Exploring The Spirituality Of The World Religions

Introduction to the spiritual pathways of the major world religions, exploring the core beliefs, values and practices of each tradition.

This book is an insightful guide to the diverse ways that religious faith is practiced and spirituality is understood. Discussing contemporary issues such as post-modernism and the emergence of a "new paradigm," the new realities of geopolitics, globalization and global warming, this book explores the importance of religion in people's lives to provide direction in the society today. This book demonstrates the common quest among the world religions for a deeper and more profound spirituality. Describing the spiritual pathways of the various world religions, it assesses the ways that the beliefs, values and practices of these traditions can be life-giving, leading to personal and social responsibility and transformation, but also sometimes harmful and divisive, even used for dangerous purposes. --From publisher's description.

Now in its third edition, this is the most comprehensive work available on the rich variety of paths available to today's spiritual seekers. More than an academic reference, it explores how religions can collaborate to help the world. Essays exploring the realm of building an interfaith community add to the book's detailed portraits of the major religious traditions. The Sourcebook also contains essays on spiritual practices as diverse as theosophy, wicca, and indigenous religions. This revised edition of the Sourcebook offers an unparalleled look at where spirituality is headed in the coming millennium.

In this indispensable reference tool for parents, students, and pastors alike, Larson analyzes dozens of world religions and spiritual movements from Islam to UFOs, New Age movements to witchcraft. This volume helps address tough questions from a biblical perspective.

Drawing on experience as an interreligious monk, Brother Wayne Teasdale reveals the power of spirituality and its practical elements. He combines a profound Christian faith with an intimate understanding of ancient religious traditions.

Humans tend to think and react in predetermined ways to trigger words, trigger situations and rituals, though the trigger and the reaction may have no apparent or logical interrelationships whatsoever. Seeing through such conditioned responses is the aim and purpose of this work. Thanks to our long gestation period, human beings are the most conditioned of animals. Though conditioning is very useful in most situations-for example, in learning how to dress-some conditioning, like racism, warps our minds and leads to avoidable conflicts and conflagrations. Author Xavier William believes that this distorted or warped conditioning is evident in many aspects of ordinary life, including: · Economics and politics · Ethics, morals and values · Religions and Superstitions · Traditions and taboos · Alternate medicines · Environmental issues · Sex and family relationships World Religions, True Beliefs And New Age Spirituality seeks to decondition and dewarp our minds from harmful doctrines, dogmas, and Parental and ethnic conditioning. In so doing, William argues, that violence and bloodshed can be significantly reduced or even eradicated. By employing clear-think and self-talk techniques, human beings can steer clear off the ruts of habitual or rhythmic thinking. With the rare insights in World Religions, True Beliefs And New Age Spirituality, people from seemingly incompatible ethnic backgrounds can build win-win relationships and a better world for all.

Exploring one of the most controversial topics in contemporary theology, this scholarly volume reveals what the world's great faiths—East and West—preach about sexuality, with a special emphasis on American religion. What do the world's most important religious texts have to say about one of humanity's favorite activities? Editors David W. Machacek and Melissa M. Wilcox have brought together top scholars in the field of religious studies to ask and answer these critical questions. Carefully researched, elegantly written, and respectfully presented, Sexuality and the World's Religions explores the intersection of the spiritual and the carnal in Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and African and Native American spiritual traditions. A separate section explores critical religious and sexual topics in American society, including the role of spirituality in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities; the role of sex in the modern witchcraft community; and the ever thorny problem of religion and sexual liberty. Reconciling sexuality and spirituality in every human soul is one of religion's most important tasks. Students and other readers will find this timely and comprehensive volume of interest in exploring these issues.