I was in graduate school when the first edition of Critical Terms for Religious Studies, edited by Mark C. Taylor, was published in 1998. The book quickly became a hot topic of conversation among religious studies graduate students at my institution and elsewhere. For several years following its publication, it served as a touchstone, a landmark, in conversations at gatherings like the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion, its mention sending a message between young scholars (and some older ones) that one was on board with a newer direction in the field, a more critical one, that unhesitatingly drew from newer interpretive and analytical approaches developed largely in the relatively new field of cultural studies over the preceding decade. The volume that Taylor edited resolutely did not take an Eliadean approach of universal pattern-finding, which was in the 1990s still very influential in religious studies. Moreover, it did not treat “religion” as something sui generis, much to the chagrin of many in religious studies who had long argued for this perspective (and which, for many, was an important justification for the existence of religious studies departments and graduate programs). Rather, Critical Terms for Religious Studies offered critical analysis of twenty-two terms that were central to the academic study of religion—not defining them universally but surveying and assessing their multiple uses and meanings, placing them in shifting historical and cultural contexts, and in the process both shaking the ground beneath our discipline and shifting the horizon of its study in exciting new directions. Such classics as Jonathan Z. Smith’s “Religion, Religions, and Religion,” destabilizing the term at the very center of the discipline; Catherine Bell’s “Performance,” shifting focus from ideas to practices; Tomoko Masuzawa’s “Culture,” gesturing toward a Benjaminian “posthermeneutical moment” in the study of culture and religion; and so many others were given their first airing here, pushing the field toward critical, genealogical, more deeply situated and contextual, scholarship on religion.

Nearly twenty years later, Sarah Hammerschlag has edited a second volume of Critical Terms for Religious Studies. This is not an “update,” revising or superseding the first volume. It is, rather, an extension. Different terms, different scholars, and in some cases different approaches continue the conversation. It is a sign of the bold transformations that scholarship on religion has undergone in the past two decades that this volume, although excellent, does not feel quite as pathbreaking as its predecessor. This is, I think, a good sign. The critical turn that felt so exciting and innovative in 1998 has taken hold.

Nevertheless, it is an exciting venture and a productive read. Many of the twenty-three “critical terms” are not ones specifically associated with religion: “catastrophe,” “disability,” “feeling,” “identity,” “law,” “life,” “memory,” “money,” “sex,” “sound,” and others. This is a strength of the volume, moving even further than the first edition toward placing religion in the context of everyday life, discourses, and forces rather than assuming something special about it. Some of the terms repeat, or close to repeat, those in the first edition (“image,” “practice,” “religion”). This, too, is a strength, performing the critical work of rereading terms through new perspectives. The authors are predominantly senior scholars at well-endowed institutions, though there are a few associate professors and a visiting assistant professor included as well. None of these scholars contributed to the first edition.

Graduate students in particular will benefit from this volume; some of the chapters may be useful in undergraduate courses as well. As a whole, the book represents some excellent issues, trends, and methodologies currently shaping religious studies, and therefore serves as both a helpful state-of-the-discipline reference and handbook as well as a generative goad toward more innovative, critical engagement with our scholarly work. If I have one criticism, it is that the “terms,” though admittedly excellent choices, could push a “critical” approach to the academic study of religion even further by including some derived from non-European/Western sources. For instance, if including terms such as “faith,” “fetish,” “nature,” “reason,” or “religion,” why not also include “mana,” “totem,” “taboo,” “karma,” or “co-origination”? Or “land”? Moreover, what about critical contextualizing terms for the study of religion? “Race,” “sex,” and “power” would benefit from the addition of “colonialism,” “secular,” or “empire.” Perhaps these are the basis for a third addition down the line.