Anna Della Subin’s book, Accidental Gods, is an interesting, if impressionistic exploration of the forces behind apotheosis in the modern world. As she observes in her introduction, “Though the idea that man could become deified may appear an archaic and arcane theological puzzle,” modernity has nevertheless witnessed a “flood of sanctifications” (8) in the wake of western colonialism. The range of Subin’s examples is truly remarkable, covering the globe and ranging from the expected (e.g., Hernán Cortés as Quetzalcoatl in Mexico) to the more obscure (e.g., the worship of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in Vanuatu and Donald Trump in India). What ties all these examples together is Subin’s consistent postcolonial lens, which, despite the book’s achronological approach and journalistic looseness, yields many nuanced insights into the processes of continued god-making in the modern world.
The first part of the book, “Late Theogony,” begins with an extended case study...
University of California Press