Defining Religion | 2: PowerPoint

You know that thing they say about buses – you wait ages for one and then two arrive at once? Well, by what some might call a mysterious and inexplicable coincidence, the same seems to be true of PowerPoint Presentations on religion.

Having seen neither hide nor hair of anything vaguely religious-looking on the site for ages, along came Defining Religion, to be followed in quick order by Defining Religion | 2 – about which you’ll probably be wanting to know a bit more before you download it.

So, where the first Presentation laid the groundwork by outlining three basic aspects of religion (Beliefs, Practices and Organisation), Part 2 digs quite a bit deeper by looking at three more complex areas:

• religious diversity
• inclusive approaches
• exclusive approaches.

For the sake of continuity between the two Presentations, this second part continues with the Timeline format, where information slides on and off the screen like a thing that slides. While the basic navigation system is the same across both Presentations, Part 2 adds a new feature whereby moving the mouse pointer to the left or right edge of the screen automatically moves the Presentation forward or, indeed, backward.

As ever, you’ve got a range of download options, from the standard PowerPoint Presentation (.pptx) you can use if you have later versions of the program (2019, 365…) and want to see how it all works, to the PowerPoint Show (.ppsx) version you can use if you just want a Presentation that auto-runs without the need for the main PowerPoint program. As an added bonus there’s also a version that has background music.

Although you may be thankful this only runs when the main menu’s onscreen.