World Religions in Seven Sentences: A Small Introduction to a Vast Topic

Douglas Groothius. IVP Academic, $18 trade paper (150p) ISBN 978-1-514-00582-8

Groothius (Fire in the Streets), a professor of philosophy at Denver Seminary, demonstrates how not to study religion in this question-begging tour of major faith traditions. Although the premise sounds promising—to unpack the beliefs of six world religions, plus atheism, on the basis of a single sentence from their respective corpora—Groothius’s determination to “engage with them philosophically and comparatively from an explicitly Christian perspective” has resulted in a study that ties other religious traditions to the bed of Christianity and lops off the protruding parts. (Groothius excuses himself with the dubious defense that any adherent of another religion would have written a similarly skewed study.) Relying on outdated research (including the 1979 Oriental Philosophy: A Westerner’s Guide to Eastern Thought) and unsourced assertions (“While religion has been advanced to oppress and murder others, it cannot match the murderous results of the twentieth century atheism in this respect”), replete with outright inaccuracies (“non-Muslims are not allowed to set foot in or bow the knee in a Muslim place of worship”) and scurrilous mischaracterizations (“I used the word protagonist for Krishna since that word usually denotes the leading character in a work of fiction”), this survey is less a peek into world religions than an avuncular and patronizing perusal of non-Christian faiths. Those seeking uncritical reinforcement of their Christian presuppositions will be satisfied. Others need not apply. (Sept.)