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WORLD RELIGION WITH A SLANT
BELIEFS
By Reuel S. Amdur

John Tory opened the religious can of worms during the last
election, much to his regret. Now Dalton McGuinty is doing the
same. Bill Davis extended the Separate school system to Grade 13
and the Tories went on to lose the next election. Religion is, even
in this day and age, a touchy subject.
While we are less observant as a country than in the past and
certainly less than our neighbors to the south, religion still
weighs heavily, at least as a cultural phenomenon. Yet, our
religious literacy is nothing to write home about. Since 9/11,
many people have been trying to find out more about Islam, and
books on the subject have been flying off store shelves. Some
authors have gone beyond the current focus on Islam to attempt
to interest the reading public in a broader examination of
religions.
John Bowker’s book is an effort to give the general reader a
glimpse at religions around the world. He is a British professor of
religious studies who has taught at universities on both sides of
the ocean. He was editor of the Oxford Dictionary of World
Religions and the author of a number of other tomes.
This current volume demonstrates his wide learning. He ends
with a brief, thoughtful conclusion about truth and religion. Truth
can, he says, be verified in one of two ways: internal consistency
or concurrence with external reality. To the extent that the
system is closed, focusing only on consistency, we have the
danger of fanaticism. He warns us that when “non-negotiable
certainties” are “tied to beliefs that ‘the end of the world’ is a
prospect fully justified within a particular circle of coherence, and
when the available means extend to chemical, biological and
nuclear weapons of mass destruction, we have reason to be
apprehensive.” One thinks of Osama bin Laden and of Christian
Zionists, who hanker after Armageddon, but these are not matters

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