Customer Reviews

The Religions Next Door: What we need to know about Hudaism,Hinduism,Buddhism and Islam and what reporters are missing

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I purchased this book to get a glimpse of each of these religions and how they differ, Admittedly I knew more about Judiasm than the others. Still I had not realized the extent of persecution they have endured. This book is written in easily understood fashion and I aplaud the author for not trying to brow beat his readers with scholarly and uppity importance. How nice to pick up a book on Religion and know that readers would not have to have a degree to understand the information.
Beverly J Scott, Author

As a columnist myself, I found the last few chapters about how the media covers religion and religious issues most interesting.

I almost passed on this book based on other reviews! This book is well written and balanced. I suspect the other reviewers are followers of, or members of the typical liberal "inteligentisia"!

I'm very disappointed. I've read enough uninformed, laudatory writing about other religions that I was really looking forward to a refreshingly honest and un-PC look at the real differences between Christianity and these other faiths. This isn't it.

I was hoping for a serious theological discussion about Christian soteriology versus Islamic eschatology and how difference in belief about the meaning of life leads to different behaviors in life; and contrasting the abnegation of the self in Buddhism to the concept of the Grace of God redeeming us from our lower natures in Christianity. Instead, here is a book describing the rituals of other religions in terms that remove them from the context of the people who practice them in order to make them seem utterly ridiculous to us.

Imagine someone writing about a Catholic mass, "people go in, a man dressed in a lavish outfit says some ritual words over bread and wine, and then everyone believes the bread has magically become human flesh, and the wine human blood, which everyone then eats in order to become like the man they've just eaten". Technically, it's not "wrong", but it doesn't help understanding. It just promotes self-satisfaction and a feeling of superiority.

I'm still looking for an honest discussion about other religions in their own terms, the theological differences between them, and the consequences of those differences. This isn't it.

With the cultural diversity of our neighborhoods today, I thought a book like this was a great idea. I expected that the author would be respectful of the different religions he's chosen to write about. That wasn't the case. Throughout this thin tome, the author has chosen to pontificate on the weaknesses of each major religion as it compares to his own Christianity. Of course, this is all opinon. His opinion. From this book, I gather we should be afraid of our non-Christian neighbors because they harbor ulterior motives and are vastly inferior. Anyone looking for a primer on the basic tenets of the world's major religions done in a respectful, all inclusive manner better look elsewhere. This small minded volume does nothing to foster undersatnding and acceptance in a multi-cultural environment.