Remedial Christianity - Paul Alan Laughlin

This is the second "required reading" for the Lay Worship Leader course that I am currently taking. I have already submitted my formal response; but thought that I would just jot down a few of my thoughts on this book in a more informal format here.

This book was written as a textbook for a college religion course, and it reads very much like a textbook. There are chapters on the bible, the historical Jesus, the Christ of faith, sin, salvation, and the history of the church. As the cover implies, there is some humour inserted throughout, in the form of cartoons, some sarcasm, and by the pointing out of irony. It was well written, and over all is much more approachable than many textbooks that I read in my university years.

There wasn't much new for me in this book. I self-identify as a Liberal Christian, and this book is written from that perspective. I can see, however, that a person with Fundamentalist beliefs might be very upset at some of the things written in this book.

My biggest complaint with this book is actually expressed in the subtitle. The full name of this book is Remedial Christianity: What Every Believer Should Know about the Faith, but Probably Doesn't. There was actually not much in this book that I didn't already know, and I found that the author's tone was quite condescending at times.

But overall, it was an enjoyable read; though I'm glad that I was reading it over the holidays when I had more time to concentrate on it. It wouldn't make good bedtime reading! A more enjoyable read for sure, than the last book I read for this course. I'm taking a bit of a fiction break now before tackling the next required reading - watch for another post later this week!