CUSH I NG STROUT
445
contemporary camp us in which any ethnic group is assumed to be enti–
tled to cultural nationalism and to be beyond critici sm except by its own
representatives.
James's radical individualism, which went a long with his strong sense
of having an American identity, makes him seem entirely out of step with
this climate of opinion. The anthropo logist C lifford Geertz has pointed
out that our sense of religion today connects it to the "communa l sensi–
bility of a religiously assertive social actor," rather than to private strug–
gles with inner demons, as James did. Dewey left out the demons entirely,
and both men a lso isolated religious experience not on ly from its institu–
tional life in churches and sects, but also from its particular theological
traditions. As Geertz argues, however, the movement of religion towards
the center of socia l life, nevertheless, is "not a unitary phenomenon to be
uniformly described." We must deal with "the personal inflections of
religious engagement that reach far beyond the personal into the conflicts
and dilemmas of our age."
In
that sense social religion is a lso a diverse
individual matter; and for those stories, he concludes, we shall need ana–
lysts with Jamesian sympathies, ana lytic insight, and literary skil l. They
will need a measure of his genius to be able to speak to general audiences
and to respond as incisively and eloquen tl y as he did to public issues and
to a wide range of individual experience.
Recent fiction
by
J.
Inchardi
I REACH OVER NOW
MORNING IN SNUG HARBOR
A
ROSE COLORED BOAT
US
ATLANTIS
QUEENB
URIAH
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