Caputo's On Religion: A Review of Contemporary Faith
This paper reviews John D. Caputo's On Religion, tracing the book's argument from its foundational metaphor of religion as love through its historical account of secularization, desecularization, and postmodern spiritual uncertainty. The review examines Caputo's use of popular culture — particularly Star Wars and the film The Apostle — as evidence that religious impulses persist in secular society. It also assesses the book's treatment of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Flannery O'Connor, while offering critical observations about the strengths and limitations of Caputo's sociological approach to contemporary religious experience.
- Religion as Love: Caputo's Opening Framework: Caputo defines religion through the metaphor of love
- Secularization, the Enlightenment, and the Death of God: Historical shift from faith to secular modernity
- Desecularization and Religion in Popular Culture: Star Wars as religious allegory and cultural evidence
- The Apostle, Wise Blood, and Fallen Holiness: Film and fiction illustrate sinful yet holy figures
- Religion in the Postmodern Era: Postmodern skepticism challenges religious meaning
- Overall Assessment of On Religion: Balanced critique of Caputo's strengths and limits
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What makes this paper effective
- The review follows Caputo's argument in sequence, allowing the reader to track the book's structure while also interspersing evaluative commentary at each stage.
- Personal critical reactions — such as skepticism about the Star Wars allegory — are clearly flagged as the reviewer's own perspective, which strengthens intellectual honesty without undermining the summary.
- Connections drawn between Caputo's examples (the Apostle, Augustine, Flannery O'Connor) show the reviewer is synthesizing across the book rather than simply paraphrasing chapter by chapter.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates evaluative book reviewing: it summarizes the source's main claims faithfully, contextualizes them within broader intellectual traditions (Nietzsche, Kierkegaard), and then renders a reasoned judgment about the book's strengths and weaknesses. The reviewer's critique of the Star Wars section exemplifies how to disagree with an author while still fairly representing their argument.
Structure breakdown
The review opens with Caputo's foundational metaphor of religion as love, then moves chronologically through the book's historical arc — from the Age of Faith to Enlightenment secularization, then desecularization. A middle section addresses Caputo's use of film as cultural evidence. The review closes with postmodern challenges to religious meaning and a balanced overall verdict. This structure mirrors the book's own organization, which is an appropriate choice for a review essay at this level.
Religion as Love: Caputo's Opening Framework
Caputo's On Religion is a review of how religion is experienced in the contemporary world. It does not begin with a contemporary view, but rather with a depiction of what religion is, what has happened to religious belief, and how religion is communicated today, particularly in media. The first part discusses the idea of religion as love. This is important because the religious experience is much like that of the experience of lovers who are separated. For example, two lovers who are separated will write or send expressions of love to one another to keep the love alive. They will use their imagination and their energy to reflect and meditate on that love, and act on it in some form of communication.
The same is true in religion. God is the recipient of love from humanity, and humanity is the recipient of love from God — yet both are separated in some way, and so there is a distance to cross that makes the demonstration or act of love all the more meaningful. Once Caputo establishes this basic understanding of what religion is, he goes on to discuss what happened to religion in the modern world and why it tends to be viewed in such polarizing ways. On the one hand, religion is mocked and scorned; on the other hand, it is seen as the ultimate purpose of existence.
First, there was the sacral age, in which the sacred was esteemed and the mystery of God was valued in society. Religion was interwoven into the fabric of community life, and people worshipped as a whole. It was important that everyone believe in and share the same faith. The Age of Faith was the period in the West when Europe was known as Christendom.
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