Book Review: Jonathan Smith (ed.), The HarperCollins
Dictionary of Religion, HarperSanFrancisco, 1996.

Ever been in a trivia game when you needed an authority
– just one authority – on a bit of religious knowledge? Here ’tis.

Did you know: * Christian fundamentalists comprise
only 15% of the broader Christian evangelical community? (They
make so much noise, I thought there were more of them) * The Forbidden
City in Peking is forbidden because it’s believed Shanti, the
heavenly deity, dwells there? * ‘Saints’ are mostly venerated
within Christianity and Islam?

If you always wanted to know about Gymnosophists
(from the Greek ‘naked philosophers’), Hathor (Egyptian goddess
of love and inebriation), puberty rituals (everywhere it seems
except in Christianity), the Crazy Wisdom Fellowship (also called
the Dawn Horse Fellowship), or the Deductive-nomological Model
of (religious) Explanation, this is your book…

Seriously, if you’ve never read an Encylopedia of
anything through, this could be your first experience. A product
of the American Academy of Religion, it’s full of fascinating,
scholarly articles by 327 experts about all matters religious
from Aaron to Zwingli. The general approach is cross-cultural/ecumenical/
liberal: so you would expect articles on ‘gender and religion’,
feminism, feminist theology, Goddess religions (contemporary),
women-church – and no masculine pronouns for God. And the general
flavor of the material on missions deals with their impact on
traditional religions/cultures…

The focus is biassed towards matters American. So
Walter Rauschenbusch is there. Roger Williams gets five and a
bit lines, John Wesley only two; Frances Cabrini is there – she’s
the first American saint – but other more important ones miss
out; being American it has to have something on ‘prayer breakfasts’,
inerrancy, televangelism – and ‘preacher’ (= a Protestant clergyman;
this term is only used generically in the U.S. so far as I know).

There’s also a strong African American flavor as
well (which is why someone like Marcus Garvey gets a guernsey.
Don’t know him? He was a black Jamaican who founded the Universal
Negro Improvement Association).

If you associated Sufism simply with whirling dervishes,
here’s something better: ‘What is Sufism? To feel joy in the heart
at the time of grief.’ Now think about that.

A few things are odd. Why something on Ezra and Job,
but not Isaiah or Jeremiah? Why does Simon Magus get more space
than apostles like Paul, John, James (and I can’t find Peter at
all: was there a Catholic on the team?). Why is there more about
a nineteenth century evangelist (DLMoody) than Billy Graham, who
may have spoken to more people face-to-face than anyone else in
history? And why more about Krishnamurti (18 lines) who advocated
no religions at all than the greatest Christian since Jesus, Francis
of Assisi (four lines)?

Why, about my country Australia, is there only stuff
about new religions and aboriginal/traditional religions? (Ned
Kelly – but not any Aus. religious leaders – is there somewhere).

And why is there more about every other religious
movement in Korea than the Pentecostals, who may be attracting
more people their churches (one of which is the largest in Christian
history) than all other religions there combined? Although Pentecostalism
may be the fastest-growing religion worldwide (200 million-plus),
they get only one page (and charismatics two short paras). In
the article on Christian worship there’s only passing reference
to the contemporary influence of ‘free worship’ styles. And why
34 lines for a nut like Jim Jones (People’s Temple)? Perhaps the
selection and weighting of some articles is media-driven: 900
mostly black Americans dying/suiciding in Guyana makes for interesting
TV/Time Magazine footage…

Now I feel a conspiracy theory coming on: why more
about Buddhas (5 and a bit pages) than Jesus Christ (four and
a bit)?

This book is indispensable if you’re a cross-cultural
missionary or YWAM’er or stocking a library – any library – or
if you’re a serious or amateur student of comparative religions.
There are brilliant articles on Sociologists of Religion – Durkheim
et. al. Best of all are the eleven ‘Feature Articles’ (Religions
of Antiquity, Japanese Religion, The Study of Religion, Religions
of Traditional Peoples, Buddhism, Chinese Religion, Christianity,
Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, New Religions).

So if your interest is Skakers or Shamans or Shape
shifting (the capacity to change bodily form at will) and lots
of other religious esoterica (which you never really needed to
know but you have too much time on your hands for much that is
important), here’s your book. Get it for your partner for Christmas,
so you can read it (but you’ll need to keep your partner for awhile:
there’s 1154 pages of summer-in-Oz/winter-in-northern climes reading
here). Ideal gift for someone interested in all matters religious
who talks too much.