When asked 'What religion do you follow?' the typical answer is to name a specific group, or to respond 'None.' An increasing number of people, however, are intentionally combining elements from various religious heritages, demonstrating that religions do not have firm boundaries, nor are they purely distinct. In Praise of Mixed Religion discusses the concept of syncretism, the term for the mixing of religious perspectives. The religious studies discipline has traditionally distinguished between two responses to syncretism: a subjective view, which treats syncretism as morally reprehensible, and an objective view, which treats it as a morally neutral phenomenon. William Harrison adopts a third perspective, the advocacy view, which claims that mixing religions is a good and necessary process. He cites countless examples - such as Islam's transformative encounter with Greek thought - from both history and recent years to show how religious traditions have gained theological and practical wisdom by borrowing key ideas, beliefs, and practices from outside their own movements. By encouraging syncretism, In Praise of Mixed Religion contests the hard boundaries between religious worldviews and presents a dramatic alternative for thinking and talking about religion.

'I have forgotten the language of my fathers and have not yet learned the language of my children.
I live in a foreign country, I amk an immigrant, I live in a little yellow house by the woods in Oslo with my family.
I was born and brought up in a tough industrial town on the south bank of the Tyne, Jarrow, Britian. I call it home.
My mother and father are getting on and moving out, cutting me adrift with no way back. Combined with an incoming Tory government that seems determined to wreck what they have missed in the 80's and I have been forced to think about who I am and where I belong.
I am photographing my hometown and the people I know there, to try and establish how much of where I am from determines who I am. Why I can't let go? What makes Jarrow so special? It has a history going back to Roman times. The Venerable Bede was a Jarra Lad and the Jarrow Hunger March is world famous. None of which makes it special to me. For me it's something intangible. Jarrow is a place that exists more in my imagination than in fact, it's a collection of stories and I am an unreliable narrator. If photography turns reality into metaphor then I am trying to photograph the metaphors. Hopefully by photographing my home, a place I know intimately, I can show something we all recognize. As L.P. Hartley said: 'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.'

Photography doesn't come easy to me, I fail more than I succeed. Knowledge of my craft is vital: The camera is not a tool but a partner, albeit a reluctant one. I take photographs because I have to confirm that what I'm seeing is real. All my work is about Britain, it's not about notions of Britishness. I am interested in the Britain that remains rigidly class-bound and how that has warped everything and always has. There is no irony in my work, I'm a romantic. Irony requires distance, but I want to get as close as possible to my subject. Each essay is a reference point on an imaginary map that I'm using to find my way home.'

William Harrison is the author of nine novels, three collections of short stories, two major screenplays, essays and travel pieces. He was the co-founder of the writing program at the University of Arkansas and still lives in Fayetteville.

Six couples from Austin, Texas, have vacationed on Lake Como in Italy during the month of August for the last seven years.  This year they learn that during this month for the last seven years  little girls have gone missing around the lake. One of them, Harry,  the photographer, suspects that one of their group is the killer. His  accusations eventually alienate him from the group—and even his  wife. When they all return to Texas he continues his investigations until he discovers the identity of the killer and faces him in the violent climax. A mystery with a set of vivid characterizations, Black August explores Americans abroad, the question of evil, and the story of a marriage in crisis.