ISBN 0-87975-654-3 Published 1991 by Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY
Books about the LDS Church are few and far between on English library shelves, so I was particularly pleased to chance across this interesting and readable offering from America. The Book is subtitled, 'Corruption, Scandal and the Mormon Empire', and within it's pages some truly disturbing stories about the Salt lake City faithful emerge.
To quote the books cover, it includes stories of, "...massive investment scams, which bilked gullible investors out of thousands of dollars, a phony child-adoption syndicate, which fraudulently offered Mexican children to childless Mormon couples, a notorious racket in forged Mormon artifacts, which ended in two murders, accusations of child sexual abuse against the pillars of the Mormon community, discrimination by a Mormon elite in the FBI against Hispanic agents, and, perhaps most controversial, the Mormon-NASA connection and the political favoritism that contributed to the Challenger shuttle explosion".
Not a book which tries to rubbish the Mormon faith, but more a book which shows how the Mormon faithful shoot themselves in the foot!
ISBN 0-340-56906-9 Published 1993 by Hodder & Stoughton
A cute little book, more anecdotal than factual, it records Ysenda's countrywide travels within the Anglican Church. For people like myself, who know little about the workings of the church, it is doubly interesting, but it's great merit lies in the easy, but uncompromising, style of writing where the uncertainties within the Anglican community are laid bare. A gentle snapshot, warts and all, of a church in crisis.
ISBN 0-06-066711-7 Published 1981 by Harper & Row, San Francisco.
I usually shun pro-Christian books because they are shallow and assume a degree of faith in the reader already. That's a shame because, as I found out when I attended an Alpha Course, there are some excellent and well thought out arguments in favor of Christianity.
It is, in fact, through Alpha that I first became interested in Lewis. Lewis is a different sort of Christian because he believes, and tries to demonstrate, that there are logical reasons to believe in God/Jesus and that it does not have to just come down to faith.
Anyone who claims to be an atheist should have read and be able to dismiss Lewis's arguments, which are eloquently set out in this book.
ISBN 0006280544 Published 1997.
Lewis presents an almost compelling case for Christianity in this, perhaps his most famous non-fiction work. Originally a compilation of talks given on radio, Mere Christianity was originally published in three parts between 1942 and 1944.
It is persuasive stuff and his arguments for the existence of God have undoubtedly stripped me of a couple of my arguments to the contrary.
But I didn't have to read for long to find myself deeply at odds with Lewis on several core issues, both theological and moral. For starters, Lewis famously asserts that anyone who claimed the things that Christ claimed, "was and is the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse...let us not come up with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us, He didn't intend to".
This is, as any serious atheist knows, utter tosh. The words of Christ are contained in only one place; a much discredited and largely edited book called the Bible, so the option remains that he should be seen as a great human teacher who's teachings were hijacked and changed.
On other issues, Lewis's Christian opinions run the full gambit from ill-informed (marriage), through repulsive (homosexuality) to deeply inhumane (capital punishment).
Having said that, if more Christians viewed their faith in the same way as Lewis did, then they may be slightly less scary.
© Religious Truth 2001