Over the past decade or so we have seen something of a ‘liturgical turn’ in philosophy of religion. Long dominated by a kind of Protestant bias that well fit the default intellectualism of analytic philosophy, philosophy of religion – especially Christian philosophy of religion – has tended to fixate on the status of belief. In other words, philosophy of religion has tended to be reduced to epistemology, to assessing and adjudicating matters of faith in terms of rationality, justification, scepticism, coherence, etc. The religious ‘phenomena’ under consideration were textual and propositional. The ‘religion’ of philosophy of religion was the religion believed by res cogitans.

The twentieth century saw smatterings of resistance to this epistemic fixation, protesting that religious communities were not mere assemblies of thinking things. There was a phenomenological trajectory from Husserl through Heidegger (whose earliest lectures focused on ‘a phenomenology of religious life’), finding contemporary expression in the work of Anthony Steinbock (see Phenomenology and Mysticism) or Robert Sokolowski. Another school of thought that reconfigured philosophical attention to religious phenomena stems from Ludwig Wittgenstein's focus on communities of practice, spawning philosophies of meaning and ritual as seen in the work of Jonathan Z. Smith (To Take Place). There has also been a philosophical turn to ritual and liturgy in the work of Jewish scholars such as Peter Ochs and Steven Kepnes. While these streams have different interests, they all share a non-reductionistic approach to religious phenomena that recognises religion is more than ‘belief’ – that religion is something we do more than we think.

Terence Cuneo's Ritualized Faith indicates a maturation of a liturgical turn in the specifically analytic philosophy of religion exhibited first in the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff and others. Cuneo's project grows out of a concern ‘that much of the discussion in contemporary philosophy of religion is detached from religious life in such a way that it threatens to offer a distorted picture of what is important to this way of life’ (p. 6). Cuneo redirects analytic attention not just to what Christians think but what they do, and more specifically, what they do most often together: worship. Bringing the dispositions and resources of analytic philosophy to bear on liturgy, Cuneo both elucidates and illuminates Christian practice.

The book is comprised of a collection of studies that can be read independently and nonsequentially. One will find fascinating studies of the role of song in Christian worship, the role of icons as ‘vehicles of divine speech’, the philosophical significance of the baptismal rite and more. It is worth noting that Cuneo adopts what he describes as a ‘particularist’ methodology, which is exactly right. Rather than speaking generically or blandly about ‘Christian liturgy’, Cuneo focuses on the specific repertoire of liturgical practices in his Eastern Orthodox Christianity. But this is not an apologetic endeavour, nor does this restrict interest to fellow pilgrims on the Eastern way. Rather, as Cuneo emphasises, this particularist methodology provides a concrete focus that staves off abstraction and generalities. The particularism makes his project more relevant to wider audiences rather than less. By showing how one can undertake philosophical analysis of a specific Christian tradition, we learn how this could be undertaken in and for other traditions.

Perhaps the most emblematic essay is chapter 4 on ‘Liturgical Immersion’ (though chapter 8 on ‘Ritual Knowledge’ is also fundamental). Cuneo considers the prominence that Christian liturgy gives ‘to the activity of liturgical reenactment’ – all the ways that worshippers are invited to reinhabit and re-enact the biblical narrative. Why? Is this just a memorial exercise, to remember what has happened in the past? Are the roles we play in such a liturgical script merely pretence, ‘playing a part?’ No, says Cuneo; they are cues in the liturgical script that suggest something more. Worshippers assume not only pretence roles but what he calls ‘target roles’: ‘When one assumes a target role, one acts the part of being some way for the purpose of being that way, becoming like or identifying with that which one imitates’ (p. 78). In other words, this isn't just enacted remembering; it is a kind of mimesis that is aspirational and formative. Such ‘non-fictive immersion’, as he calls it, changes the actors. ‘[B]y immersing themselves in the core narrative, participants in the liturgy fundamentally alter their relation to that core narrative. [. . .] The dominant purpose of immersion is to let participants open themselves up to and appropriate the riches of the narrative’ (p. 87). My sense is that helping worshippers understand this would also raise the stakes of worship and perhaps change their angle of entry into the sanctuary.

Overall, this book is a masterful study that gives one hope. Such original attention to liturgy is not only a scholarly advance for philosophy of religion. Should this kind of philosophical reflection begin to trickle down to inform practical theology and pastoral training, it would also renew the church.