About.com Rating



The laws in most liberal, democratic nations are human laws - that is to say, they are self-consciously human creations for human needs in a human society. There was a time, though, when laws were treated as having divine origins, and there are people today who would like to change society into something which is once again regulated by God's laws - or, at least, their interpretation of God's laws.


Summary

Title: The Religion Book: Places, Prophets, Saints, and Seers
Author: Jim Willis
Publisher: Visible Ink Press
ISBN: 1578591511

Pro:
?  Offers a different and at times insightful perspective on various religious issues

Con:
?  Heavily influenced by the author's own biases, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse
?  Uneven quality of the articles, with some offering interesting insights and some very lacking

Description:
?  Encyclopedic reference on religious beliefs, people, places, scriptures, and more
?  Over 500 pages, 300 entries, 100 photographs on many different religions around the world
?  Each entry accompanied by a bibliography for more information

 

Book Review

Into the milieu of competing religious reference works steps Jim Willis, a minister with the United Church of Christ who serves as adjunct professor of comparative religion and cross-cultural studies at Mt. Wachusett Community College. His recent book, The Religion Book: Places, Prophets, Saints, and Seers, is an encyclopedic reference that explains over 300 important religious figures, books, locations, etc.

The result is somewhat uneven. Many articles are quite excellent and provide an interesting way of looking at old issues. The piece on the Divine Right of Kings is representative of the better entries. Most have probably heard about this medieval doctrine, according to which the rulers had divine sanction to exercise political office, but Willis puts a new twist on it by asking why it isn't taken as seriously today, even by biblical literalists:

• "A literal reading of the Bible seems to indicate that once a ruler is in place, people must believe that the ruler is God's choice. He has a divine right to rule. ...Taken to its logical conclusion, what does the doctrine mean to those who impose a literal interpretation of the Bible today? Does Paul forbid voting a president out of office? No one seems to take the verses that literally, but no one really explains why this passage can be neglected or labeled a cultural aberration while other verses must be followed exactly."

On the other hand, there are entries which are so inexplicably sparse that they really stand out. A good example of this would be the article on the Ten Commandments. All it contains is a listing of the commandments, a short description of how they were supposed to have been received and an explanation of what they regulate.

There is nothing about the presence of at least three forms of the commandments in the Bible ? there isn't even an explanation of where exactly the listed commandments actually come from. The commandments Willis lists certainly don't come directly from the Bible; instead, they look like one of the common Protestant formulations that simplifies the wording. There isn't anything about the conflicts between Protestant and Catholic versions of the Ten Commandments, an undeniably interesting subject of inter-Christian relationships.

There is also nothing about the debates in America over whether the government should display monuments of the Ten Commandments despite the fact that the article is accompanied by a photograph of one such monument. I'm not sure, but it might be Roy Moore's infamous monument. Why use such a photo and ignore this rancorous debate?

This isn't the only entry with such failings. The article on atheism and agnosticism, for example, repeats the old misconceptions that atheism is nothing but the denial of the existence of gods and that agnosticism is a "middle position" between atheism and theism. Willis' sources for this are a dictionary and a Joseph Campbell book. It's not often that we see such misconceptions spread by someone who at the same time admits to not having done much research on the subject.

Why do these problems exist?

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