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Sommerville believes postsecularism offers opportunities for religion in higher education that secularism never offered. Roughly the first half of his book addresses various "troubles" which emerged in the secular academy. These alleged troubles emerged through attempts to define the human condition, maintain the fact/value dichotomy, eliminate religion, and judge religions. In his chapter entitled "Trouble Eliminating Religions," Sommerville turns to Stanley Fish for assistance in making his argument for the free expression of religious convictions in the pluralistic setting of the university. Echoing Fish, Sommerville contends that "Understood properly, toleration means allowing for proselytizing, not stifling it. For proselytizing implies the freedom of one's audience, as opposed to efforts to coerce it. Stifling religious views may show a lack of confidence." If one of the emerging virtues of postsecular academe is a true toleration of divergent viewpoints, then no rightful reason exists to eliminate religious viewpoints (a point also made in the "postscript" to Marsden's Soul of the American University).
Roughly the second half of Sommerville's book deals with how religious viewpoints may contribute to the postsecular university. He initially looks at areas of inquiry such as science and history. Sommerville argues that in the absence of religion, conclusions offered in both of these areas are often incomplete. In relation to science, for example, Sommerville lucidly works through the arguments voiced by physicists such as Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and John Polkinghorne, concluding that "there is now wonder and mystery on the boundaries of science that suggests a religious awareness if not a religious response." The recognition of what exists on these boundaries is also present in almost all other areas of inquiry. In the postsecular university, Sommerville believes, "religious and personalist vocabularies might bring new realism and interest" to subjects that have been stripped of their human meaning. The university can once again become a place where "life's questions" are pursued.
While Sommerville's hopeful analysis is welcome, I remain unconvinced. On one level, Sommerville's book lacks a clear definition of religion (or theology)—a need he acknowledges at the beginning of chapter four. Perhaps religion is more than "a certain kind of response to a certain kind of power." For Christians, theology is the language we learn through the practices of common worship in which we participate as the body of Christ. Briefly stated, we welcome our newest members through baptism. Together, we are nourished by the hearing of Scripture and the taking of Eucharist. One scholar recently contended "that the epistemological precondition for theology was the community of the Church and the Spirit."2 Seen in this light, the university is the place where the language learned through the practices of the Church can be refined. Sommerville, by contrast, makes little mention of ecclesial life in his book. At times, he seems more concerned with civil life—suggesting, for example, that universities which take religion seriously "could find themselves more at the heart of our national life if they fostered an atmosphere of real exploration of concerns that the population has never given up."
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