 |
|
Angels and Demons is an exploration of the spiritual realm that separates God and humans. Most of the chapters are the product of the 2004 and 2005 conferences of the Religion, Culture and Communication Group of the Tyndale Fellowship. The Fellowship was founded in 1944, at a time when many conservative Christians failed to see any need for ‘biblical and theological research’, and when many academics were skeptical about whether committed Christians could engage in such research with intellectual integrity.
All the contributors are Christian scholars and most write as detached observers of the religious traditions they are describing, although a few include their own personal experiences.
Each chapter of the book is able to either stand alone or be read in conjunction with the others. There is a lot of detail so the reader really does require at least a good basic knowledge of the religious traditions which are being written about. The chapters cover Traditional African Religion, African Pentecostalism, Charismatic Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam (including oral and folk traditions). However, the last two chapters covering ‘Satanism and the heavy-metal subculture’ and ‘Angels and Demons in Western pop culture’, although interesting and informative don’t seem to quite fit with the rest of the book.
The book is successful in presenting a sound academic text but what is a great shame is the absence of some religious traditions: Catholic Christianity, modern Judaism, Buddhism and Sikhism from the book. Although this is acknowledged in the introduction it does seem that the book therefore fails to live up to its subtitle of ‘...diverse religious traditions’.
Rosemary Morton
|
The United Reformed Church is not responsible for the content of external websites.
|
