In my twenties I became aware that I had had very little in the way of religious education. A little bit of Sunday School when I was young and parents who believed in a higher being but never went to church. Grandma was a regular church-goer but Nan & Pop only went on special occasions. We were not expected to join them. My parents taught me how to recite The Lord’s Prayer when I was five and Sunday School taught me how to sing Amazing Grace. My main memory is a very unsatisfactory conversation I had with my Sunday School teacher (when I was 6 or 7) about the colouring-in sheet that depicted Jesus walking on water.
However, my adult reading journey often led me to characters and stories that required more than this basic understanding to truly appreciate what was going on, or what the author was trying to do.
It was my first reading of Brideshead Revisited that highlighted my lack of knowledge around Catholicism in particular. Friends who had grown up in Catholic families and gone to Catholic schools filled in some of the more personal details, but I still struggled to who believed what and why.
On the 15th April 1996 I purchased The Illustrated World’s Religions (1994).
I read it from cover to cover. It claimed to be a book that confined itself to the “theological claims” of each religion. It included chapters on Hinuism, Buddhism, Conficianism, Taoism, Islam, Judaim, Christianity and the Primal Religions.
The following year on the 12th October 1997, I purchased The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1997). I dipped into it a few times over the years, but by 2000 I had a personal computer at home, and when I wanted to know something I would Yahoo! it.
I haven’t looked inside either of these books for over a decade now.
(This) Authentic Life 