Review of Stephen Prothero’s “God Is Not One”

As I’ve taught at Hillcrest, believers have the task of being good neighbors and good communicators at the same time. Stephen Prothero will help you learn to be a good neighbor—and he will get you halfway to being a good communicator.

That requires some explanation.

Stephen Prothero’s work is a refreshing change in the academic field of religious studies. The field has been dominated by the notion that all religions are just different paths up the same mountain (see Karen Armstrong, Huston Smith, and Wayne Dyer, for examples). None of us who take our faith seriously have been satisfied with that inadequate treatment of faith issues. Though that approach is viewed as the best route to religious toleration, Stephen Prothero is right to regard this approach as “dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue.”

In new book, God is Not One, the Boston University religion professor shows how the world’s religions ask very different questions, tackle very different problems, and aim at very different goals. Climbing up the same mountain? Hardly. “If practitioners of the world’s religions are all mountain climbers,” he writes, “then they are on very different mountains, climbing very different peaks, and using very different tools and techniques in their ascents.”

Each religion articulates:

• a problem: an explanation of what is wrong with the world
• a solution: the religion’s goal
• a technique (or techniques): things that have to be done from moving from this problem to this solution
• an exemplar (or exemplars) who chart this path from problem to solution

Prothero uses this four-part approach to succinctly introduce eight religions: Islam, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Yoruba Religion (from which offshoots like voodoo come), Judaism, and Daoism, with a brief coda on the “religion” of atheism.

Prothero’s book is not a critique of the various religious claims so much as it is a celebration of them. In each chapter, he serves as an appreciative tour guide, helping the reader to understand why a particular ritual or perspective is so meaningful to the adherents.

And that is why his book will help in your task of being a good neighbor—and it will get you halfway toward being a good communicator.

Believers are to be good neighbors, seeking “the peace and prosperity of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7). We are to work for our neighbors’ good, regardless of whether they convert to Christianity or even express polite interest in it. At the same time, we are to be good communicators of the gospel.  The promise of God’s forgiveness and presence through Jesus is a promise not only “for you and your children” but also “for all who are far off” (Acts 2:39).

It is impossible to be good neighbors and good communicators without understanding, and I highly recommend reading Prothero’s book to that end. However, believers who want to be good communicators must also know how to assess and not simply appreciate the alternate religious views among their friends. Christians would say that other religions do not adequately explain the human inability to overcome our personal and corporate faults, or the personal nature of a God who both hates our sin and yet loves us. All of this was so perfectly demonstrated in the biblical account of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, which is the Christian communicator’s constant touchstone.

Prothero’s book was not designed to help you critique the world’s religions, and you will want to add other books to your bookshelf for that purpose (for example, Winfried Corduan’s Neighboring Faiths, a review of the world’s religions from a Christian perspective.) But he can help you in the task of appreciating the convictions that are so important to those from other faiths. To that end, Prothero’s God is Not One should be on the bookshelf of every mission-minded believer.