Customer Reviews

A World Religions Reader

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A World Religions Reader is a very positive look at the major world beliefs ranging from Atheism and Buddhism to Islam and Judaism. Markham presents all these world views decked up like prom queens. One begins to wonder while reading the book how the world could be such a jacked up place with all these beautiful and enlightened belief systems all around us.
The book is very egalitarian in that each different world view is presented by people who hold fast to them as being absolutely true. Every view gets its fair shot to persuade you. The book makes no attempts to show that one belief system may be more correct than another, that one may be more coherent than another or that one may have more harmful effects than another. It seems that, above all; the editor was trying to be fair and inoffensive to everyone. The book is really a World Religions 101 in that many major views are presented but none in great depth. If the goal of the book was to create a platform for each major belief system to present itself, then I suppose the book was successful in accomplishing its goal. If it was to critically show them "warts and all" then it failed like a bat taking an eye exam.
The book is informative to a point and is therefore worth a read for those approaching interfaith dialogues or for those trying to figure out why in the world someone would actually want to convert to Shintoism. I felt that Judaism was the most beautifully presented. Half way through I felt like joining a synagogue but then thought that they might have some policy against taking Pentecostal missionaries.
Personally I found it very interesting that so many of the writers used Christianity as its point of comparison. Many of the writers would point out that a certain belief or practise in their faith was either like or unlike a belief or practise in Christianity. I also found it a bit odd that so much attention was given to liberal theology in the chapter on Christianity as throughout history and even into the present such groups only tend to make up a small, white quibbling minority which is often viewed as heretical by the rest of the world body.