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3 BOOK REVIEWS 471

Body Pray er: The Posture of Intimacy with God. By Doug Pagitt and Kathryn Prill. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Waterbrook, 2005. 150 pp. $15.99 (cloth). For the uninitiated, Body Prayer offers a window into the spiritual prac tices of emerging church communities and some of the theology behind them. The primary purpose of this text, however, is not to inform but to stim ulate devotional life. It is in this sense a profoundly practical guide for in corporating the physicality of the human condition into the all-too-often otherworldly emphasis of contemporary spirituality. With thirty different pos tures and accompanying sample prayers the book lends itself to a month-long devotional cycle. Designed to be used by groups as well as individuals, it includes several suggestions for use in public worship or to initiate creative or contemplative experiences. Each chapter includes a picture of the posture, an introductory reflection, a short poetic prayer, a description of how the prayer relates to the posture, and blank space for journaling. Each of the prayers has been classi fied according to one of three categories represented by symbols above the chapter title: meditative prayers (a face looking forward), requesting prayers (a face looking up), and prophetic prayers (a face looking to the side). The book also includes three helpful appendices: a collection of references, an index of prayers by category, and an alphabetical list of the postures. Although the chapters themselves are both clear and stimulating, some of the broader editorial choices are downright confusing. For instance, it is not clear why the appendix of "Bible References" cites different passages than the "Notes," or why a creed and an ancient Irish prayer are included in the former. Additionally, some prayers use an individual " while others use an inclusive "we" without an apparent intent to convey a theological distinc tion. Finally, although the conceptual categories "meditative," "reflecting," and "prophetic" are interesting, it is sometimes difficult to understand the difference between them, especially since they do not correspond with an in tuitive grammatical distinction between "of" and "for." A prayer of refresh ment is Usted as a request rather than a meditation and a prayer for Gods activity in the lives of others is listed as a meditation rather than a request. Among the six prophetic prayers, only one takes the form of an imperative. Readers seeking to apply these categories strictly would benefit from further elaboration or reorganization, but they nevertheless serve as a useful vantage point for thinking about the intent of each prayer. What readers will really appreciate, however, is the delightful theologi cal nuances hidden within the content and explication of each prayer. A cur sory reading might tempt us to assume that prayers for beauty or an end to loneliness reflect an unhealthy preoccupation with an individualistic sense of well-being. More critical appraisal recognizes a deep awareness of the human condition that informs significant theological assertions. For instance, the

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Anglican Theological

Review

prayer for beauty is framed in terms of participation in the boundless beauty of Godboth as the result of God s creative act and as bearers of God s presence in the world. It thus serves subtly to deconstruct the egocentric aesthetics of the advertisement industry. By comparing forgiveness to breathing, another prayer portrays this grace as both readily accessible and also an ongoing need. It closes by asking for help to extend forgiveness to others with the same fluidity. Readers sensitive to gendered language about God will applaud the predominant use of gender-neutral terms. Those cautious about a tendency towards Christocentric prayers will likewise appreciate infrequent reference to specific members of the Trinity, balanced by the inclusion of the entire Nicene Creed in an appendix. The final test of any book on prayer is, of course, whether it leads people to pray. And for those willing to get off their pews and experiment, it certainly will.
R. K E E L A N D O W N T O N

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA Faith and Order Commission Washington, D.C.

Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West. By Lamin Sanneh. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003. xii + 138 pp. $12.00 (paper). Christianity has survived the Christendom guilt complex of the West and today thrives as a post-Western religion in the global South. Not only has the population of Christians in the South overtaken those in the North, this development also has had major implications for world Christianity. This is the primary argument in this short but important book. The subtitle might be misleading, however, since the book s focus is primarily on Africa and not the whole of the global South. A quick glance at this book and one might think that this is simply a popular version of the authors earlier, award-winning book Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. Although Whose Religion is Christianity? appears to be a distillation of this earlier work, it turns out to be much more than that. True, Sanneh intends to reach a broader audience with this smaller and more popularly written volume; nevertheless, the book leaves no doubt as to the significance of the question it poses in its title. Even with the focus being on "brevity, clarity and dispatch" (p. 11), the urgency of the message is never in doubt.

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