The World's Religions [Paperback]

When I began religious studies at university three years ago, this remarkable book was not on the reading list and my set texts were biased towards Western Christianity and virtually ignored Eastern Orthodoxy. Then I discovered Ninian Smart's eloquent, accessible books and I cannot recommend this one highly enough as a place to start understanding religion, whether you are a student of philosophy, science, sociology or just looking for a good read. Understanding our world's religions and ideologies is a key to comprehending mankind's development and what propels many current global conflicts. Despite our increasingly secularised societies, religion still drives many human beings. Religions remain practices and ideas that move mankind, they are a window to understanding cultures and perhaps your next door neighbour. And in an age where globalization virtually rules, it is worth noting that religions are interacting in ways they never have before and out of this comes new faiths - as well as conflict.

Smart discusses the importance of understanding religions, the nature of them and of secular world views and the roots, formations and reformations of religions. So you think religions divide us in their dissimilarity? It is remarkable, Smart writes, that in doctrine, a number of faiths have a virtual similarity in regard to the idea of creation.

The book is well organized. Smart uses timelines to divide the book into two parts: The first from around 3000BC to around 1400AD, and the second from 1500AD. In the first part, Smart works his way from India's diversity of Buddhism, Brahmanism, classical Hinuism, Islam and Sramanic alternatives, to the confusion over what was and is religion in China, dimensions of Polynesian religion, the contribution of South-East Asia, the diversity of the Americas, the ancient Near East, spiritual values in the Ancient Greece and Roman worlds, classical and medieval Judaism, classical African religions to classical and medieval Islam. In part two, he examines the effects of science and secularism on religion, the reforming of Christianity, reactions to colonial intervention, developments in Islam including fundamentalism, the results of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union, new religious movements in Africa, Latin America's turmoil, China, Japan and Korea in modern times.

As the book was published towards the close of the 20th century, it contains a more comparitive view than was thought possible in the Western world half way through the 20th century. It is not easy to write of religion without bias but Smart, in my humble view, is refreshingly free of prejudice. I believe he encourages us to look at religion similarly and this is what makes The World's Religions such a joy to read.