Getting Oriented [Paperback]

Paul Alan Laughlin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 2005

Getting Oriented leads readers on an adventurous trek to discover and unlock the treasures of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. Paul Alan Laughlin sketches out an alternative, enlightened version of the Christian faith that draws upon the mystical dynamic of those great Eastern religions. With special attention to new ways of viewing God, humanity, Jesus, and the Bible, he offers a unique, compelling, and refreshing vision of Christianity for the Third Millennium.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Laughlin's new work exhibits his lucid style and his uncanny ability to open up difficult concepts for the lay reader. -- Paul L. Redditt, Professor and Chair, Department of Religion, Georgetown College

This is a major contribution to the comparative study of religion. ... This is a great book! -- Dell deChant, University of South Florida

About the Author

Paul Alan Laughlin is Professor and former Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Otterbein College, Westerville, Ohio, where he teaches Comparative Religions and American Religious History. He is the author of Remedial Christianity (1999).

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Polebridge Press (March 31, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0944344542
• ISBN-13: 978-0944344545
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #432,295 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Tour de Force from Laughlin, June 1, 2005

By 

Robert Garrett (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Getting Oriented (Paperback)

Several years ago, I read _Remedial Christianity_, and was literally stunned that I was so ignorant about my own professed faith. Dr. Laughlin woke me up with his wonderful book, which all Christians should read and savor; in fact,it should be used in church and Sunday schools across the country, heads unburied by dogmatic and literalist sands. Since I personally believe that religious fundamentalism is the most dangerous belief system in the world today, i.e., "ONLY WE HAVE THE ANSWER, AND IF YOU DON'T AGREE WITH US, WE MIGHT HAVE TO KILL YOU", Laughlin offers another way. And that means realizing that nobody should make exclusivistic truth claims but that we should honor ALL religions as valid paths to the ineffable.
In his great new book, _Getting Oriented_, he shows how an integral philosophy between East and West might emerge. And he rightly points out that we Christians might well be better off staying within our own, redefined faith than jumping ship totally for a culture we don't understand.
Here's an excerpt from his chapter on Hinduism, classic Laughlin: "Let's think of Hinduism today as a slowly cooking stew, in which the oldest ingredients from the era have long since settled to thge bottom of the pot. Those of the Vedantic period are suspended in the middle, leaving the most recent and still prevailing devotional emphasis of the millenium-old sectarian period close to the surface. All of these constitute and flavor the stew, though what is on the surface is most visible and probably provides most of the flavor to those who sample it" These delicious tidbits permeate the book.
The best is saved for last, where you will find suggestions for a new paradigm, still respectful, but bold.
People are fleeing dogmatic religion in huge numbers. There are those who will argue that books like this will destroy Christianity, but I say that it's our only chance to survive, and thrive.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Getting Oriented by Paul Laughlin, May 4, 2005

By 

William Parker (Emory Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Getting Oriented (Paperback)

This book is a must for forward thinking Christians and for those who have become disillusioned with the faith and are willing to take a different view. I think the book demonstrates that there is an alternate to abandoning your faith by showing how it can be reinterpreted. A rare book to be written by a minister but written by one who is well qualified to do so. Equally as good as his first book "Remedial Christianity"

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Be aware of what you're getting, October 2, 2006

By 

Andy Kaylor (Beaverton, OR United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Getting Oriented (Paperback)

The author is not entirely forth-coming about his affiliations. He is, in fact, a minister in the Unity Church, a branch of Christianity that has come through the New Thought movement. So when he says that he wants to construct a new Christianity, it seems to me that he has one in mind. If you know anything about Unity, the proposed tenets of his "enlightened Christianity" will sound familiar to you. I'm not saying the author isn't entitled to his perspective, I just would have liked to have been aware of it going in, or at least had it disclosed when he talked about Unity and New Thought.

That said, the reason I read this book was because I had previously read Laughlin's "Remedial Christianity" and found him to be a good communicator and teacher. I had some serious disagreements with him in that book, and a couple of those persisted into this book (such as his presentation of immanence and transendence, which I think fails to hear all that traditional Christianity would like to claim about the immanence of God), but on the whole Laughlin maintains the clarity of presentation and strong knowledge of his subject matter in this book. It is this book's greatest strength.

I came into this book with some knowledge of the Eastern faiths being described, and the author's presentation is generally consistent with what I had heard before and he had much to add to what I knew. The section on Hinduism seemed to me to be the strongest in the book. He does a great job of making sense of a wide variety of beliefs and practices. The section on Buddhism seemed a little weaker with regard to beliefs, focusing more on practices, but that may be because Buddhism doesn't have a lot of specific beliefs.

The section on Chinese religions left me wondering if maybe Laughlin didn't have quite as deep an understaning of this. His comparisons of Confucianism and Taoism to strains of popular American culture (nearly granting hippies full Taoist status) didn't quite fit with my understanding of these philosophies in anything but a superficial way. I was left wondering if this section got less revision and rethinking than the others.

Finally, I didn't have much use for his chapter reconstructing Christianity to be an Eastern religion. I do think that there is much that Christianity can learn from dialogue with these other religions, but I think a far better approach would be to look for minor threads within the Christian tradition that could be highlighted in light of Eastern teachings rather than the wholesale replacement of major doctrines that Laughlin proposes.