As the title suggests, the author examines the crisis that’s worldwide in the institutional religions, east and west, north and south. Formerly a Catholic priest and currently a social psychologist and counselor, he examines the distinction between religion and spirituality.

His studies in anthropology revealed that 70,000 years before the major religions were formed, humans have been grappling with religious questions. As a psychologist he is aware of the spiritual hunger in all people that manifests itself in a search for meaning in life.

In this book he argues that we are born as spiritual people and history points to the inhibition of this spirituality by the institutional religions. Spirituality is an innate endowment whereas religion is an inherited cultural wisdom.

He finds disturbing how prevalent is the popular notion that civilization began 5,000 years ago. Before that everything was barbaric, primitive, illiterate and unenlightened. Since we humans in our present state have been around 200,000 years, modern religions seem to suggest that God was twiddling His divine thumbs before that. The on-going savagery propagated in cultures of today’s formal religions – Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu illustrates the irony of those 5,000 years of civilization. History clearly points the finger at the emerging dominance of patriarchy that drained the spirituality out of human cultures and transformed religion into a human invention.

The author compels the reader to take another look at the major religions and their beginnings.