Reviews for Healing and Religion (Hisarlik Studies in Contemporary Religion)

The average rating for Healing and Religion (Hisarlik Studies in Contemporary Religion) based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-03-04 00:00:00 Valentina Vujosevic Sinclair is a passionate and articulate advocate, and I enjoy his rhetoric on behalf of working people and against social inequality. The main thrust of his argument, however, is that religion, as it now exists, (or more accurately as it then existed) is nothing more than a tool used to keep the oppressed from rising up against a wealthy class that the religious leaders represent. It is an argument that I might have found compelling in my youth. In fact, when I was in high school I wrote a cheeky essay on how the church as a big business that was interested in protecting its profits. It was full of quotations and clever arguments, and I got an A on it in my English class. So in arguing against Sinclair, I am also arguing against my junior year self. Sinclair makes the mistake of assuming that there is a single entity in the world called "religion" that can be replaced with a new religion of justice and equality that mirrors his socialist idealism. He imagines that all religion is in the business of making money and consolidating power, while the religion of social equality does not exist now, only in a utopian future. Of course the reality is much more muddy. Churches modeled on the ideal of social justice exist along side churches that encourage support of the status quo.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-03-02 00:00:00 Janet Kirks Socialist and agnostic, Mr. Sinclair has little good to say about religion, ancient or modern. He puts forth his social agenda in strong words and appeals to reason as the ultimate authority. He points out the worst in the churches and accuses all religion and religionists as the principle supporter(s) of keeping the poor and the wage-slave in their place. He pokes fun at every belief from Spiritualism to Mormonism (there he didn't get his facts entirely straight but I give him a B- for effort). His prophetic pronouncements on the future of Socialism didn't come to pass - he wasn't that great of a a prophet himself. But I think his heart was in the right place, wanting to lift people out of the grind of poverty and fear.