Booknotes

As a professor's daughter, I was raised with books. I was also taught to revere them. The rules were: no breaking of spines, no bending of pages, no drawing inside the covers with crayons. My first books were read to me. When I could read for myself, I came home from the public library each week with a small stack of books under my chin. In the summertime I consumed them one a day, like apples, while other children rode their bicycles to the swimming pool. When my two sisters and I were old enough to be interested in money, their idea was to comb construction sites for empty Coke bottles, which were worth three cents each at the grocery store. I convinced them to open a lending library instead, where we could charge five cents a day for overdue books.

We did not get rich on my idea, but it was the beginning of a book collection that now crowds three rooms of my house. One room contains theology books, another holds poetry and fiction, while the third is an eclectic mix of books on creative writing, travel, depth psychology, gardening and the new science. All three rooms are vital to my work as a preacher and teacher. More than that, all three are vital to my intellectual and imaginative life in God. What I would like to do in these booknotes is to take you on a short visit to each one, pulling three or four volumes off the shelves in hopes that they may be of interest to you.

The Theology Room: This is the most respectable room, the one most directly related to my work. Since it contains biblical commentaries and comparative religion texts as well as theology books, the possibilities are vast. One book that has been particularly helpful to me this year is Huston Smith's The Illustrated World's Religions (HarperSanFrancisco, 1994, 255 pp.). Until nine months ago I was a parish priest concerned chiefly with Christianity. Then last fall I accepted a teaching post at a small liberal arts college where the one required religion course is a survey of world religions. Before I knew it, I had fifty students looking to me for guidance through the mysteries of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Islam. Huston Smith, who is to world religions what Joseph Campbell is to mythology, came to my rescue. In this slim, beautifully illustrated book, he approaches each tradition as a repository of human wisdom. He does not compare them, nor does he pay much attention to dates or statistics. His sole purpose is to introduce his readers to the core beliefs and values of each major world religion, which he does with reverence and respect.

Reading the book, I realized how shallow my understanding of these religions really was. Like many Christians, I was operating on stereotypes that simply were not true, which made me a lousy citizen of the world. Right here in rural Georgia, I have neighbors who are Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim. Every day I read about religious conflicts in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland and the Sudan. As a Christian, I cannot afford to remain ignorant about other people's faiths. If I am going to love my neighbors, I need to know something about their relationships to God.

Smith's book is a good first step in that direction, although he consciously avoids critique of the Hindu caste system, the status of Muslim women or the use of violence by fundamentalist sects. Readers will have to look elsewhere for challenges to such things. The virtue of Smith's book is his wide perspective on the human search for God. While there is no way to put down this volume believing that "all religions are alike," it is still possible to recognize threads of wisdom that run through all the world's religions.

For those already familiar with Smith's work, a more advanced text is Our Religions, edited by Arvind Sharma (HarperSanFrancisco, 1993, 536 pp.). While most surveys of world religions are written by a single author, this collection of essays comes from seven scholars who are immersed in the faiths they write about. While Harvey Cox and Jacob Neusner mav be the only names familiar to most readers, the other authors are equally distinguished in their own traditions. To be introduced to Islam by a Muslim (Seyyed Hossein Nasr) is to understand how perception may be skewed by Western journalism and Hollywood typecasting. Those who are serious about building global community will welcome this antidote to cultural and religious caricatures.

A final entry in this category is Believers and Beliefs by Gayle Colquitt White (New York: Berkley Books, 1997, 242 pp.). Subtitled A Practical Guide to Religious Etiquette for Business and Social Occasions, this volume offers answers to questions such as "Why doesn't the Jehovah's Witness girl in my daughter's class pledge allegiance to the flag?" or "What should I wear to an orthodox Jewish wedding?" Covering ten world religions along with seventeen Christian denominations and sects, White provides an overview of each faiths origins, doctrines, worship and customs, followed by recommendations for further reading. Unless you live in a Christian commune and intend never to leave it, this book is a great aid to living in community with other believers.