My favorite books on religion

[qatarperegrine]

A friend asked me for a recommended reading list on religion. That's a daunting task, and I'm sure there are a lot of great books I've forgotten to include -- not to mention all the great ones I've never even read. Some of the religions are woefully underrepresented, too. However, of the books I've read on religious studies and theology, here are my favorites.

(Ones I don't have with me in Doha are grayed out. I also can't find Faith and Belief or Remedial Christianity -- did I lend them to one of you?)

General Religious Studies

• Religions of the World, by Lewis Hopfe
  Good basic textbook on the major world religions. It's what my parents used in their classes.


• The World's Religions, by Huston Smith
  An alternate basic primer on religion; a little less descriptive and textbook-y and more narrative/analytical.


• Anthology of World Scriptures, by Robert Van Voorst
  A good supplement to the above: excerpts of the actual scriptures of the major world religions, focusing on the core teachings, so you get a taste of different religions' holy writings without wading through all the Leviticuses of the world.


• The Stages of Faith, by James Fowler
  This is not foundational, just interesting. Fowler theorizes that people's faith develops over their lifetimes, as Piaget and Erikison said their psyches develop, and attempts to chart how faith tends to develop from a literalistic viewpoint to a more nuanced worldview over time -- usually involving at least one significant crisis of faith along the way.

Hinduism

• It's worth reading the Bhagavad Gita in its entirety (perhaps Gandhi's translation, as a reminder that its somewhat warlike content can be interpreted symbolically), and selections from the Upanishads.


• Encountering God, by Diana Eck
  Chronicles the author's journey from her Methodist childhood, through studying Hinduism in India, to embracing a pluralist view that allows her to simultaneously practice her own Christian faith and honor other world religions. This book isn't about Hinduism per se, but you learn a lot about it on the way.

Buddhism

• The Dhammapada. I like Thanissaro Bhikkhu's translation.


• The Beginner's Guide to Insight Meditation, by Weisman & Smith
  I love this book. It is simultaneously a very practical how-to guide to meditation, an American Buddhist-style self-help book, and an introduction to Buddhist history and philosophy. It really just has it all.


• The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, by Thich Nhat Hanh
  Thich Nhat Hanh presents the core teachings of Buddhism, but often with a twist. To be honest I don't remember a great deal about particular points he made, but I remember the book being very moving.

Judaism

• Who Wrote the Bible?, by Richard Friedman
  A thorough and very enjoyable (weirdly detective-story-like) explanation of the documentary hypothesis, and specifically the type of reasoning behind current beliefs about who the various authors of the Torah are.


• When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Harold Kushner
  A classic. A Conservative rabbi explains the failures in traditional explanations for the existence of evil, and presents the alternative view he embraced after facing the death of his child. This was the first book where I read about the omnipotent/omniscient/omnibenevolent problem, and also the first place I heard a religious leader suggesting that maybe omnipotence isn't all that.

Christianity (in order from mainstream to hippy)

• The Bible Makes Sense, by Walter Bruggemann
  A short and compelling book presenting an approach to understanding the themes of the Bible, by focusing on its "primal narratives" -- the oldest and most central stories of each testament -- and understanding other parts of the Bible as commentaries on those narratives.


• Faith and Belief, by Wilfred Cantwell Smith
  With breathtaking erudition and eloquence, Smith shows how the meaning of "faith" has changed (for the worse) since Biblical times, from expressing a relationship of trust with one's maker to representing an opinion one might or might not hold on the existence of a maker. This book rocked my world.


• The Meaning of Jesus, by Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright
  Two prominent Jesus scholars -- one liberal, one traditional -- present a dialogue in alternating chapters about their divergent beliefs about who Jesus was, what the resurrection means, and so on.


• Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, by John Dominic Crossan
  Crossan, co-founder of the Jesus Seminar, reinterprets parts of Jesus' message based on a reconstruction of the historical and social context in which Jesus was situated. (I don't have this book in Doha, but I do have Excavating Jesus, which he cowrote with a Biblical archaeologist.)


• Honest to God, by John A.T. Robinson
  Forty-five years ago, an Anglican bishop wrote this controversial book suggesting that theism belongs to a pre-scientific age, and that we must form a belief in God that transcends mere supernaturalism in order for Christianity to survive.


• Why Christianity Must Change or Die, or really anything else by Bishop Spong
  Bishop Spong continues along the same lines today, and though his words are too strident for my liking, there's a lot of good stuff there for those reexamining what it means to be Christian in the modern age.


• Remedial Christianity, by Paul Alan Laughlin
  Frustrated that his college students thought they understood Christianity because of dim memories of superficial platitudes from Sunday school, Laughlin wrote this book as an introductory text on Christianity. As an added bonus, it features cartoons and is often downright hilarious. I adore this book. Guaranteed to offend all traditional and mainstream Christians.

Islam

• Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations, by Michael Sells
  The 114 oldest surahs of the Qur'an, side by side with commentary, to help non-Muslims understand the key messages. I wish I'd started with this instead of reading the entire Qur'an on my own with no guidance. Also comes with an awesome CD of various of the surahs being recited in different manners.


• The Heart of Islam, by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
  Nasr presents a very intimate and appealing vision of the meaning of Islam. It covers all the basics of the religion, but also gives fantastic insight into what one Muslim scholar finds most compelling in its message. Not at all preachy, though.


• No god but God, by Reza Aslan
  A very narrative approach to the history of Islam, but with an eye to helping the reader understand the state of the Muslim world today. Aslan believes that Islam is mid-reformation, and cannot be understood except through that lens.

Secularism

• The End of Faith, by Sam Harris
  Of the many pro-atheism books suddenly hitting the market, I think this one presents the most grounded, least vitriolic argument for why religion should be considered with more than a grain of skepticism.

So what about you guys -- if you had to recommend a handful of books on religion, what would you recommend?

Comments

[douglasperkins.livejournal.com]

City of God.

There are one or two good parts in The God Delusion. The rest of it is mediocre.

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Agreed. :-) Too much of it is just irritating and frustrating to read for me to recommend it unreservedly.

My favorite part of The God Delusion is probably this paragraph, which I think succinctly sums up something I struggled with for a long time:

"Which religion, anyway? The one in which we happen to have been brought up? To which chapter, then, of which book of the Bible should we turn - for they are far from unanimous and some of them are odious by any reasonable standards. How many literalists have read enough of the Bible to know that the death penalty is prescribed for adultery, for gathering sticks on the sabbath and for cheeking your parents? If we reject Deuteronomy and Leviticus (as all enlightened moderns do), by what criteria do we then decide which of religion's moral values to accept? Or should we pick and choose among all the world's religions until we find one whose moral teaching suits us? If so, again we must ask, by what criterion do we choose? And if we have independent criteria for choosing among religious moralities, why not cut out the middle man and go straight for the moral choice without the religion?"

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Encountering God is definitely yours; I had accidentally acquired two copies.

I remember giving you my copy of Remedial Christianity, and also don't recall if it was a loan or a gift. :-D I think I intended to give it to you and buy myself a different copy, and now I can't remember if I did that and then loaned the second copy to someone else, or if I never remembered to buy a second copy. At any rate, you should keep yours and I should buy another one, on the grounds that the more Remedial Christianitys in the world, the better.

[qatar.livejournal.com]

rofl. I want that on a business card: "Marjorie Carlson, patron of expanding consciousness." Just don't bring up my name when they bust you for paying your taxes late. :-D

[elkit.livejournal.com]

I really should finish reading the Bhagavad Gita; I've never read the whole thing, just bits and pieces. I have a translation with commentary by Sri Eknath Easwaran that I really like - he explains the story well to Westerners. I like his approach to religion - he takes the good, positive, uplifting bits from anywhere, and acknowledges that some of us are "allergic" to the religion we're raised with.

And I am half-tempted to recommend Christopher Moore's "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal", because it's a little bit of religion and a lot of not taking it too seriously.

I'll have to bookmark this post of yours - great reading list!

[qatar.livejournal.com]

I've never read Lamb -- I actually nearly bought it in an airport bookstore just a couple days ago, but resisted. I'll grab a copy next time I have a chance.

[y-pestis.livejournal.com]

Argh! You're right! I thought "Gosh, what a reading list, there's nothing I could contribute to that" but you're right, LAMB!

I'm hoping by July to have won the Battle of the Bookshelves (I want Leksvik, he wants some horrendous china cabinet thing) and have the books unpacked so I can find things. Just this afternoon I went through some boxes of books looking for something in particular and completely failed to find it, while coincidentally finding three other things I'd been idly wondering about. No sign of Lamb yet. Must win Bookshelf Battle soon, I'm getting too big to be horking boxes of books around the spare room!

[kartiksg.livejournal.com]

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/plbook/book.pdf

Trust me. It's a religious text book. I'm not kidding.

I really

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

I think that qatar really does NOT want THAT kind of Holy-War in her journal. ;-)

[lasa.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the list. There are a number on there I really want to check out.

I'd add Bruggemann's The Prophetic Imagination. He contrasts the imperial world-view of Solomon, who used God for his own means, against today's Christians. Got me all excited.

Also, Brian McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy. It's funny, but challenging, and also got me all excited.

Muhammad by Martin Lings

[(Anonymous)]

Muhammad by Martin Lings is an excellent biography of the Prophet of Islam. Well worth the read...

Muhammad Asad's also wrote a book called "The Road to Mecca" which recounts his fascinating journey as an Austrian to Islam during the 20s.