Sumser, John. The Conflict Between Secular and Religious Narratives in the United States: Wittgenstein, Social Construction, and Communication. Maryland: Lexington Books Lanham, 2016. Pp. 168. ISBN 978-14985-2208-3 (cloth) $80.00; 978-1-4985-2209-0 (eBook) $76.00.

My conservative, Christian fundamentalist, working class mom stopped by my house. She was excited about an event televised on her evangelical network. Mr. Trump, she told me in a trembling voice, is on "their" side. She finds POTUS a powerful speaker when addressing his supporters, and now she is newly fired up about "the gays and their agenda." She assures me that while she will be nice to the LGBTQ community, she has had it up to here (eyeball level). I recognize contradictions and have many arguments at the ready, but praise be, I just finished The Conflict Between Secular and Religious Narratives in the United States: Wittgenstein, Social Construction, and Communication. Within a preface, six chapters and a conclusion, John Sumser details a comparison of secular and fundamentalist ways of thinking and reasoning commonly found in American cultural discourse. The book offers a deep, practical analysis of why, try as they might, secular and religious interlocutors continually struggle to reach mutual understanding or mutual influence. I now clearly understand why attempts to offer a reasoned response to my mother's political and social views is not an effective choice.

Sumser's book is centrally a book about communication. He discusses the function of narrative, language, argument, and meaning. He shows "how various perspectives shape the social narratives of life, how religion is woven in, and how meaning changes across time and across groups" (p. 7). I was not drawn to this book to further my theological and philosophical knowledge, though I learned enough to understand the arguments. As Sumser discusses the study of religion, he clarifies that his book is about the study of the way people talk about religion, the way people use religion to make sense of the world, not the study of "the nature of the cosmos" (p. 14), which is ideal for those who study and teach communication.

Early on Sumser explores definitions of religion. He uses Emile Durkheim's practical approach to this endeavor because any definition of religion has to resonate with how regular people think about religion. From there, Sumser explores the many ways different thinkers approach such a task. He introduces distinctions such as the difference between the sacred and profane and the difference between thinking of heaven as an imaginary place versus an actual place. Sumser introduces the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein in a way that gives enough information about Wittgenstein's thought to develop his argument about how to think of secular and religious narratives in productive ways. Wittgenstein complicates the idea of categories. If religion is a category, it is, like other categories, complex. Therefore, it is more useful to think of categories as family resemblances. In this way, religions "form a family. Some have gods, some do not" (p. 9). Wittgenstein's philosophy is incorporated through the entire book rather than introducing it heavily in an early chapter with an expectation that the reader remembers how to apply it later.

The book's title includes conflict. Sumser explains the problems that stem from an instability of meaning and an absence of shared stories in contemporary culture. He points out the decline of institutions and the rise in our ability to share ideas. He defines ontological insecurity and security and the relationship of each orientation to a civil society. "We are on our own in a world without solid footing and so we assert ourselves, our beliefs, and our gods in an effort to find some ground" (p. xi). Conflict between secular and religious reasoning, Sumser writes, is at the core of the culture wars in America. He uses the extremes of Christian fundamentalism and secular materialist rationality to illustrate the different styles of reasoning and their futility when considered as oppositional.

The section on social construction explains how we use communication to create reality and meaning. From there, narrative theory is introduced. To explain the difference between narrative thinking and secular rationality, Sumser uses the distinction between logic and rhetoric. Logic has rules for thinking that do not entertain contradictions, so that if something is one thing, it cannot also be another (bread is bread, not also body). Rhetoric has rules for thinking that are tolerant of contradictions because they "can live suspended in narrative webs of meaning without cancelling each other out" (p. 31). His memorable example is the Virgin of Guadalupe. In 2009, a man in California saw an image on a rock that he deemed the Virgin of Guadalupe. Sumser identifies the different reactions (secular and religious) that accompanied the news story to show the narrative frameworks expressed. For example, a secular response asks how the man can be so daft while the religious response is about the importance of this man's beliefs and a follow up promise to pray for the skeptic. The Virgin story becomes a useful touchstone to explain competing narratives throughout the book.

Sumser introduces critical theory because of the need to focus on how inequality is embedded and reproduced in the major social narratives of culture. "Gross inequities in society can be buried in narratives of meritocracy, natural and moral superiority, or God's will" (p. 44). Through a comparison of two creation stories--one from the Bible and one found in the Hindu religion--Sumser shows the importance of examining the assumptions and consequences of myths. Myths, as Sumser describes, "hit an odd part of our brain where normal rules of sense-making do not apply" (p. 55). This makes the application of narrative rationality impossible. Using a British philosopher, Sumser says, "the difference between religion, on one hand, and philosophy or science on the other, is that the myths and metaphors in secular thinking are self-conscious" (p. 92).

In the latter half of the book, Sumser reminds the reader of the earlier concepts, which is especially helpful as his argument begins to connect making sense of the world with different explanations of culture and economics (e.g., Marx and Weber). Sumser also shows the complexities involved in literal, allegorical, and commonsensical interpretations. "The ideas of interpretation and literalness are, themselves, enormously deep pools of confusion" (p. 88). These complexities are also why communicating across difference is harder than it seems like it should be.

Necessarily, Sumser gives atheism the same treatment he gives religion. He discusses the divisions, definitions, philosophies, and kinds of ethical atheism. He points out that atheist positions are as divisive as fundamentalist positions. He is able to show how the value narratives of atheists and religionists "do not collide head on but rather resemble ships that pass in the night, never making contact but sliding by in a fog of cross-purposes; you cannot use a great tennis serve to beat someone in bowling because the two things are unrelated" (p. 116)."

The last chapter is application. Sumser uses real religious debates by ordinary people found in online controversies as a way to show how people use secular and religious worldviews to construct their reality and to demonstrate how the types of narratives and their assumptions function (p. 123). Concretely, he illustrates that the way these groups talk to each other "prevents agreement" and "the way deeply held beliefs create miscommunication" (p. 129).

Sometimes authors with personable writing styles narrow their audience through what can feel like attempts to charm or befriend a reader. While conversational, personable, accessible, and intelligent, Sumser's writing style feels as intimate as a lecture, though the book form works well because Sumser draws broad types of sources to support his arguments: fiction, poetry, academic, and philosophical. The book format allows readers who are not accustomed to this style an opportunity to re-read, and of course, underline. This is the second book I have heavily underlined and thoroughly enjoyed by this author.

There are greater pedagogical and scholarly uses beyond my stated profit. The book would be a good central text or companion text for an upper-division undergraduate communication course, be it narrative theory, philosophy of communication, conflict, argumentation, or communication and society. Helpfully, Sumser makes use of the many polls that have been conducted on Americans and religion to illustrate the difficulty of measuring Americans' belief in a god. He lightheartedly dissects the flaws of these surveys, which would be useful in a research methods course.

Anyone with a desire to understand why communication is not a panacea should read this book because it offers a clear understanding of how communication scholars approach phenomena as well as an enlightened understanding of why the cultural wars over topics like gay rights and abortion that occur in religious and secular narratives in public discourse will never satisfactorily resolve. By the end, I had a better understanding and was immediately able to communicate more productively when faced with fundamentalist expressions.

--Heather Crandall

Gonzaga University