imply that both were drafted by protofascists destined for the Axis” (232); yet given Ito ¯ Hirobumi’s admiration for Otto von Bismarck and his employ- ment of German legal advisors, the comparison may be a natural one. Finally, Josephson states that “Shinto ¯ extremism” was transplanted European monarchism (230). He considers Article 3, “The Emperor is sacred and inviolable,” as a direct Japanese translation of clauses in a number of European constitutions. But Shinto ¯ extremism, or radical Shinto ¯ ultranationalism, of the 1930s and early 1940s had little to do with traditional European monarchism. Rather, it was the mixture of core Shinto ¯ doctrines and German metaphysics, which produced a religious ethnic national ideol- ogy very close to that expounded by thinkers in the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arberterpartei. Klaus Antoni, for example, has argued against delinking state Shinto ¯ from the ultranationalist, expansionist, and militaristic ideologies of the 1930s and 1940s (“Does Shinto History ‘Begin at Kuroda’? On the Historical Continuities of Political Shinto” in Politics and Religion in Modern Japan: Red Sun, White Lotus, ed. Roy Starrs ed.). Josephson invokes Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and writes that his “translation is a provocative attempt to push it out of the dis- course” (295). Josephson is not doing “normal science,” that is, working within and enlarging an established paradigm, but “revolutionary science”— trying to produce a “paradigm shift” in our understanding of the “science” of the [Shinto ¯] gods. Most scholars will likely disagree with the interpretation of Tokugawa Shinto thought presented in The Invention of Religion in Japan, but Josephson deserves credit for the attempt. Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. By Kate Bowler. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013. 352 + xi pp. $34.95 cloth doi:10.1017/S1755048313000643 Andrew R. Murphy Rutgers University Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston seats 16,000 and boasts a membership of nearly triple that number. His books — with titles like Break Out: Five Keys to Go Beyond Your Barriers and Live an 886 Book Reviews