James A. Beverley

I received a review copy of Nelson’s Illustrated Guide to Religions, eager to have a current resource for relevant information about world religions from a Christian perspective. This large (800+pages) book has information on a variety of world religions, from Baha’i to Witchcraft. It also has an excellent introductory chapter detailing the author’s perspective on the study of religions from an evangelical Christian perspective, including a discussion of cults and ten tests for truth in religion.

The book does a good job of detailing the major religions of the world, including their history, theology and practices, major controversies, and more. There are many timelines and short biographical sketches of major leaders interspersed throughout the chapters. It also has an extensive chapter on various facets of “New Age” spirituality which are missing from older books.

This book does, however, fall short in several areas. First, it is not a “comprehensive” introduction as listed on the cover, for it does not cover every religion. Second, I was disappointed that the book was not unified or systematic in its approach. Essentially, this is actually 19 smaller books, because each chapter has its own approach and internal organization. There is a whole chapter on Branch Davidians for reasons that are unclear, unless the author just had a particular interest in them and had enough material for an entire chapter. Freemasonry is a subcategory in the New Age chapter, also for reasons that are a mystery to me. Some religions have a table at their end with such listings as typology, websites, and recommended reading, but the tables don’t all contain the same entries. I would have also appreciated a systematic approach to listing how each religion answers basic world view questions.

Overall, I can recommend this book’s extensive valuable and accurate information, but its shortcomings in organization detract from its value.… (mais)

Book Description:
A comprehensive introduction to the religions of the world analyzed from a Christian perspective. Nelson's Illustrated Guide to Religions covers more than 200 religions, sects, and cults, most of them ones the reader might encounter on any given day.
My Review:
At 850 pages, reading Nelson’s Illustrated Guide to Religions cover to cover can initially seem overwhelming, but because of the layout and divisions in the book, it is quite easy to read. It is an excellent resource for information, doctrine, and historical facts. The breakdown of the chapters includes windowed information boxes with timelines of major events. Many contain an apologist statement, questions and answers, doctrines, and how and when the division or sect started. Websites references are listed for both support and criticism.

The book has sturdy pages and easy to read print. Mr. Beverley approaches each religion with fairness and objectivity. He clearly states the Christians objection to some of the religious doctrines; he also defends against unfair judgments by Christians.

I have picked up other books about world religions, but this is the first one that I found interesting enough to read through its entirety.… (mais)

I bought this book because I wanted to learn a lot about the different religions of the world so that I could use it as a starting point for possibly picking one for myself or at least disqualifying the ones that I know I couldn't follow. In other words, I was looking for a menu of religions that would give me summaries of what they believed. This book does not really provide this.

A lot of the entries talk about the organization and history of the religion itself and completely skipped talking about the beliefs. For example, the entry on Zen just says that it is a form of Mahayana Buddhism, says that adherents aim to suddenly achieve enlightenment, and then names two people who brought Zen Buddhism to America and a third individual who it says should not be associated with it. I would have liked to have seen it actually give me some of the core teachings as if a Zen monk was explaining to me what his religion was about.

To be fair, the author was upfront in the foreword about how he was writing this from an evangelical Christian perspective for other evangelicals, and it offers tips for evangelicals on how to deal with the people of the different religions to try to win them over. And to describe the book as "a guide to convert people to evangelical Christianity" would definitely be inaccurate since the author only included his personal thoughts and suggestions at the end of the entries and was very brief when he did, so it wasn't preachy or distracting for me. However, I wish this would have been stated more clearly in the actual description of the book instead of just in the foreword.

In spite of the book turning out to not be quite what I wanted, I still feel like I have gained at least a basic knowledge of a lot of the world's religions, which is definitely something I wanted. For that reason, I'm still happy I bought the book.… (mais)