Book Review: Nancy Davis and Robert Robinson's: Claiming Society for God: Religious Movements and Social Welfare in Egypt, Israel, Italy, and the United States

Abstract

In their path-breaking and provocative book, Claiming Society for God: Religious Movements and Social Welfare in Egypt, Israel, Italy, and the United States, Nancy Davis and Robert Robinson show how the most prominent and successful religiously orthodox movements, rather than using armed struggle or terrorism, as much of post-9/11 thinking suggests, use a patient strategy of ‘‘bypassing the state’’—building vast grassroots networks of religiously based social service agencies, hospitals, schools, worship centers, and businesses—to make religion the cornerstone of society. The book, drawing on sociology, political science, and history, is the culmination of nearly two decades of research. In a series of award-winning articles, Davis and Robinson advanced ‘‘Moral Cosmology’’ theory. Their approach theorizes moral cosmology as a continuum, ranging from religious orthodoxy to modernism, on which people from all faiths or none can be placed. Importantly, unlike scholars who focus on doctrinal orthodoxy, they treat moral cosmology as an overarching orientation, with the religiously orthodox seeing God as the ultimate source of moral authority, while modernists view the individual as the locus of such authority. Davis and Robinson argue that the orthodox are inclined toward communitarianism in seeing themselves as part of a larger community with members subject to divine law and will. Their communitarianism entails ‘‘watching over’’ community members, giving it both a well-known ‘‘strict’’ side on sexuality, gender, and family and a less recognized ‘‘caring’’ side that looks out for those in need. The genius of Davis and Robinson’s treatment of orthodoxy, not as doctrinal, but as orientational is that it allows them to easily compare across faith traditions and countries in order to identify patterns. Thus, Claiming Society for God goes beyond Christianity in the West to chronicle religiously orthodox Islamic and Jewish movements in the Middle East. They show the strict and caring sides of four orthodox