Product Description

Succinct chapters provide an excellent guide to understanding Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, Shintoism, and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #128353 in Books
• Published on: 1996-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From Library Journal
This book is a compilation of profiles of world religions written by scholars affiliated with the International Students, Inc., an evangelical Christian organization. It is a manual designed to arm proselytizing Christians in their attempt to confront Buddhists, Moslems, Hindus, Taoists, Jews, Marxists, and other faith believers with the inconsistencies of their faiths and to ring them into Christianity. The chapter on Judaism ends with a message to weary Christians: "Be encouraged that many Jewish believers in Jesus have come to faith through the loving witness of Gentle Christians." The message for those attempting to convert a Marxist has a simpler ending: "Love them. Pray for them. Encourage them to study God's word with you." This strong theological agenda eliminates this book as an objective source for facts concerning world religions. Even facts concerning Christianity are twisted until they fit the agenda or are ignored if they don't fit this organization's beliefs. Not recommended.?Glenn Masuchika, Chaminade Univ. Lib., Honolulu
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ingram
The Compact Guide to World Religions is a complete, easy-to-use handbook of the origins, basic beliefs, and evangelistic challenges and opportunities of the world's major religions, including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and others.

About the Author

Dean Halverson is a World Religions Specialist with International Students Inc., a para-church organization committed to sharing Christ with the half-million internationals studying in the U.S. He was a researcher for the Spiritual Counterfeits Project and is the author of Crystal Clear: Understanding and Reaching New Agers. He lives in Colorado with his wife, Debbie. They have three children.

Customer Reviews

Reader Be Aware
The book is okay. It has some good information. *BUT the Reader should be aware that the book is not a "fair and balanced" guide to the world's religions. I guess most things that say "fair and balanced" really aren't that at all-at least not today. The book is saturated with bias. The whole goal of the book is to show how Christianity is the better religion or at least how Christianity differs from all the other world religions and tries to point out where the other religions go wrong. I found that the author makes generalizations and misses many of the deeper meanings and beliefs of some of the world's other relgions. If one were to take an intro cultural anthropology class, one of the first words one would learn is ethnocentrism. This book is a classic example of that type of bias. If you are looking for a Compact Guide To World Religions without bias don't buy this book. If you are looking to find a book that points out some differences but often distorts facts and uses quotes out of context to support his agenda-get this one. I don't have anything against any religion, but it seems this guy does. That is my problem with the book.

Good basic overview
I use this book as one of the texts in a class that I teach on World Religions, Cults, and Christianity - Building a Bridge to the Lost. The evangelical nature of the book is an excellent tool for classroom discussion. It also summarizes the major world religions without being too "in depth" for the beginning student, nor too "shallow" for a more advanced student.

If you're not an evangelical, skip it
Although this book has interesting comparative charts of various world religions and christianity, and basically good summaries of those other religions, the entire slant is toward evangelizing people of those other faiths. This is evident in the text, but you needn't go that far: praises on the back cover come from two individuals that sound like they represent evangelical agencies, one man from Jews for Jesus, and the pastor of Southern Gables Church. The book contains hints on how to "witness" to those of other religions, ie., try to convert them, and attacks on things "secular" including the theory of evolution. I'm a modernist, I don't live in the 8th-century, and am not into such things, so I'll keep this on the back of the book shelf and avoid much of it to get at the basic summaries of the non-christian religions.