John Richards (2) (1939–)

I found this book to be well balanced and well written. I have been reading and have read several books on the demonic dimension of pastoral care and have found many of them to be either in a state of denial or in process of naming everything to a demonic force. This book faults on neither side. John Richards does a good job in talking about a topic you can tell is personal yet at the same time riddled with statistics. However, there are a few things I did not like about the book. The first and most prominent is its age. I know that all classics stand the test of time, and I feel that this one has done a good job of that, however, when speaking of what modern psychology and other scientific fields offer, I feel that some of these are in desperate need of updating, I feel it is important to see if these numbers and thus his conclusions still ring true. The second thing that I did not like about this book dealt with his theology. Now I know that he is Anglican and so will be different than me (a Lutheran), but that being said for most of the book he very clearly was trying to stay away from making clear cut theological positions and was emphasizing more the facts of the matter. It seemed that in the last true chapter on places he fell from this and began to rely, not much more, but more heavily on his own theology.
With all of this being said, I would definitely place this on a must read for anyone planing on starting up deliverance ministry or just curious about the truthfulness of some spiritual claims.… (mere)