Jun. 21, 2009 - Nelson's Illustrated Guide to Religions
Nelson’s Illustrated Guide to Religions by James A. Beverley is an 850 page book that is divided into sections by religion. The non-Christian section is fairly detailed. The pictures are nice and instructional. They are topical for the area they are in – in other words, the pictures goes with the words around it and the author didn’t just throw in unrelated pictures.
This book is not completely exhaustive. It is a very good sampling of religions and is from a Christian World View. The author spends a significant amount of time explaining those religions.
The greatest challenge that the book faces is in its treatments of denominations in that religions with a large number of denominations, even though those denominations may differ in many fundamental ways, they’re given a very brief treatment. As an example, the Baptists, which have over 300 million followers according to the book, are parsed down to 3 pages in the middle of the Protestant chapter whereas Baha’i Faith with around 4 million followers is lavished with 9 pages of content.
The author approaches each religion from a Christian World View and tends to place his opinions in well marked sections so that the reader can easily distinguish which portions of the text are fact and which are opinion.
As a layman’s reference book, this gets 5 out of 5 stars from me. It should be treated as an encyclopedic work where many topics are discussed in some detail but few things are discussed in great detail. I received this book from Thomas Nelson to review.
Comments
Jun. 22, 2009 - Excellent
Posted by Sarah
I really enjoyed it and will be using it time and again. My review is at quivermom.blogspot.com I really enjoyed how detailed he was and factual the book was.
God bless,
Sarah
homeschoolblogger.com/OhioSarah
