The problem is these are very good books. Oh yes, that is a problem—because a book with the title The Bible for Dummies sounds like a punch line for some petty, mean spirited joke. Even more so Catholicism for Dummies or Islam for Dummies; as if either Catholicism or Islam are for idiots or that rich theological learning has been dumbed down.
But nothing could be further from the truth. The Idiot Guides and Dummies books are often well written by specialists in the field. Religion for Dummies is written by a rabbi and a monsignor who are famous as The God Squad in the States. They have produced a very good book on comparative religions—in less than 400, easy to read pages, filled with cartoons, bad puns, little boxy sidebars and quaint fonts, the reader will come away with a working knowledge of a half dozen major world religions and also of some indigenous beliefs.
In less than 30 pages, in the same book, the reader gets a thumbnail sketch of the birth, life and death rituals of a dozen faiths. It's breezy, of course, but that doesn't make it dumb. There are 31 books on religion and spirituality in the Idiot's Guides catalogue; about 20 in Dummies. None of them will get you a PhD in the subject but very few of us have seven spare years despite our constant thirst for deeper understanding of faith and spirituality. We need something simple and smart.
Simple, smart, sure, but these books read like music videos. Short chapters, bits of this and that here and there, lots of non-sequiters, all of which somehow accumulates into a narrative. This is the language of cartoons, of video games—in fact of many things associated with visual media, including web sites. Sure there are words in these books, and after all we old folk who grew up on words can make sense of words, but these books aren't written in the old fashioned language of words.
They are designed in the language of today. Not surprising since these series started out as how-to books on computers and computer programs. There are lots of little tid-bits you need to know to understand how to create a Flash film: you can't use a drop-down menu unless you know what it is. So, the how-to book has a little box on the side explaining the terms being used. That was the template. And while there are still lots of how-to-do-things titles, there are increasingly how-to-be titles emerging.
And there is nothing more how-to-be than religion—it has the patent on the theme. Spirituality for Dummies is the perfect example. Take it seriously and it will prove a serious book; it is simple in its language and its process but not simpleminded. It is well written and nicely balances a lot of different spiritual traditions, including Christianity. It might make a very good study guide for a group. That could be said of several of these books.
Still, given that there are nearly two thousand of these Idiot and Dummies books, including titles on Scrapbooking and Being Psychic they lend themselves to being mocked. Anything ubiquitous quickly sinks to public contempt. So, perhaps that is why Christianity for Dummies sounds so wrong.
Or perhaps it's something else. We are easily humbled by technology (and golf) but when it comes to our faith we rarely express humility. Father John Triglio, who co-authored the book on Catholicism and also Women in the Bible for Dummies made the point in an online interview that St. Paul used the phrase “fools for Christ. The actual word in the Greek, if you translate it literally, means morons. Nobody gets bent out of shape that St. Paul is calling them a moron.”
Make no mistake, however: Christianity for Dummies is no Marcus Borg. But then as an intelligent well-read friend recently said to me, “I don't know what he's trying to say.” She might need to become a dummy, or an idiot. Spirituality for Dummies begins by reminding us that the first step towards wisdom is to realize we know nothing. And maybe, just maybe, that's the real problem.
