Religion: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #669

by Thomas A Tweed

Religion plays a central role in human experience. Billions of people around the world practice a faith and act in accordance with it. Religion shapes how they enter the world and how they leave it - how they eat, dress, marry, and raise their children. It shapes their assumptions about who
they are and who they want to be. Religion also identifies insiders and outsiders, who has power and who doesn't. It sanctifies injustice and combats it. It draws national borders. It affects law, economy, and government. It destroys and restores the environment. It starts wars and ends them.
Whether you notice it or not, religion plays a role in how billions conduct their lives. We are called, then, to understand this important factor in human life today.

Beginning with the first signs of religion among ancient humans and concluding with a look at modern citizens and global trends, leading scholar Thomas Tweed examines this powerful and enduring force in human society. Tweed deftly documents religion as it exists around the world, addressing its role
in both intensifying and alleviating contemporary political and environmental problems, from armed conflict to climate change. Religion: A Very Short Introduction offers a concise non-partisan overview of religion's long history and its complicated role in the world today.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, Theology

168 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2020

Reviews

[Raphael Lysander · Rating 1 out of 5]

I learned nothing from this book. Merely a six grade description of the world's major five religions with lots of errors.

[Ryan Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

As I always say, this series is hit-and-miss. And this one is a miss. The author spends the first chapter developing an ultimately unsatisfying definition of religion. Then he wanders around the idea of religion with some rather random examples of how it is lived and talked about. It ends with two chapters taking us from the Neolithic to the modern Information Age finding rather tangential examples of religion interacting with other cultural and political phenomena in world history.

Having read this, I would say that I feel no better informed about what religion is, why humans have developed it, and how people live it than I was before reading this.

[Henry Sandridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up from the store with the goal to understand more about religion as a whole since I didn't know much. The book read more like a manual or a textbook, so if I was studying for a class, this might be a good read, but I wasn't, so a lot of the material wasn't super purposeful for me. I would recommend for people super into religion looking to see how religions across the world are formed and operate.

[Bill Tyne · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a short introduction to Religion in the same way that a book on album cover design is an introduction to music, or a book on the history of exterior architecture is an introduction to interior decor. The "says nothing" opening chapter, that culminates in a convoluted definition of religion laden with words culled from the sixth form handbook of trendy po-mo signifiers, is the closest this volume gets to actually approaching its subject. Most of the book is a half-arsed sociological treatise on the passage of humanity through hunter-gathers to the digital age via farming and industrial revolutions with passing reference to religion's role. As with so many books in the field of cultural commentary, there is a strong and uncritical riding of the present milieu's favourite hobby horses (think emphasise bad colonialist, capitalist, Westerners and Christians and good Buddhist, shamens etc and you get the idea). Often this whole exercise comes across as "this is what I think and I'm right", where we are expected to take so many statements at face value.
To sum, this is not only a book about religion that fails to explore religion in any meaningful way, it also fails in its historical and sociological analysis of religion. One of, if not the worst volume the VSI team have let slip pass their editors.

[Josiah Richardson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was ok. Tweed gives a brief overview of the major religions out there, and because it is a very short introduction there is a lot that falls through the cracks. I think this works well as a historical primer to the world's religions, but not much more than that. Don't look for any depth reading on doctrines and dogmas of the major religions because you won't find that. Additionally, the book is chalk full of religious pluralism. The author may say he was just trying to be unbiased, but any good cook should be able to call out what the soup of the day lacks.

[Bryce Marshall · Rating 3 out of 5]

When it says, "A Very Short Introduction", it means it. I shouldn't fault a book for doing exactly what it says it's going to do, but here we are. I'd still recommend it to anyone looking for "A Very Short Introduction", but with the warning that that is exactly what they'll get. Also, I was hoping for a map of how one religion influenced the rest by date and invention but that's not what this book promised or delivered.

[Jeff Liu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly really boring. Thomas Tweed spends spends the first chapter offering (too many) various definitions of religion offered by scholars. Tweed's offers his own definition of religion, which is way too convoluted to be useful. The middle chapters are esoteric sociolagical factoids about the world's religions. Things get mildly interesting in chapters 4 and 5, where he gives a very broad overview of the the history of the world's major religions.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a solid introduction to religious studies. I used the first chapter with my students to begin a course on the global history of ancient religions and it worked well with them. The other chapters are also great summaries and provide excellent real world examples to utilize when understanding religion as a practice, history, tradition, and emotional current.

[Mahender Singh · Rating 3 out of 5]

A primer on Religion but as usual of any Western writer, too West centric.
Another flaw of this book is this that in name of discussing religion, he is discussing more of politics and history though it is agreed that there are no clear cut boundaries.
Lastly, attributing IT revolution to religion is too much to bear.

[Some Guy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It insists upon itself. Jokes aside, I felt like this was kinda pretentious, spent too much time on definitions but didn’t really arrive anywhere satisfactory. Scope was maybe too broad for the length.

[Jacabaeus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative and frames many of the issues in religious studies in a way I hadn't considered before. However, it is a tough read that made me quite exhausted after only reading a few pages.

[Taylor Swift Scholar · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, this is the worst very short introduction I’ve read so far. It was boring and I didn’t learn anything. At least it didn’t take long.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

A Western-centric conventional rehash of older propaganda.

[Michael Buttner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sparse. Longwinded. Pedantic.