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David W. Shenk

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Global Gods: Exploring the Role of Religions in Modern Societies Paperback – September 8, 1995

by David W. Shenk (Author)

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David W. Shenk looks at world religions and ideologies from the viewpoint of a Christian experienced in interfaith dialogue. Global Gods explores ten religious or ideoogical options, including African traditional religion, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, the European Enlightenment, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Marxism, and Platonism. The author honestly assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each major stream. And he interacts with sophisticated currents of thought while keeping his presentation clear and accessible.

Global Gods contributes to the growing conversation about the role of religion and ideology in society. In an increasingly pluralistic world, the issues Shenk explores are not only theoretical but have practical urgency.

Selected by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association as one of the top five missions/evangelism books (1996).

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Though the title here suggests that this is a freshman college textbook on comparative religions, it is actually an overt Christian investigation of the strengths and weaknesses of Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Maxism, and, to a smaller extent, Hinduism and the African religions. The author's approach is nonsystematic, and his personal observations and experiences are interwoven throughout the text, making it seem as if the book was compiled from lectures. His treatment of the tenets of each faith is factual and by and large fair, though not especially revealing or insightful. Read as a Christian's ecumenical introduction to other faiths, the book is adequate for the job but will disappoint all but the most general readers.
Glenn Masuchika, Chaminade Univ. Lib., Honolulu
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

One of the risks involved in writing a survey of world religions is that necessarily cursory treatment of complex traditions will give way to unnecessarily dismissive treatment. Shenk seems conscious of that, and his consciousness lends a valuable sensitivity to this work. But it does not rescue him entirely from dismissiveness. This is a missionary book, written from a clearly Christian perspective. That does not make it less valuable, but it does define and locate its value. Global Gods will appeal to Christians who, though they wish to be more informed in encounter with other religious options, do not wish to fully embrace pluralism. The author accords global status to four options--Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Marxism--and generally assumes the global reach of a fifth, capitalism. That the fifth is assumed compromises the critical effectiveness of the survey but, again, does not make it less valuable. In a curious way, it may prove most useful to non-Christians who wish to understand the missionary impulse of globally conscious Christians who sojourn uncomfortably in the midst of diversity and engage in only sporadic criticism of the "warm god" of global capitalism. Steve Schroeder