The New York Times had an interesting take on a recent book entitled God is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Economist's editor-in-chief and Washington bureau chief, respectively. The reviewer, the well-known literary critic Michiko Kakutani did not like the thesis of the book that religion is back and that "the great forces of modernity-technology and democracy, choice and freedom- are all strengthening religion rather than undermining it." She accused the book's authors of conveniently seeking out examples to suit their argument of a resurging religiosity. The examples used in the book are in fact quite revealing about the commodification of religion and the steady rise of an entrepreneurial religiosity that follows a logic of capitalist market forces. Kakutani seems to be taking issue with the fact that religion suffuses public life. The authors are hardly exaggerating anything in this book. Religion is everywhere and has been everywhere for a long time. It's just that some people, including the majority in journalism, who have been thinking of religious people as ignorant and often a load of dimwits, have not been noticing. A recent Pew survey has found that in 2008 (election year) religion accounted for a meager 1% of the newshole, which leads me to my strong reservations with the title and thesis of this book. When reporters and others who are rarely interested in religion decide to finally devote some time to it, they enter an overwhelming discovery zone that often leads them to an a-ha moment that God is back and that he's now everywhere. This is what happens when the religion story is reduced to the crazed religious extremist or, as one blogger recently put it, to the Virgin Mary appearing in a plate of refried beans.

Religion is not back. It's always been there but it's taking new forms, at times away from organized structures as the Church, the Mosque, or the Synagogue. The subtitle of this book is also misleading because the examples used focus mostly on Western Christianity. Unlike Kakutani, I find the book useful in its claim that religion is more pervasive than we'd like to acknowledge, but my ultimate concern is that the book assumes that religion was dead, and that also perpetuates a Eurocentric view of the role of religion in public life.