Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion

`"Guthrie's argument is interesting, clearly set out, and well taken....The book is lucid, engaging, and very well written."'Wayne Proudfoot, Columbia University
`"A scholarly contribution to our understanding of the springs of the immagination."'James W. Fernandez, University of Chicago
`"Witty, elegant, magnificently written....A stunning achievement that will have an enormous impact on religious studies."'Robert Orsi, Indiana University
`Academic and seminary libraries will need this provocative and carefully argued explanation.'Library Journal
'The subtitle may be deceptive. What is offered here is not so much a "new" account of religion, as something potentially more interesting, namely a sophisticated and clearly argued defence of a classical view, generally neglected in recent studies of religion. Guthrie must be commended for paying attention to recurrent features of religious representations, which are too often neglected or treated as self-evident by cultural anthropologists. Such careful attention to psychological findings and hypotheses is rare, and is the main reason why the book will be indispensable to all students of religion.'Pascal Boyer, King's College, Cambridge, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
'fascinating study of anthropomorphism'Philip J. Stewart, Human Sciences Centre, Oxford, Social Anthropology, Volume 2, Part 2 - 1994
readers will be intrigued by the book's more general thesis that this anthropomorphism is no less pervasive outside the field of art and aesthetic appreciation of nature, and by Guthrie's attempt to explain why this is so ... The explanation is surely plausible, and Guthrie presents it in a lively and lucid fashion.