McBrien begins this ethnographic study of religion and secularism in Kyrgyzstan with snapshots of the town of Bazaar-Korgon, the site of most of her research: a Soviet-era statue of Lenin, a government office now representing the independent Kyrgyz republic, and a mosque built in the post-Soviet period. “[The structures] suggest a startling fact: the mosque construction did not seem to necessitate the removal of Lenin's image” (p. 5). The book sets out to trace “how this complex, sometimes contradictory landscape of religion and politics came to be,” highlighting the legacies of illiberal Soviet secularism as well as contestation over religion and secularism in the post-Soviet period.

McBrien summarizes the book's central argument as follows: “The conception of religion held by the majority of Bazaar-Korgonians differed significantly from the locally new variants circulating in the region—ideas that premised the notion of belief and conviction. Their ideas about religion had more to do with collective belonging, and they had been cast by the modernizing campaigns of the Soviet Union and its political project of secularism” (p. 8). Thus, in the Soviet period, a collectivist approach to illiberal secularism constructed religion as essentially a category of belonging, while the post-Soviet period has opened space for more liberal, belief-oriented conceptions of religion, and contestation has ensued as a result. “Religion,” or at least the popular conception of its appropriate form, is an outcome of distinct secular projects. This belief-belonging distinction at times seems a bit overstated, as McBrien acknowledges that each operates in both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. But it also seems to capture something important in the self-understanding of community members, particularly those who lived for an extended time under Soviet rule. As one remarks (in some frustration), “Look, we are atheists. Yes, we are Muslims, but let me explain—We are all Muslim people…we were born Muslims. That's it” (p. 120).

The book is in some ways an ethnographic, anthropological complement to the burgeoning institutionalist literature in comparative politics and sociology on the varied relationships between religion and state, including distinct understandings of “secular” institutions. While work from Alfred Stepan, Ahmet Kuru, and Jeremy Menchik (among others) has already shattered any necessary link between secularism and liberalism, McBrien furthers the work not only through setting out the Soviet and post-Soviet styles of non-liberal secularism, but also documenting the intersection of centralized state policies with local religious life far from capital cities and party conferences. A changing formal legal environment intersects with what might broadly be termed, building on Orsi and Hurd, lived religion, from rhetoric in wedding speeches to house-based religious study groups and the explosion of a Brazilian soap opera depicting an exoticized version of Moroccan Islam.

While the contrast between liberal, Western secularism and illiberal, Soviet secularism in the account is in many ways compelling, the text leaves largely unexplored the extent to which the Soviet approach may have been largely a matter of colonial or imperial governance demands also characteristic of Western powers. McBrien helpfully discusses the Russian imperial roots of the Soviet secular project, which eventually lends a fairly coherent Marxist and Russian orientation towards the concept of religion. However, this leaves unexplored the extent to which Western European imperial projects relied on what seems like a quite similar priority on religious belonging in managing subject peoples. The book is meant as a close-to-the-ground ethnography, so should not be faulted for not analyzing French colonialism in West Africa. But this historical resonance serves as a reminder that Western secular projects were never entirely liberal. And today, as secularism, religion and populism intersect in the heart of Europe, belonging seems very much on the agenda of states that conceive of themselves in the liberal, Western tradition.

Although not the primary focus, McBrien's book also highlights two dynamics that are high on the agenda of religion and comparative politics. First, religion and secularism are connected in complex ways to national and ethnic identity in McBrien's account. The physical location and ethnic makeup of Bazaar-Korgon make Uzbek identity quite salient to the story. On McBrien's analysis, Kyrgyz residents were more closely integrated into the Soviet state apparatus, while post-Soviet revivals of those who have become “close to Islam” are largely concentrated among Uzbeks. Veiling practices perceived as “foreign” invite whispers from neighbors in the market, although the authority of a local mosque does not seem to be undercut by “Arab” funding, because of perceived local control of the construction process. McBrien closes with a poignant discussion of ethnic violence scarring the town in 2010, well after her fieldwork. It would be of significant scholarly value to know how that tumultuous period intersected with the dynamics of religious belonging and belief documented in this volume.

Second, McBrien offers ethnographic perspective on the sources of religious authority in public life, setting out localized explanations of authority that blend religious and social capital. Drawing on the story of a prominent local imam, the book documents the ways in which “official” and “unofficial” religious authority reinforced one another at the local level during the Soviet period, as well as the importance of social ties not directly tied to religious qualifications. International dynamics play a part in shaping religious authority, both with funding from Arab sources and a securitized approach to Islam in the region, particularly after September 11th, but these matter primarily as filtered through local networks and actors.

The place of some of the distinct chapters within the overall research design could at times be clearer, and some will have reasonable questions about drawing broader conclusions from a study grounded in a site that the author describes as experiencing “an exceptional moment” during fieldwork (p. 176). But in its rich portrayal of patterns of continuity and change at the community level, From Belonging to Belief, makes an important contribution to our understanding of the interplay between religion and secularisms in the contemporary world.