The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity.
Worcester, Thomas
THE CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY OF CHRISTIANITY. Edited by Daniel Patte.
New York: Cambridge University, 2010. Pp. lxvii + 1343. $150; $39.99.
A work of this breadth is an enormous undertaking, requiring
scholarly experience and expertise, but also a broad array of
administrative and organizational abilities, a talent and a tact to
cajole and persuade authors, and a resolve to persevere and carry the
project through to completion. Daniel Patte merits no little applause on
publication of this hefty volume. He assembled an editorial board of
eleven scholars, for recruitment of more than 800 contributors who would
write some 3,500 entries. A lengthy preface explains both the
organization of the dictionary and the process by which selection and
editorial decisions were made. The international, multicultural, and
diverse reality of Christianity today is emphasized and is evident from
the space given to non-Western cultures and to the Southern Hemisphere.
Among the authors commissioned are many outstanding scholars such as
Nicolas Standaert, Giuseppe Alberigo, Thomas Massaro, Jeffrey Klaiber,
Wendy Wright, Fernando Segovia, Sandra Schneiders, Margaret Farley,
Gerald O'Collins, Gillian Evans, Patrick Carey, and Eugene TeSelle,
the last mentioned being P.'s Vanderbilt colleague and the author
of an exceptional number of the entries. There is a major contingent of
highly regarded authors from countries with large numbers of Christians,
such as Brazil and Nigeria, as well as from places such as Japan where
Christians remain a tiny minority.
To help keep the total length within a million words, difficult
choices were made. Bibliographies for the entries are available only on
a Vanderbilt University website. An understandable decision, it will
nevertheless not please all users of this dictionary. Also, there is no
index, which surely reduces the work's usefulness. The only images
reproduced are on the cover: nine images of Jesus, in color, in
different media, from different eras and cultures. Christianity and the
arts is a crucial topic that gets short shrift. An entry on "Arts
and Theology" is barely long enough even to mention topics that
merit substantive treatment.
Allotting limited space to many possible entries is no easy task.
There is great variety in length of entries, with some topics getting
terse, dictionary-style definition, and others getting lengthy
historical treatments more typical of encyclopedia articles. Some
entries are signed by their authors, others not. Though a diversity of
entry lengths is expected and necessary, the choices made are sometimes
puzzling. "Charles Borromeo" gets a sentence;
"Shamanism" gets a full page. "Dietrich Bonhoeffer"
apparently merits four times what "Bonaventure" does.
"Cloister" merits one sentence, while "Ethiopia" is
discussed for five pages. Several entries on popes, by Michael Walsh,
are much too brief to do justice to important figures such as Plus IX,
Pius XII, and John XXIII; the bibliographies accompanying these entries
emphasize works offering negative assessments of the papacy, downplaying
other perspectives. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin gets nearly ten times as
much space as Pius XII, a disproportion even most critics of Pius would
likely find bizarre. And some entries are misleading or lacking in
balance. For example, the entry on secular clergy is too confused to be
helpful, whereas an entry on the YMCA seems overly congratulatory. And
there are omissions of key information, such as in the entry on King
Louis IX of France where no mention is made of his having brought what
was believed to be the crown of thorns to Paris. A list of abbreviations
on page lxvii for Catholic religious orders makes one wonder why some
orders or congregations are not included; Cistercians and Sisters of
Mercy are among the more prominent of those left out. MM is wrongly
identified as referring to Maryknoll sisters only.
Despite its limitations, this dictionary will be useful, especially
for its concise overviews of Christianity outside Europe and North
America. A single volume cannot possibly cover everything that matters
when it comes to Christianity. But this volume goes quite a long way in
making much of what matters most accessible to students and scholars.
THOMAS WORCESTER, S.J.
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Mass.
