Summary
Title: Religion for Dummies
Author: Marc A. Gellman & Tom Hartman
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons
ISBN: 0764552643
Pro:
• Easy to read and understand
• Easy to find specific information about religious practices
• Quite a lot of factual information worth knowing
Con:
• Authors' biases and prejudices cause them to misrepresent some aspects of religion
• Comparative format makes it harder to read about just one religion
Description:
• Explanation of the nature of religion generally and specific religions around the world
• Comparative format, explaining religious beliefs & acts side-by-side
• Geared for lay audience
Book Review
One book which can be helpful in learning more about religion is Religion for Dummies by Marc A. Gellman and Tom Hartman. These two authors, together known as the “God Squad,” have a cable television program, a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and make regular appearances on various shows to discuss religion.
Most general books on religion present their subject religions separately, treating each belief system individually. This book, however, is primarily topic-based. There are sections which address individual religions independently, but most of the work is devoted to addressing issues like the nature of faith, death and life, God, communal worship, rites of passage, moral questions and more, each time explaining how various religions deal with those matters.
This structure is very helpful because it can provide a clear understanding of the variety of approaches which religions take with regards to important questions. This structure also allows the reader to skip around to different sections rather than reading straight through from beginning to end. So, if you are just looking to learn about how different religions treat prayer or abortion, you can go to one particular section and read only about that.
The book is, of course, geared to a lay audience and written with non-scholars in mind; one consequence of this is that quite a lot of simplification has occurred. That’s inevitable in any such introductory text to such a vast topic as “religion” and thus isn’t a serious drawback, but it should be kept in mind by readers.
There also isn’t much about atheism — just a mistaken reference to atheism being the denial of the existence of God rather than simply disbelief in gods. Such a lack of coverage is perhaps good, however, because in their regular column, Gellman and Hartman have evinced a strong prejudice against atheism.
In column, they wrote to a mother that she should be glad that her son “is only an agnostic and not yet an atheist,” even going so far as to argue that without God, “there would be no reason to do good.” Sadly, they have bought into the common prejudice that atheism and morality don’t mix — a problem I wrote to them and questioned them about, but I never heard back.
