It was 1958. Ten years before Sgt. Pepper. Twenty years before the ascension of Pope John Paul II to the throne of Peter. In 1958, Althea Gibson won Wimbledon, and two airlines, BOAC and Pan American, started transatlantic jet service between New York and London and Paris, respectively. In that year, a young professor of philosophy and religious studies in St. Louis not yet 40 years old, wrote this in the introduction to his new book: “We live in a fantastic century. . . Lands across the planet have become our neighbors, China across the street, the Middle East at our back door. . . We hear that East and West are meeting, but it is an understatement. They are being flung at one another, hurled with the force of atoms, the speed of the jet, the restlessness of minds impatient to learn the ways of others. . . When historians look back on our century, they may remember it most as the time when the peoples of the world first came to take one another seriously.”
The man was Huston Smith and the book was “The Religions of Man” -- retitled in 1991 “The World’s Religions.” A more comprehensive or prescient primer on religion has not yet been written. A book broader in scope -- 400-odd pages, one chapter each on humankind’s most ancient and enduring religions, the “wisdom traditions” -- cannot be imagined. It has sold three million copies in the U.S. alone, and it still goes to press three times a year. For five decades, any person finding him or herself interested in religion and unsure of where to turn has turned to Huston Smith.
The book holds up, and its datedness makes a contemporary reader long for its wide-ranging perspective: In 1958, at the peak of American religiosity, Smith was able to see how small the world was getting, but he could not foretell how narrow conversations on religion would become. He devoted fully half of his book to on religions we barely talk about outside of yoga class and meditation retreats. The first four chapters are, in order, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. Only then does the reader arrive at the slightly more comfortable destinations of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. This emphasis -- rather like looking at one of those world maps where the United States does not occupy the front, center spot -- serves as a reminder of how parochial our religious interests today are, how focused on conflict and competition over whose god is more true. Yes, more Americans people practice yoga today than in 1958, but how many devotees of Saturday afternoon “vinyasa” classes can name Hinduism’s four paths to god?
The second, related revelation has to do with Smith himself, and his approach to his subject -- his sweeping, ambitious tone, his astonishing breadth of knowledge -- harkens back to makes one nostalgic for a time when the “liberal arts” were in some sense sacred, when the academy was not so broken down into interest groups. Smith uses the primary sources, but he also confidently wraps Kierkegaard into his analysis of Hinduism and, in a throwaway line, compares Abraham Lincoln to the Buddha. In a discussion of Islamic views of polygamy, Smith cites a Dorothy Parker doggerel delicious enough to be repeated here: “Hoggledy higamous men are polygamous,/Higgledy hogamous women monogamous.” He’s not being flip; he’s just well read and good-humored enough to infuse his learning into every paragraph. Smith knows that the ins and outs of various religious doctrines make for boring reading; he doesn’t sweat the details, but when it comes to some of religion’s most powerful myths – as when Mohammed was is awakened in his cave by an angel commanding him to “Recite!” (or as Smith has it “Proclaim!”) -- he knows he’s hit pay dirt and his story telling is as vivid as any adventure movie.
For the introduction to his second edition, Smith dug up a note written to him by his editor in 1958. It said: “I have re-read your book several times over the summer. When you are an old man, I am certain you will look back on its author with a great deal of affection, admiration, and respect.” Smith is now 87, and that admiration and respect is all his.
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