The Christian Century

This thoughtful, well-researched book seeks to develop and apply a distinctive philosophical approach to reflection on religion--an ap­proach that goes beyond the traditional methods of confessional theologies, secular religious studies and cultural anthropology.

I See Satan Fall Like Lightening. By René Girard. Translated by James G. Williams. Orbis, 199 pp., $20.00 paperback.

A growing number of works by Catholic authors such as Garry Wills, Eugene Kennedy and Donald Cozzens, as well as books by numerous feminist writers, call for greater honesty regarding the problems within the Catholic Church. One of the most familiar and insistent of these voices calling for church reform is Hans Küng's.

This is a helpful and elegant introduction to the teachings of one of today's best-known Buddhist leaders. A Vietnamese Thien (Zen) Buddhist monk living in exile in southern France, Thich Nhat Hanh helped to found the movement of Socially Engaged Buddhism, bringing Buddhist principles to bear upon contemporary social and political problems.

Max Weber's early 20th-century sociological analysis of the ideal types of religious leadership is still a useful benchmark for discussions of founders of religious traditions. The Rivers of Paradise takes up Weber's challenge by exploring the foundational roles that Moses, the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad played in their respective traditions. Five authors (Carl S.