Korean Catholic religious sisters-those who distribute communion solely according to the directions of the priest and who are prohibited from entering the sanctuary to receive the elements-refuse to participate in the Eucharistic ministry. As an alternative, she explores a model for a women's church through the lives of Korean Catholic women martyrs. A Filipina theologian, Agnes Brazil, who advocates the decriminalization of prostitution, makes another far-reaching proposal. According to Brazil, both the current state policy and the teaching of the church in the Philippines do not address the root problem behind prostitution: extreme poverty forces women to engage in prostitution. Thus, church and state nonsensically blame and punish the prostitute, perpetuating a status quo that makes women even more vulnerable to abuse and marginalization. Approaching the matter through the genre of tragedy, Brazil advocates the decriminalization of prostitution. Defining decriminalization as "penalizing pimping and the management of brothels, but not the sale and purchase of sexual service itself, as well as, the right of women in prostitution to organize" (3–4), she argues that it is a Christian duty to protect the victim and the powerless, which in this case are prostitutes. As a first collection of Asian Catholic feminist theologians, EWA, presents vastly diverse issues and contexts of Asian Catholic women, coupled with feminist visions for the church. The significance of the book in Asian theology and Asian feminist theology cannot be overemphasized, but there is an important question that the authors still need to ask; to wit, who are their conversation partners? In over 600 footnotes from twenty-eight chapters, other Asian women theologians or feminist theologians from the two-thirds world, who have been wrestling similar concerns in different contexts, are hardly mentioned. In contrast, the work of Western feminist theologians and Asian male theologians are widely quoted by almost every author. Asian feminist theology is mostly identified with Asian Protestant theology, which points to the significance of this book by and about Asian Catholic women theologians. However, the authors should ask whether Asian Catholic feminist theology benefits by being standoffish to its Asian Protestant sisters. Alternatively, Asian Catholic women theologians should ask whether Audre Lorde's finding is on point: "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" (Audre Lorde, Sister Outside. Crossing, 1984). doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfl046 Boyung Lee Advance Access publication February 15, 2007 Pacific School of Religion Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism. By Richard Crouter. Cambridge University Press, 2005. 277 pages. $80.00. That history-not only in the form of the lived experience of a writer, but also the history of the appropriation of a text-should be of supreme 200 Journal of the American Academy of Religion at Purdue U niversity L ibraries A D M N on D ecem ber 31, 2015 http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from importance in grasping the meaning of a body of work, is a theme that runs throughout Richard Crouter's book on Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), arguably the most significant Christian theologian since the middle ages. Exploring several facets of Schleiermacher's oeuvre, the book investigates "religious debates and questions within the complex details of personal, social, and institutional history" (9). Schleiermacher's influence, however, extended beyond the field of theology: he made lasting contributions to philosophy, in particular, in the fields of hermeneutics and the theory of knowledge. Significantly, Crouter makes use of Schleiermacher's own insights into hermeneutics in an effort to understand him. Schleiermacher stressed the ineradicably subjective and perspectival element present in all apprehensions and expressions of human knowledge. Hence, it is important to situate a person's utterances in their historical context in order to understand them. This situating is the task of Crouter's book: Schleiermacher's work is positioned not only in relation to his own life and practice, but in relation to the thought and practice of both his contemporaries and that of later thinkers, who were in some way influenced by him. Furthermore, Schleiermacher's "cultural location between Enlightenment and Romanticism" (1) is explored. The first and last chapters frame the common themes of the book. In the first chapter, "Revisiting Dilthey on Schleiermacher and Biography," Crouter discusses the general question of whether biography, and hence the context of a life and the way that it has been lived, is important to understanding a body of work. Dilthey had claimed that this was especially true in the case of Schleiermacher: unlike Kant, Schleiermacher's significance could only be grasped through his biography. Yet, Crouter not only examines claims about Schleiermacher's personal impact, but also provides an analysis of Schleiermacher's own position on the relevance of life for understanding a body of work. Significantly, he quotes Schleiermacher: "No writing can be fully understood except in connection with the total range of ideas out of which it has come into being and through a knowledge of the various relations important to the writers' lives of those for whom they write" (32). In the last chapter of his book, on the other hand, Crouter discusses the relevance of the history of a text's effects, its Wirkungsgeschichte, in assessing the text's meaning. In this case, the issue is not the history and context of the origin of a work, but rather the history of its reception. What is it that makes a text, in this case Schleiermacher's On Religion, a classic? Crouter cites Francis Watson's dictum that "the significance of a text takes time to unfold" (249). As such, along with Kierkegaard's Johannes Climacus we can affirm that our access to the history of a text's effects privileges our position in accessing its meaning. So Crouter: "...we have not grasped the underlying force of the stream that animates these various rivulets [of a text's effective power] until we ourselves witness the temporal unfolding of his [Schleiermacher's] significance" (266). However, while he affirms the "relative" truth of Watson's dictum, Crouter claims that access to this Wirkungsgeschichte is no substitute for letting the text itself work immediately upon the reader. Ultimately, argues Crouter, our interest in classic Book Reviews 201 at Purdue U niversity L ibraries A D M N on D ecem ber 31, 2015 http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from texts such as On Religion lies in "its immediate power, in its claims to replicate and refocus the world of the reader in ways that destroy time" (267). Framed by the two hermeneutical problems discussed above, the book is divided into three parts. The first is entitled "Taking the Measure of Schleiermacher." Chapters in this section place Schleiermacher's work in the context of the social, political, religious, and intellectual concerns of his contemporaries or near contemporaries. Chapter two, "Schleiermacher, Mendelssohn, and the Enlightenment," compares themes common to Mendelssohn's Jerusalem (1783) and Schleiermacher's On Religion (1799), especially in the context of the thorny problem of the relation between the coercive power of states and religious communities and the freedom of conscience required for the expression of all genuine religion. The third chapter, "Hegel and Schleiermacher at Berlin," not only analyzes the tense relationship between Hegel and Schleiermacher in terms of the political realities of the day, but also provides an acute analysis of fundamental differences between the two thinkers. Two stand out especially. First, unlike Hegel, Schleiermacher denies the possibility of absolute knowledge. Second, he denies that all elements of our experience can be mediated by consciousness. His stand on both questions results from his insistence on the finite and perspectival character of all human knowings. Crouter discusses Schleiermacher's March 1810 speech before the academy, in which he "spoke against systematic philosophy and in favor of the historical-critical approach to philosophy as appropriate to be represented in the academy" (87). We have no access to absolute knowledge. Rather, knowledge is the result of the rule-governed interplay of the different perspectives of finite human selves standing in interrelation with the world. As such, our knowing is inter-subjective as well as historically conditioned, and this fact should be reflected in our approach to the discipline of philosophy. The fourth chapter, "Kierkegaard's not so hidden debt to Schleiermacher," explores the dialogical character of Schleiermacher's understanding of human knowing. Knowledge occurs in and through the interplay of several different historically conditioned perspectives in conversation with one another. There are "formal as well a substantive concerns" uniting Kierkegaard and Schleiermacher (103); Kierkegaard's use of pseudonymous authorship certainly stands in debt to Schleiermacher's literary endeavors, especially his Confidential Letters Concerning Schlegel's "Lucinde," where, in Kierkegaard's words, Schleiermacher "constructs a host of personalities," and through them we are acquainted with their "individuality" and "various point of view" concerning Schlegel's controversial book (111). Through the play of various points of view, human understanding is exhibited and achieved. Part two of the book is entitled "Signposts of a Public Theologian." Here, Crouter provides an analysis of the way that Schleiermacher puts his thought into action in the wider public and political arena. The fifth chapter, on the letters Schleiermacher wrote on the question of the emancipation of the Jews, echoes some of the more theoretical political concerns discussed in chapter two. Chapter six, "A Proposal for a New Berlin University," picks up on some 202 Journal of the American Academy of Religion at Purdue U niversity L ibraries A D M N on D ecem ber 31, 2015 http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from of the themes touched upon earlier in the chapter on Schleiermacher and Hegel at Berlin, and explores how Schleiermacher's understanding of the character of human knowledge influenced his shaping of the institutional character of the university of Berlin. Of special importance is chapter seven, "Schleiermacher and the theology of a bourgeois Society," taking issue with many contemporary readings of Schleiermacher that portray him as a "cultural accommodationist" (172). Crouter rightly points out that such an understanding of him is far too simplistic, acutely noting that "since cultural forces are inevitably diverse and complex, we must always ask which forces are being joined and for what reasons, and also, against what other forces" (181). Crouter's analysis provides a much-needed corrective to Barthian caricatures of Schleiermacher, which have been repeated over and over again in the secondary literature, and he convincingly shows that Schleiermacher "made political choices that must be judged to be on the side of progressive social change" (171). Common to the last section of the book, "Textual Readings and Milestones," is the theme of how Schleiermacher's view of religion influenced his understanding of hermeneutics, and the role this played in revising his own work. The ideas expressed in On Religion are foundational to all of Schleiermacher's work, especially the idea that "linguistic expression ... can never fully and immediately grasp reality" (200). Nevertheless, all expressions and actions are fundamentally affected by the person's relation to Being, to which one stands in a relation of immediate and absolute dependence. Hence, every linguistic community both reveals and conceals Being; a classic text functions as a prism refracting reality in multivalent ways and is, thereby, inexhaustibly rich. In his chapter on Schleiermacher's revision of The Christian Faith, Crouter discusses Schleiermacher's theory of language, "in which doctrine rests on and refers back to more immediate, preconscious levels of experience" (239). These preconscious levels of experience are reflected most directly in the poetic or rhetorical dimensions of language, and only later in dogmatic expressions. This sheds light on Schleiermacher's grasp of theology as a field of study, explored by Crouter in chapter nine: practical theology is the crown of theology. All theoretical reflection must be rooted in experience; the understanding of experience only gains its significance in relation to the practical sphere, where judgments regarding an appreciation of the worth or importance of things have a direct effect on action. The insight that all purely intellectual judgments or beliefs derive their significance from their relation to what is valued and its impact on action underlies Schleiermacher's claim that practical theology is the "crown" of theology. Many of the themes explored in this book can profitably be summed up under the heading of the primacy of the practical in the understanding of life and thought. Crouter deftly interweaves the theme of Schleiermacher's own understanding of the relation of life to thought with an analysis of the actual ways in which Schleiermacher's ideas shaped his actions in the public arena. The book is an important contribution, not only to the growing field of Book Reviews 203 at Purdue U niversity L ibraries A D M N on D ecem ber 31, 2015 http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from Schleiermacher scholarship, but also to the history of philosophy and theology. Crouter's most lasting contribution is the way his book exhibits why life and thought must be taken together, not only to take the proper measure of a great thinker, but to understand the meaning of his thought as well. doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfl047 Jacqueline Mariña Advance Access publication January 29, 2007 Purdue University Faithful Economics: The Moral Worlds of a Neutral Science. Edited by James W. Henderson and John Pisciotta. Baylor University Press, 2005. 155 pages. $29.95. Perhaps the largest gathering ever of economists assembled to pursue the relationship between their work as economists and their profession as Christians occurred at Baylor University's 2002 conference on "Christianity and Economics: Integrating Faith and Learning in Economic Scholarship." A conventional array of concurrent sessions, using the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to frame economically related policy emphases and/or theoretical constructs (hereinafter FDI for faith-discipline integration), was complemented by seven plenary addresses. Reworked versions of these addresses comprise the chapters of Faithful Economics; an Introduction and Conclusion by the conference organizers and FE editors complete the book. Assigning historian George Marsden, the first address/chapter reveals one conference objective-establishing the legitimacy of FDI work within the normal routines of the modern research university. Claiming no expertise in economics, Marsden generalizes his experience within history to other disciplines: the modern research university marginalizes and trivializes religion as a useful source for uncovering truth about the world and how to act within it. Working from Wolterstorff's epistemology, Marsden argues that one's foundational commitments/worldview cannot help but inform the theoretical constructs used and the policy implications proposed-a reality as true of feminists and Marxists (which the academy welcomes) as religiously grounded scholarship (which the academy shuns). A two-fold general counsel followed: (1) high-level FDI scholarship requires grounding in the intellectual dimensions of one's religious heritage (Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, Anabaptism, and so on), requiring fresh professional effort for most economists; (2) within the academy, present one's FDI-informed analysis in ways scholars from all worldviews can understand. Interestingly, the three Christian economists writing chapters proffer little support from their experience for Marsden's characterization of the modern academy. Judith Dean (U.S. International Trade Commission) finds useful his specific guidelines for doing FDI work: let one's faith inform choice of problem for analysis and questions asked, push the analysis to discern the impacts upon real people, and test the philosophical presuppositions of 204 Journal of the American Academy of Religion at Purdue U niversity L ibraries A D M N on D ecem ber 31, 2015 http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from