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A Little History of Religion (2016)

di Richard Holloway

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2166125,073 (3.93)2
In an era of hardening religious attitudes and explosive religious violence, this book offers a welcome antidote. Richard Holloway retells the entire history of religion from the dawn of religious belief to the twenty-first century with deepest respect and a keen commitment to accuracy. Writing for those with faith and those without, and especially for young readers, he encourages curiosity and tolerance, accentuates nuance and mystery, and calmly restores a sense of the value of faith. Ranging far beyond the major world religions of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism, Holloway also examines where religious belief comes from, the search for meaning throughout history, today fascinations with Scientology and creationism, religiously motivated violence, hostilities between religious people and secularists, and more. Holloway proves an empathic yet discerning guide to the enduring significance of faith and its power from ancient times to our own.--INSIDE FLAP.… (altro)
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Um livro que aborda de modo inovador as várias religiões da actualidade, desde as suas origens até hoje.
A maior virtude deste livro é a linguagem utilizada, simples mas dinâmica, clara e humorada. Pelo meio aborda muitas ideias interessantes.
Grande parte do que neste livro é dito já era do meu conhecimento, no entanto, foi uma leitura plenamente justificada por ser um bom resumo e ter ideias novas. ( )
  CMBras | Jan 23, 2021 |
Read this after hearing about it in a reddit thread discussing books about religion. This was put forward as an excellent non partisan work on belief, god and religions.

It is pretty excellent. It covers all the big name religions over the last 4000 Year’s from Hinduism through to Scientology and Secular Humanism. It explores how the faiths developed and influenced each other and why people believe.
It seemed to me to be pretty balanced and doesn’t push any point or belief as right or wrong, leaving it all open to the reader. It comes from a perspective of ‘Humans and the things they believe in and the structures they build around these things are very interesting’ rather than the ‘I am right and this is why and everyone else is an idiot’ that you tend to get in a lot of works about faith.

I highly recommend it to anyone interested in humans and their religions. ( )
  mjhunt | Jan 22, 2021 |
Commendably broad overview of the World's religions. I listened to it as an audio book which may not have been the best method, as there's a lot of information to take on board, but it was always a diverting listen. ( )
  arewenotben | Jul 31, 2020 |
A whistle-stop tour around the world and through time, from the very first stirrings of mystery and spirituality through to modern sectarianism. Fascinating and enlightening. ( )
  AriadneAranea | Jan 13, 2018 |
I found A Little History of Religion to be a pretty comprehensive guide to the world’s religions. Understandably, the three major religions – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – get more attention in the book. However, Holloway includes smaller religions as well, for example Jainism and Scientology.

The book isn’t organized by religion or chronologically exactly but the method Holloway uses makes perfect sense. He will write about one religion and then go into the spin-offs and evolutions of that religion. Then he’ll put that aside and move to another area of the world and what was going on there for a while before catching up with the first religion. I really liked this, especially since I listened to the audiobook. It kept it interesting to switch it up instead of having one long section for each religion.

Holloway writes in a conversational tone and even injects some dry humor throughout. The book contains great information without being too academic or dry. Holloway is Scottish and so is the narrator, James Bryce. I like it when the narrator has the same accent as the author. I’m not sure why – it makes it seem more authentic for some reason. Bryce’s delivery for the humorous lines was great.

This book was educational and entertaining. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to know more about the world’s religions and especially about how they have intersected with one another throughout history. ( )
  mcelhra | Dec 21, 2016 |
Holloway's is an unashamedly, but apparently unselfconsciously, Protestant account. He takes it for granted that the only religious experience that matters is divine revelation, when God talks directly to human beings: none of that ritual mumbo-jumbo that bothers the anthropologists. So we race past entire areas of human experience. He explicitly states that Shinto, ancient Greek polytheist and native American beliefs aren't proper religion; presumably he would say the same about the indigenous cultures of Africa or South America, since he never mentions them.

His account is largely narrative-driven, and every story always begins with the little guys – by implication, there were no women in religion until Mary Tudor – for whom the voice of God offers the route out of an oppressive society, whether it be Moses in Egypt, Christ or Muhammed. Religion is good in these situations; it only becomes bad when ossified into rigid, coercive social structures. God’s voice is generous and true, if we have the ears to hear it; it is human society that introduces the vanity and toxicity. For Holloway, it is the second commandment, forbidding idolatry, that defines the essence of religion. All great religious revolutions are founded in the rejection of artifice. "Like Muhammad and the leaders of the Protestant Reformation," he writes of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, he "hated showy religion. He was a monotheist with a profound contempt for the merchants of idolatry." It is no surprise to find a celebratory narrative of Europe's Reformation occupying the heart of the book. When the plucky Protestants cast off the shackles of corrupt, idolatrous Catholicism, it's the culmination of the same story that he has told from the start.

Holloway certainly tries to moderate the Protestant teleology of his history. He begins dutifully with Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, but then leaves these parked in the first millennium BCE. He has later excursions into Chinese and Zoroastrian thought, but these too prove to be dead ends in his overall story. Judaism features heavily, but only in its time-honoured role as parent of Christianity. (No Jewish history since the time of Jesus, then.) Islam too, is viewed primarily as an episode in medieval history, although even in his account of its formation Holloway introduces discussion of violent jihad and smuggles in metaphors of armed conflict (for example, when discussing concepts of Hell: "the Church's holy book couldn't beat the Qur’an in the terror stakes"), hinting that 21st-century fundamentalism was a theological inevitability. Modernity is represented in this history primarily by America’s Christian and para-Christian developments: Quakers, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientologists and so forth.
aggiunto da Cynfelyn | modificaThe Guardian, Tim Whitmarsh (Sep 21, 2016)
 

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In an era of hardening religious attitudes and explosive religious violence, this book offers a welcome antidote. Richard Holloway retells the entire history of religion from the dawn of religious belief to the twenty-first century with deepest respect and a keen commitment to accuracy. Writing for those with faith and those without, and especially for young readers, he encourages curiosity and tolerance, accentuates nuance and mystery, and calmly restores a sense of the value of faith. Ranging far beyond the major world religions of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism, Holloway also examines where religious belief comes from, the search for meaning throughout history, today fascinations with Scientology and creationism, religiously motivated violence, hostilities between religious people and secularists, and more. Holloway proves an empathic yet discerning guide to the enduring significance of faith and its power from ancient times to our own.--INSIDE FLAP.

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