Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion

by Tweed

Beginning with a Cuban Catholic ritual in Miami, this book takes readers on a momentous theoretical journey toward a new understanding of religion. At this historical moment, when movement across boundaries is of critical importance for all areas of human life―from media and entertainment to economy and politics―Thomas Tweed offers a powerful vision of religion in motion, dynamic, alive with crossings and flows.

A deeply researched, broadly gauged, and vividly written study of religion such as few American scholars have ever attempted, Crossing and Dwelling depicts religion in place and in movement, dwelling and crossing. Tweed considers how religion situates devotees in time and space, positioning them in the body, the home, the homeland, and the cosmos. He explores how the religious employ tropes, artifacts, rituals, and institutions to mark boundaries and to prescribe and proscribe different kinds of movements across those boundaries; and how religions enable and constrain terrestrial, corporeal, and cosmic crossings.

Drawing on insights from the natural and social sciences, Tweed's work is grounded in the gritty particulars of distinctive religious practices, even as it moves toward ideas about cross-cultural patterns. At a time when scholars in many fields shy away from generalizations, this book offers a responsible way to think broadly about religion, a topic that is crucial for understanding the contemporary world. Lucid in explanations, engaging in presentation, rich in examples, Crossing and Dwelling has profound implications for the study and teaching of religion in our day.

Genres: Religion, Academic, Nonfiction, Grad School, Theory

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Steven Godby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good books are books that make you think. They force the reader to re-evaluate their current views. This is such a book. I found the book important for three reasons: First, it gave me a greater appreciation of religion as "intensifying joy and confront suffering." Second, I am grateful for understanding religion as "crossing and dwelling." However, the metaphors were too terrestrial. Third and last, I would prefer aquatic metaphors. I think of religions as rafts, boats, ships, or vehicles. The ship captains would be Moses, Jesus, the Buddha, etc. The weakness of the book is the language. The terms and sentence length unnecessarily obfuscate an important "crossing and dwelling. " Nevertheless, it was well worth the journey.

[Frank R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Tweed's "Crossing and Dwelling," he offers us a theory of Religion--or I should say, "religions" since we never encounter "Religion" except as a theoretical construct, but always experience religions through religious individuals and groups. Like Brent Nongbri, Talal Asad, and Richard King--of the "New Religion" academic movement--Tweed, using Malory Nye, de-ontologizes the concept of Religion as we know it and advocates for Religion not as a noun, but a verb; we are 'religioning' as we move through our lives (78). Religons, he says, "are active verbs linked with unsubstantial nouns by bridging prepositions...Religions designate where we are from, identity whom we are with, and presecribe how we move across" (79).

Though he advocates for religions, he tends to temporarily essentialize the concept of Religion and offers his own definition/theory of Religion in Chapter 3,

"Religions are confluences of organic-cultural flows that intensify joy and confront suffering by drawing on human and suprahuman forces to make homes and cross boundaries" (54).

He uses the Cuban Roman Catholic feast-day celebration of Our Lady of Charity at a shrine in Miami as his ethnographic point of entry to discuss and justify his situated position that blossomed into this theoretical view. He soldiers on to dissect the content of his definition with cross-cultural examples as well. Chapters 4 and 5 comprise extended discussions of how religions make homes (the 'dwelling' portion of the title) and serve to move religious people through not only physical landscapes and across continents into new diasporas, but also through life-cycle transitions, birth, and death (the triple-layered cake of "crossing" in the title).

For Tweed, religions orient one in a sacralized landscape (sacroscapes) and provide the religious with homes while simultaneously moving them across boundaries of time, space, territory, and death toward the ultimate ends (teleographies) they've conceptualized.

Tweed has certainly touched upon a new set of motifs to understand how religious people construct and utilize their religious milieus. While he certainly mentions Durkheim, he does not lay claim to being a Functionalist in any way, shape or form, but his theory certainly throws up enough examples to qualify it as a reiteration of a functionalist approach. I suppose that could be a natural outgrowth when one is observing what religious people do and perform: we conceive of religion as DOING something.

I am not criticizing this perspective. On the contrary, religious people do things, perform rituals, speak of their beliefs, etc. and this constructs and performs religion. Just as well, religions must do things for us to continue to transmit them, and Tweed strives to set religion up as a viable category of analysis separate from culture, politics, economics, or even their convergences that could displace it despite his advocating to not reify it as a monolithic category. This is the project of contemporary scholarship in contemporary Religious Studies: strip away the category of religion as a product of western colonialism and the Protestant Reformation to allow for flexibility but maintain enough of it as an essentialized concept to be distinguished as an existent concept... Interestingly enough, while he de-ontologizes Religion and offers a theory for religions, he also offers several dozens more within the explanations of each part of his definition. There are actually many theories hidden within these few sentences of his theory.

I commend him for having one of the finest and most accessible discussions on the nature of Theory and theorizing in Chapter 1 that I've ever read--and I will use this in future courses--but his reformulation of functionalist approaches at least deserves a nod or two. Furthermore, I read a plethora of Peter Berger in this! The Sacred Canopy approach to religions, while not encapsulating movement and 'crossings' like Tweed, does a great job of understanding teleographies and the religious desire to orient oneself in a cosmos of meaning, direction, and symbolism that teaches/transforms.

I also applaud Tweed heartily for the readability of this text. It is easily tackled by undergrads and lay readers alike. I could also get a feel for his personality throughout the book, and it seemed unpretentious and not condescending whatsoever. I also enjoyed the emphasis on "intensifying joy" in his explanation of this portion of the theory. Too many religious theorists from E.B. Tylor to Malinowski and a host of others have placed so much emphasis on death as the prime motivator of religious thought/behavior; we are just as moved by birth, being filled with awe when observing the natural world, and anticipating a transformation or salvation at the time of death with joy as we are by feelings of fear and dread at the body's final breath!

I wish he would have brought more recent research from the Cognitive Science of Religion into this text, especially on concepts that propose explanations to the origins of religious thinking like the Theory of Mind, HADD, and other concepts that detail the Naturalness Theory of religion (humans tend to perceive agency, intentionality, and project anthropomorphic qualities on the world; this in turn, can be a source of religious thought and experience and the beginning of collective/shared religious experiences that can then be culturally transmitted). He does mention that religion is an "organic-cultural flow" which incorporates a bio-cultural understanding of religion as originating in both our neurons, lived experiences, and cultural learning, however. So at least he doesn't discount human biology in the construction of religion--he also discusses the creation of sacred geographies and source of cognitive mapping via the projection of our bodily orientation to the world ala Yi-Fu Tuan and others--and in the Conclusion, he agrees with Geertz that nature and culture, the mind and culture are "reciprocally constructive" (173).

The least enjoyable thing about this read was the length. It is not a long book, but the discussion runs dry. His examples and themes are redundant; I will be glad to never see the word 'tropes' again after reading this book--religions use tropes to orient the religious to dwelling and crossing in our lives, don't you know? Tropes, tropes, and more tropes! He also spends too much time discussing the "aquatic metaphors" researchers of religions should be using to describe the nature of movement, change, and growth that FLOW from CONFLUENCES and CONVERGENCES (you see what I mean?). I think this text could have been half the length in all honesty. It would have been a nice, condensed volume with a fresh look at a few characteristics of religions that we hadn't thought of before so deeply, but instead I felt overwhelmed by cross-cultural examples from art, history, and a few limited religious milieus that were meant to illustrate his points but were only beating a dead, boring horse.

Boy, I sound like I hated this book...I didn't! I appreciate this nuanced view of religions and religious people. This isn't an earth-shattering theory by any means, but Tweed knows this and recognizes that his "definition...illumines much of what [he] encountered at the feast-day celebration and the shrine" but it is still a "positioned sighting" (177). He is humble enough to offer up several blind spots as well (the theory doesn't account for which "flows" researchers should follow in studying religious ideas/movements/practices, it doesn't account for agency in religious individuals to revolutionize or change their religious "organic-cultural flows," and it doesn't account for where nature ends and culture begins in religious thought, symbolism, behavior, etc.) 171-174). Overall, I would recommend reading this--I read this to prepare for a Qualifying Exam--even as a lay reader interested in the exposition of contemporary scholarship in the field of Religion.

[Ryan Rebel · Rating 2 out of 5]

There becomes a point at which postmodern theory stops being useful, and starts saying nothing at all. That point is very soon, and this book is far past that point. Tweed espouses a "theory" that he mainly tries to prove (no wait, he doesn't have the tools nor the desire to prove things) by giving copious examples of religious times, places, situations, or activities that can be described (not even explained) using his particular terminology.

This was refreshing after reading Boyer, who is horrendous and condescending. But Tweed also has some masturbatory impulses that he needs to reign in, I think.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Presented a paper at the AAR utilizing Tweed's theory here as it applies to the French-Canadians of Woonsocket, RI.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

As academic works go, this one is pretty good – easy to read and pretty well-written, although you can easily stop reading after Chapter 3 and not miss anything.

Tweed argues that theories of religion do not properly account for the dynamic nature of religion, that it involves movement, both by bodies and between places. Other theories are “too static,” assuming either that the religious or their observer(s) are not themselves in motion.

Tweed employs aquatic metaphors about flows and currents to describe religion. “Religions are confluences of organic-cultural flows that intensify joy and confront suffering by drawing on human and suprahuman forces to make homes and cross boundaries.” He wants to imagine religion as “dynamic and relational.”

So he sees religion as a “complex process” that may include systems or institutions, but not necessarily. He argues it avoids casting religions in stone, and also allows them to change each other through contact. Liquid is by definition not solid; therefore, religion described in this way also seems to lack any kind of a solid structure, whether mediated by formal institutions or more informal communities. Perhaps these are covered by the notion of “confluences,” but confluences are brief; institutions preserve themselves.

To try to get around this, Tweed discusses “organic channels direct[ing] cultural currents” (66). And currents can be seen as more or less permanent (they don’t reverse themselves willy-nilly), but they describe movement in a way that may overstate the relative permanence or solidity of religious establishments. He argues “that religions are processes in which social institutions … bridge organic constraints … and cultural mediations … to produce reference frames … that orient devotees in time and space.” But that’s a different definition. Not surprisingly, to properly account for the influence of “social institutions,” Tweed has to essentially abandon the metaphors that underlie his primary argument.

Another element of this definition is his emphasis on emotions as an important part of religion, thus the joy/suffering piece. Religions “provide the lexicon, rules, and expression for many different sorts of emotions.” So it’s not that emotions undergird religion, but rather that religion manages emotions. The emphasis on joy strikes me as correct. Perhaps dealing with suffering provides a stronger or primary justification (as negative emotions leave stronger marks), but wonder and awe do seem to be significant emotions that lead to religious thought.

Tweed’s issue with Paul Tillich’s definition of religion as “ultimate concern” is that it makes religion too broad (76-77). Or, I might argue, it means Tillich accurately captured the possibility that almost anything could in fact be religious, even if it doesn’t quite meet whatever criteria are required to be religion. But if the problem – as Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers by Charlie McCrary and The Production of American Religious Freedom by Finbarr Curtis point out – is that “official” definitions of religion are expanding so as to privatize regulation that properly belongs to the public sector, it might be time to move past Tillich, or split “religion” from “religious” in legal American discourse.

In the end, Tweed argues his statement on religion is less definition than interpretation. It “does not try to formulate universally applicable laws or trace religion’s historical origin. … It does not aim at explanation or prediction” (165). This is an odd statement; what’s the point of the book if it does not aim at explanation? Sure, no definition is universally applicable, but is it even a definition if it makes no pretense at explaining the phenomena it’s interpreting?

[Blake Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Post-Mircea Eliade. Although Tweed is convinced that his theory "illumines more than it obscures," his analysis seems superficial to me. Religions sometimes define thresholds for dwelling. Sometimes they cross thresholds. Religions are in motion, not static.

Tweed's definition of religion is "Religions are confluences of organic-cultural flows that intensify joy and confront suffering by drawing on human and suprahuman forces to make homes and cross boundaries."

Tweed's categories allow us to consider religions as relational. His goal is to challenge "the usual notions of religion and static and bounded and the prevailing assumptions, enacted in the authoritarian voice of most scholarly studies, that the interpreter is everywhere at once or nowhere in particular."

This entire book could have been one small essay.

I'm not sure that the theory tells us much about religion specifically, against something like culture, even though Tweed claims that it does.

[ekrobin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found Tweed's writing on the study and conception of lived religion(s) to be both fascinating and thought-provoking. In particular, the chapter "Confluences" (i.e. religious thought = aquatic/organic/mutable), proved very formative in my own approach to religious studies. I cited this book quite a bit while working toward my bachelor's and still often think of the metaphor when discussing theories of religion.

[John Traphagan · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some interesting ideas in this book, but in terms of breaking any new ground torward a theory of religion, it accomplishes little.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tweed does a great job in his attempt to capture the motion and movement of religious lives. Two things about his theory:

In the first couple of chapters his main category is "religion" or "religions" but later in the last three chapters--and especially the final two--he begins to talk a lot about "the religious," as in people involved in religion. I would have liked a bit more on the connection b/w these two categories because I feel like his theory does a great job of explaining "the religious" that is the behaviors of people but not so much on the category of religion and how it is differentiated from other "cultural flows."

Second, Tweed makes a distinction between meaning and power which I find problematic. While I think he would grant that the two are related, I think they deserve the same hyphen (meaning-power) that he gives to "organic-cultural." Power works to determine meaning and meaning in turn reflects, reinforces, and sets the horizons for power. This is a small critique but I know Tweed wants to account for power and I think he could have offered a small section working through this question.

Overall, I love this book and I find it incredibly useful for research and for teaching. It's one of those books that will remain a classic for a while.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tweed has solid ideas and provides an interesting theoretical framework for studying religions which is broadly applicable. However, the writing of the text itself became tedious and overwrought as example upon example illustrated only slightly different colorings of the same basic ideas. The text would have been more effective in a shorter, more restrained version.

[Monica Mitri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thoughtful book for thinking about a theory of religion. Tweed's use of metaphors such as spatial and aquatic metaphors, allow him to focus nicely on his three elements of a 'religion': movement, relationality, and positionality.
Well-worth the read and quite generative for thinking with.