A ton of books continue to be published, but most are variations on a theme. Few are as original as The Weirdest People in the World. A review in the NYT whetted my appetite. I read the sample and was hooked. But after getting into it I got bogged down. His scholarship, in some areas, was tedious. Like tribal kinship arrangements. I decided I would skim such. His depth is important, especially for serious critics, other scholars. Not for me as a generalist. He was providing more depth than I wanted to dig through. Henrich is not a generalist as a thoroughist. I admire his candidness in admitting some concepts were inconclusive, open to more study, etc. His general thesis was astounding – crediting the Roman Catholic Church, with a booster shot from Protestantism, in initiating the West we live in today. While I’ve been a part of the RCC for these many years, I never viewed it in this perspective. And yet Henrich notes the RCC stumbled into the paradigm that made the West what it is today. It was more of an institutional effort rather than a theological or biblical application. (Henrich identifies himself as “non-religious.”) It began innocuously with banning marriage between cousins! Something that had been normative for eons. For years I had couples fill out marriage forms and couldn’t understand the obsession with relationships and consanguinity, etc. Henrich reveals why. Nor am I aware of any cultural analysis which factors in canonists. He certainly jarred my formed brain, at the same time providing revelation about deeply held concepts; not knowing why they are deeply held! One is the issue of guilt. Catholics have been caricatured as obsessed with guilt. Henrich parses why. Guilt is something an individual has in response to certain actions. The awareness of being an individual precedes the feeling of guilt. Guilt isn’t necessarily bad as often dismissed. It reflects an individual’s sense of responsibility for one’s acts. I don’t intend to be exhaustive but simply provide how this work forces one to revisit numerous concepts that now make more sense than Iever imbued them with. It caused me to think of Jesus as perhaps the first weird person. Henrich doesn’t provide any exegesis of scripture, nor theological discourse as focusing on the Roman Catholic Church as an institution. However, I began to perceive many of the concepts that are normative for western society inchoate in Jesus. The issue of intense kinship is key to Henrich’s analysis. Jesus rejected intense kinship. The very question of his inconclusive parentage underscores his severing traditional kinship ties. In his adulthood, he questions who is my mother, who are my brothers and sisters? (MT: 12:48) His response transcends blood. He challenged persons to be analytic. The parable of the Good Samaritan is a classic example of his probing what others think, as he did constantly using parables for people to parse. Going against tradition is essential for Henrich’s thesis to break out of the kinship mold and hold. Jesus did this constantly, creating an adversarial relation to the keepers of the tradition. His rejecting the law as an absolute and elevating the person for whom the law is to serve was considered blasphemous. “The Sabbath is made for man; not man for the Sabbath.” I feel I could take distinctive qualities that Henrich contends made the West peculiar, weird and find many of the seminal concepts in the uniqueness of Jesus as an historical person. When a writer stretches one’s imagination, the writer has succeeded. There has been much discussion of how western pop culture has impacted the world. But Henrich’s is offering a deeper analysis of how many concepts which emerged in western society are now being tested one way or another through the world. The cultural evolution of the west is becoming catholic.

Brand	N/A
Rating	4.5 (1270 ratings)
Price	$13.79
Category	Anthropology

WEIRDest People in the World