Abstract
Locklin introduces the idea with a story about his college rowing crew, where only time and practice together made a group of disparate individuals into an athletic team with flashes of brilliance. The boat becomes a metaphor for organized religion: "chanting together, breaking bread together, teaching and learning together, all joined inextricably to one another as we move up the slide, drop our oars into the water, and pull" (86). While the argument of the book is sound, its greatest strength is how the author himself models both institutional commitment and openness to "outsiders" in his own life.