  This book is a sampling of attempts to create what the editors call “the new natural science study of religion.” (xiii) The many different bibliographies, one at the end of each chapter as well as after the editors’ introduction and conclusion are heavily weighted with books that are part of what is being called “the cognitive science of religion” (e.g., works by Steward Guthrie or Justin Barrett), or are in some way guided by biological theories concerning human evolution, including cultural evolution (e.g., on pro-social morality as part of religious evolution). While the theories about religion here are all naturalistic, i.e., not using faith or supernatural causes to explain things, they try to avoid completely reductionistic approaches which treat religion as fully a dependent variable, a product entirely of non-religious causes.  The middle path this book seeks is a variety of explorations of ways in which natural causes influence, guide, or form religion without replacing it entirely.

The editors have tried to give it some focus.   In the Preface the two editors compare this work to that of archeologists who have dug “test pits” across the broad surface of religion, using mainly models related in some way to evolutionary theories to interpret the findings.  The result is a rather bumpy widely spread out field without clear paths connecting the various mounds excavated.  They are such widely varied samples the reader can only hop uncertainly from pit to pit.  This is probably inevitable.   “Religion” is hard to define; “evolution” comes in many forms. Science methods vary widely. The editors and some of the contributors acknowledges that ‘religion” usually refers to different historically concrete movements, while “religiosity” could be a deeper orientation which gives rise to religions, and “theology” might dig deeper yet to uncover or express the source(s) of religiosity.  Yet each of the volume’s 16 contributors (+ two editors) provide implicit or explicit notions of religion, none of which is exactly alike.  So, what is said to be evolving is sometimes hard to pin down.

The notion of “evolution” likewise appears in various forms.  The evolution of religion in these pages sometimes refers to stages of forms of religion, thereby using evolution to stand for any process of change.  Or it refers to processes of natural selection, whereby elements of religion survive and even flourish because they confer some benefit on those who live by those elements (are “adaptive”).  Or it can refer to theories about how the evolved nature of us human gives rise to those forms of behavior we call religious, which can include beliefs, rituals, morality, and social identity.

In an attempt to organize topics by the science or other methods used, the book is divided into four major parts.  The first has four chapters related to “evolutionary biology.”  The second has five chapters under the rather broad heading of “philosophy of language, psychology, and neuroscience.” The third is “theology,” and the last “anthropology.”  I suspect the editors had to struggle to impose this order on articles that do not lend themselves to such orderly categorization.  In the first part alone, for example, the summary line at the end of Ch. 2 on the evolutionary functions of specific beliefs treats some belief as “an in-group marker for a human breeding population” (49).  That is a quite a different area of study compared to the very next chapter, which is concerned to see whether “certain aspects of the neural architecture that enables humans to experience orgasms also created the capacity for profound experiences of spiritual transcendence . . . .” (54).

To review, even briefly, each of the 16 chapters and their many different themes would take up a great deal of space.  Fortunately, Amazon.com provides a solution.  Find this book by title and then use the “Look Inside” link, and click on Table of Contents.  The ToC that appears then is quite incomplete but it includes the Preface of the book, including pp. xii-xiii, which offer a one-sentence summary of each of the 16 chapters.  The reader can discover which of the many topics listed are of personal use or interest.  The bibliographies at the end of each chapter could be quite useful.