A Little History of Religion

By: Richard Holloway

Narrated by: James Bryce

Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

In an era of hardening religious attitudes and explosive religious violence, this book offers a welcome antidote. Richard Holloway retells the entire history of religion - from the dawn of religious belief to the 21st century - with deepest respect and a keen commitment to accuracy.

Writing for those with faith and those without, and especially for young listeners, he encourages curiosity and tolerance, accentuates nuance and mystery and calmly restores a sense of the value of faith.

Ranging far beyond the major world religions of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism, Holloway also examines where religious belief comes from, the search for meaning throughout history, today's fascinations with Scientology and creationism, religiously motivated violence, hostilities between religious people and secularists and more.

Holloway proves an empathic yet discerning guide to the enduring significance of faith and its power from ancient times to our own.

©2016 Richard Holloway (P)2016 Audible, Ltd

Good Perspective

I learned a lot in this book and always appreciate learning about other religions. The most important thing i learned is how to answer the question of why there are so many sects of christianity, or religions in general. Groups of people join together to fight against a percieved injustice and then become their own tribe/culture who has their own way of understanding the world. The book ended with secular humanism. The book neither promoted religion or non religion but rather stated a history of comparison and patterns of human thinking/behavior inside religious worldviews and how the enlightenment and science affected religious thinkers and non religious thinkers alike.

Worth rewinding

I found it a fascinating listen. I was aware of the commonality of many religions ... the ten commandments were practiced, minus the silliness about god and the sabboth, long before Moses struck them in stone.

Good overview, easy listen

I really enjoyed this book and the narration. The flow of religious history between the chapters seemed really natural and the story was engaging. I can understand how people of some faiths might interpret the last few chapters as being negative against their particular faith group, but history is not emotional and if you listen with an ear towards what happened objectively, you won't feel snowflakey about it. Every major religion has killed people in the name of god. That's just a fact but the book ends with a choice, a promising choice of doing better. the language and history was simple enough in the writing that my children were able to pop in and out of the listening and able to ask questions about what they were hearing. I enjoyed the narrator's voice and would listen again. The reason I only gave this four stars though is that an entire religious movement from the mid 1800s to present day was omitted: paganism and its dominant form of Wicca. Thus far this is the only religion, besides Janeism, in which humans have never killed in the name of the faith and it would have been interesting to hear how that fit in with the larger movements of that era and how it has evolved. If there's ever an update that adds the pagan or the satanic movement I would gladly listen to that.

Just what I was seeking.

A nice introduction to the worlds predominate religions with only a little smatteting of bias.

Narration

The narration made the book better. The content was great. A ton of knowledge within a short period. But the narrator carried it home.

Wish they would've included the original religion of the slaves that were taken from Africa (ex. Yoruba) and the practices created from it (ex. Santeria)

Perfectly consice and detailed overview

I had long been looking for a book to fill the gaps in my knowledge about where religions come from and how did they intertwine in history.
This book gives a great and very objective overview of the origins, similarities, differences and human mixups in the stories of all the main religions. It does not prefer one to another nor glorify subscribing to religious denominations in general. And yet it manages to not be too academic or repetitive as some very objective books tend to be.

Recommend to anyone who wants a short but solid overview of religion(s) in an objective way. Very good from a storytelling perspective too and an awesome performance by James Bryce.

Excellent narration

Wonderful narrator and a story that weaves its subject matter together seamlessly makes for a perfect overview.

great overall view

fantastic book good when it needed to be detailed when it had to be. I highly recommend this as an overall view of many religions and the views that may or may not go with them very objective writing well done

Logical and rational

I enjoyed this little history of religion, just the right amount of detail and length to be a useful and enjoyable overview of the subject.

Good summary of religion

As the title suggests, this book is a short history of religion, but it has just enough information to cover the basis of most religions. It doesn't get very deep into specific events or details, but I feel like i can have a more insightful conversation with people of all religions. Good for beginners with no understanding of other religions.

More people should read this book to understand the similarities between everyone's beliefs.

The narrator is a little hard to understand with his accent and sounds like he whispers occasionally, but wasnt too bad once I got uses to it.