This Dark World: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost

Rating:
Summary: Insight into Fundamentalism
Review: I found "This Dark World" to be insightful and inspiring. Ms. Briggs presents an interesting, inside-out view of fundamentalist religion. She does this from the perspective of a conversion to fundamentalism, and then a slow but powerful enlightenment as she discovers chinks and inconsistencies in the armor of zealous religious faith.

A fast and easy read, this book left several impressions on me. It presented a believable (true, actually) account of how Christian religious fervor can lead otherwise intelligent people to behave irrationally for months or years. Second, it provided an inspiring example of one woman's successful struggles to find herself, her own voice, and finally her independence despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles and obligations.

As I watch and listen to recent world news, particularly the events in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other middle-eastern Islamic states, I find myself thinking back to Ms. Brigg's story. She embraced Christianity, while the people cited in the newspapers appear to embrace Islam. But the parallels are striking: young people, difficult lives, and over-arching reliance on strict dogma to guide and justify their actions. The empathy Ms. Briggs evokes for her former plight has helped me to understand, at least in a small way, the susceptibility of people to religious dogma.

I whole-heartedly recommend Ms. Briggs' book. I found it interesting, insightful, and, unexpectedly, a useful tool for understanding another side of the human experience.

Rating:
Summary: Good Read, but ...
Review: I found the book an interesting read because it relates well to the things I went through as a Jehovah's Witness. Like the author, higher education became my conduit during exile from "the Truth."

I think the book ended abruptly, and left some issues dangling. However, it's a memoir of where the author is at the time she wrote the story. I hope she writes another memoir in a few years so readers can follow her next spiritual and life stages.

John Shelby Spong has an insightful book that goes beyond the stage of exiting a spiritual path, to discovering God anew. It's a great follow up after reading, "This Dark World." Spong's new book is called, "A New Christianity for a New World."

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: If I had known how anticlimactically this book would end, I wouldn't have wasted any time on reading it. I was hoping to learn how the author discovered that her religion was based on a false foundation and what effects that discovery had on her. Instead it turns out that she ran out of passion for her hardworking and apparently very decent husband and decided to divorce him, after letting him put her through seven years of school. In order to reconcile this decision with her conscience, she had to dump "God" too. A more feeble reason for giving up a religion that has been the framework of one's life for twenty years can hardly be imagined.

My other sentiments concerning this book have already been ably expressed by other reviewers, and I should perhaps add that I am an atheist.