Many American historians in recent years have made reading and writing central to our understanding of pre-Civil War American religion by focusing on the proliferation of print among various Protestant traditions. Fewer scholars, however, have carried their analyses into the late nineteenth and twentieth century, when both the literary and religious marketplaces grew considerably more diffuse and difficult to characterize.

This collection of fourteen essays, which emerged from a conference that was sponsored by the Center for the History of Print Culture at the University of Wisconsin in 2004, seeks to move the existing scholarship forward in time by exploring the intersection of print, religion, and spirituality in the modern era. An interestingly diverse series of vignettes emerges, documenting literature that ranges from medical missionary narratives in the 1880s to Bible-zines directed at teenage girls in the twenty-first century. Most individual treatments succeed admirably on their own terms, but it remains difficult to find common themes and overarching frameworks that tie the narratives together.

Scope constitutes part of the problem. Gari-Anne Patzwold, for example, presents an interesting case study of The Megiddo Church. This tiny sect was founded in Oregon in 1880 and currently consists of a remnant of thirty-five believers who live in various church-owned properties in Rochester, New York. Patzwold documents the way in which pamphlets, tracts, and the Meggido Message magazine served to unite the small and scattered group throughout the twentieth century. Print knit the faithful together into an imagined community, provided a sense of intimacy and friendliness among believers, offered readers the opportunity to witness and tell stories of their good works, and reinforced such unique beliefs and rituals as the celebration of True Christmas on the new moon after the vernal equinox rather than in December. This article certainly offers an interesting story that reflects the diversity, quirkiness, and idiosyncratic nature of modern American religion. Yet, as Charles Cohen forthrightly admits and acknowledges in his introduction, the entire book contains virtually no mention of such a major American tradition as Catholicism, excepting a brief discussion of Thomas Merton's autobiography. Similarly, the only discussion of print culture and Judaism consists of Jonathan Pollack's article that analyzes news and editorial content in the Hillel Review at the University of Wisconsin from 1925–1931. Some attempt at providing a better balance and soliciting contributions concerning major and more mainstream American religious movements would have enhanced the book.

Another difficulty involves determining the extent to which print culture actually altered religious practice and constituted a dynamic force in its own right. David Whittaker's article on Mormonism best illustrates this issue. Whittaker examines the writings of a now obscure and largely forgotten Mormon pamphleteer and theorist, Joseph B. Keeler, who published several influential works concerning church governance between the 1880s and 1920s. Whittaker argues that Keeler's works played an important role in legitimizing legal structures, encouraging bureaucratic standardization, and systematizing theological teachings within the communion. He views Mormon writing as moving “away from its more polemical and freelance discourse” of the early nineteenth century and toward “a more standardized discourse that was carefully crafted and focused on institutional consumption” (119). As a case study of institutionalization and bureaucratization, Whittaker's article certainly points toward important changes within early twentieth-century Mormonism. Yet, I remained unclear about what this ideological and organizational shift revealed about Mormon print culture. The Latter-day Saints continued to produce a diverse literature in the early twentieth century, and considerable controversy developed over practices that challenged official teachings. Keeler offered one effective and ultimately successful response to change, but it remains difficult to gauge whether his contribution proved transformative or merely reflective of broader trends.

Finally, questions arise about the definition of print culture itself, given the sweeping technological changes that have altered America's communications ecology over the course of the twentieth century. Candy Gunther Brown, for example, masterfully analyzes Kathryn Kuhlman's three major books on spiritual healing to examine changing narrative strategies and apologetics about illness, health, and miracles over the course of the 1960s and 1970s. Yet, as Brown observes, Kuhlman reached her audience through radio broadcasts, nationally syndicated television productions, guest appearances on the Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin talk shows, and a variety of other venues. She operated in a complex multimedia environment that created both new opportunities and formidable challenges for anyone hoping to appeal to increasingly sophisticated and media-savvy consumers. Does Kuhlman's ministry really speak to a “culture of print” or something fundamentally new? Paul Gutjahr best illustrates this issue in his discussion of the Bible-zine Revolve. Thomas Nelson Publishers attempted to create a culturally relevant Bible in 2003 by borrowing techniques from secular teen magazines. Christian dating tips, self-awareness quizzes, beauty secrets, and contemporary photos appeared to overwhelm the scriptural message and create a fundamentally new type of religious publication in the process. Formatting clearly mattered in this case. Gutjahr points toward some historical antecedents of Revolve, such as the American Bible Society's common-language translation Good News for Modern Man (1966). Thomas Nelson, however, seeks to reach an emerging new generation of digital natives who point and click over America's virtual religious landscape. They no doubt will alter the messages, forms, and identities of religious folk in unanticipated ways, quite possibly rendering the notion of “print culture” itself quaint and anachronistic in the process. New media and technological transformations make it even more critical now to bring greater historical clarity and specificity to the relationship between religion and print. This book makes a good start in that direction. The field awaits a broader, clearer, and more comprehensive synthesis.