Customer Reviews

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Exploring God

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I bought this book at a bookstore in my mall, because I was always interested to see the different religions' view and experience of God. I was struck right away with the seeming veiled conscension, or at least a marked coolness, with which the author referred to non-Christian ideas of God. Throughout the book, but most noticeably in the last two chapters, only the Christian version of God and His attributes are referred to. The author is a professor at a college where he teaches Christian History and American Religious History. He is an "active Elder" within the Presbyterian Church, and as such is a liasion to the Wabash Presbytery's Committee on the Preparation of the Ministry. He is an education facilitator in the Presbyerian Church of the United States, a co-editor of the Newsletter of the Conference of Faith and History and also the author of the Complete Idiot's Guide to Christianity. This information is written on the back cover of the book.

Basically, the book seems to be written from the viewpoint of a fervent Christian who thought it might be interesting to dally around in learning about other religions. I really don't recognize an unbiased or objective review in this exploration of Divinity.

I see that the preceding reviewer has retracted her review in which she described the book as Protestant-Christian biased. In my opinion the author reveals no such biases at all. Indeed, the book is a remarkably comprehensive -- and well-balanced -- review of the major religions of the world and their prominent variations. He also deals with appropriate length and fairness with Atheism and Agnosticism.

The reader should be aware that the focus of the book is with theology, albeit in very clear, layman's term. It deals with in reasonable detailed & rigorous way with the each religion's theological issues and their historic evolution. But this book isn't the place to look for much discussion of the incidental cultural traditions of the people of the various religions. Also - an likely for the better - it definitely doesn't deal with political issues, e.g. political Islam (Islamism), or the the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.