In The Evolution of Religions, Lance Grande applies evolutionary biology to trace the genealogy of world religions. Despite numerous misapprehensions, errors of fact and an incomplete bibliography that compromise the work, Grande’s unique, bold approach merits attention for its fresh perspective on religious history and interfaith understanding, writes Stevan Veljkovic.

The Evolution of Religions: A History of Related Traditions. Lance Grande. Columbia University Press. 2024.

One cannot but admire the energy and optimism of this book. Roger Lansing Grande (writing under the name Lance Grande) is an outsider to the academic study of religion, a natural scientist by training who describes himself as an “evolutionary systematist” (3). But in writing The Evolution of Religions Grande has attempted a feat that would be ambitious even for a leading scholar of the field: a comprehensive, largely chronological genealogy of the world’s religions, from the earliest evidence of supernatural thought in prehistory through to the 21st century.

The method in Evolution of Religions is derived from evolutionary biology and consists in the mapping of lineages

It’s important to note that Grande is not – as might be supposed in view of his expertise as an evolutionary biologist – proposing an explanation of religion through human evolution, such as one finds in the work of cognitive anthropologist Pascal Boyer. Rather, the method in Evolution of Religions is derived from evolutionary biology and consists in the mapping of lineages – technically speaking, the construction of “phylogenetic trees.” Nodes on Grande’s trees represent discrete “religions,” which Grande sometimes refers to as “ideological belief systems.” Grande is thus concerned with demonstrating not how human biological evolution has shaped religion but rather that “today’s branches of Organized Religion were all influenced by branches before them that were influenced by branches before them” (34).

Readers are introduced to the rudiments of Grande’s systematising method in the opening chapters, along with terms like “symplesiomorphy” and “monophyly,” which will undoubtedly look foreign to many of those coming from the humanities and social sciences. Grand’s initial discussion also deals with the history of evolutionary approaches to religion, and the disrepute these once attracted through their association with racist ideology. Grande clarifies at length – some readers might say ad nauseum – that he disavows any notion of natural progression from one religion to another, being instead solely concerned with systematic classification.

Organised religion, in Grande’s view, emerged from forms of archaic religion, which in turn emerged from ‘supernaturalism’ – and this Evolution of Religions takes to be the kernel of religion in all times and places.

Astute readers will at this point be wondering, what counts for Grande as religion? Organised religion, in Grande’s view, emerged from forms of archaic religion, which in turn emerged from “supernaturalism” – and this Evolution of Religions takes to be the kernel of religion in all times and places. But when he attempts to make nuanced distinctions between cases, Grande is often tripped up by the inherent complexity of the topic. For instance, Grande declines to call Scientology a religion, justifying this on the grounds that the movement began as a secular undertaking (550). Why then admit “new-age Gaianism” (56)? Does Grande think that James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis saw their undertaking in overtly religious terms? Similar instances can be found throughout the book.

Readers may find it curious that Grande’s innovative methodology produces such traditional accounts of its subject matter. The core chapters consider in turn the branches of Grande’s overall phylogenetic tree of religions. Grande presents narrative descriptions of his different trees, with reference primarily to secondary and tertiary sources. These overviews do disappointingly little with the terms of art referred to above (“cladogram” is another) which are introduced in the book’s early sections. Readers with expertise in particular topics are likely to notice a general unevenness of coverage, as when Grande belabours points that are virtually uncontroversial (eg, that Christianity emerged from Second Temple Judaism [571]) whilst rather unreflectively hewing to religious tradition in areas of significant scholarly uncertainty (eg, early Islam).

Although the book initially gives an impression of meticulousness through its attractive physical form – folio in full colour – a closer look reveals that whatever care went into its design was not matched by its editing. Typos of every description may be found throughout each chapter (eg, “Tower of Babble” [186]); the massacred editor of Charlie Hebdo, Stéphane Charbonnier, is referred to as “Stephanie” [483]). A more serious issue are the many absurdities and infelicities of expression, such as where, for instance, Grande tells us that “atheist was coined well before the fifth century BCE as a derogatory term for Christians and other monotheists” (518) (there obviously were no Christians in the fifth century BCE). Indeed, Evolution of Religions is sadly teeming with solecisms, misapprehensions, and errors of fact. Moreover, one would have thought that Grande’s phylogenetic method might be of use in particular for avoiding anachronism in religious history. Yet, it’s as if Grande’s method actually inserts a kind of teleological bias, such that, for instance, Grande refers to something called “Roman Catholicism” existing from the birth of Christianity, or to “Anglicanism” as having been a coherent idea from 1534 onwards (366–68).

Grande concludes with a discussion of how the findings of his enterprise might promote interfaith understanding. In doing so he conjoins scholarly aims to extra-scientific ones, and it might reasonably be wondered whether Grande doesn’t end up implicitly defending a hierarchy of religions

Grande concludes with a discussion of how the findings of his enterprise might promote interfaith understanding. In doing so he conjoins scholarly aims to extra-scientific ones, and it might reasonably be wondered whether Grande doesn’t end up implicitly defending a hierarchy of religions – even whilst stating the very opposite intention. Readers of Grande could be forgiven for taking away the lesson that at the apex of religions stand Unitarianism and the Bahai’i faith, which are singled out again and again as exemplars of inclusiveness and ecumenism. In his valorisation of all things pluralist, Grande almost seems to suggest another form of progressionism. Grande makes no secret of what he regards to be spiritually salutary: “The blind, unquestioning faith that sometimes comes with Organized Religion has often been used by people in power to justify tribalistic hypernationalism, aggressive expansionism, and cultural subjugation” (503). Such statements, leaving to one side any question of their accuracy, sit awkwardly alongside Grande’s scholarship.

The book has much back matter, and these sections make up a large proportion of the whole. The glossary is helpful, but also contains some of Grande’s more dubious assertions. There are two sets of notes, one discursive and the other a list of chapter citations. The discursive notes contain some of the book’s most interesting and involved passages. The citation system is difficult to use, because it requires that one complete two steps in looking up a source: superscript markers in the chapters point to author-date citations, which then need to be looked up in the bibliography. The bibliography appears to be missing some references.

Grande’s big, bold book will test many readers [… ] But it should be given serious attention by anyone interested in fresh approaches to the study of religion.

Grande’s big, bold book will test many readers with its profusion of typos, imprecise formulations, and methodological aporias. But it should be given serious attention by anyone interested in fresh approaches to the study of religion. It’s not uncommon that terms and ideas from STEM subjects are appropriated for philosophical or theoretical purposes – just consider the academic industry that has arisen around the term “anthropocene.” Nor is it uncommon to see charges levelled, across the two-cultures divide, of borrowed materials being improperly used. It’s less usual for a representative of the natural sciences to take tools from her own field and apply them to the human and social sciences, as Grande does here with his classificatory panorama of religions. As a lesson in such cross-disciplinary ambition, the outcome of Grande’s project deserves to be widely discussed.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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