Understanding Other Religions

Globalization and high-speed communication put twenty-first century people in contact with adherents to a wide variety of world religions, but usually, valuable knowledge of these other traditions is limited at best. On the one hand, religious stereotypes abound, hampering a serious exploration of unfamiliar philosophies and practices. On the other hand, the popular idea that all religions lead to the same God or the same moral life fails to account for the distinctive origins and radically different teachings found across the world’s many religions. Understanding World Religions presents religion as a complex and intriguing matrix of history, philosophy, culture, beliefs, and practices. Hexham believes that a certain degree of objectivity and critique is inherent in the study of religion, and he guides readers in responsible ways of carrying this out. Of particular importance is Hexham’s decision to explore African religions, which have frequently been absent from major religion texts. He surveys these in addition to varieties of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

"This book articulates a learning process to help educators improve approaches to other religious traditions. Understanding Other Religious Worlds distinguishes between learning facts about other religions and understanding them and their followers in a wholistic manner. Berling argues that incorporating the religious "other" in one's own Christian identity is integral to living an authentic Christian life."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Understanding other religions is no longer an academic, ivory tower exercise. In this timely and important book, Dr, Braswell provides an introduction to the major world religions, as well as many of the minor ones.

A cutting-edge introduction to contemporary religious studies theory, connecting theory to data This innovative coursebook introduces students to interdisciplinary theoretical tools for understanding contemporary religiously diverse societies—both Western and non-Western. Using a case-study model, the text considers: A wide and diverse array of contemporary issues, questions, and critical approaches to the study of religion relevant to students and scholars A variety of theoretical approaches, including decolonial, feminist, hermeneutical, poststructuralist, and phenomenological analyses Current debates on whether the term "religion" is meaningful Many key issues about the study of religion, including the insider-outsider debate, material religion, and lived religion Plural and religiously diverse societies, including the theological ideas of traditions and the political and social questions that arise for those living alongside adherents of other religions Understanding Religion is designed to provide a strong foundation for instructors to explore the ideas presented in each chapter in multiple ways, engage students in meaningful activities in the classroom, and integrate additional material into their lectures. Students will gain the tools to apply specific methods from a variety of disciplines to analyze the social, political, spiritual, and cultural aspects of religions. Its unique pedagogical design means it can be used from undergraduate- to postgraduate-level courses.

Examining other religions provides Christians the opportunity to more deeply understand their own beliefs. Learning about other religions is not the same as learning from other religions, which can have great value to Christians who wish to strengthen their faith. In this book's ten easy-to-read chapters, Wogaman shows readers what Christians can learn from different religions, such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and even from atheism. From these religions Christians can achieve insight into love, sin, ritual, the importance of myth to convey truth, the foundational roots of Christianity, the dark side of Christian history, and many other important ways to see and interpret the world and to understand God. The book concludes with a chapter on what other religions can learn from Christianity. Perfect for church study groups, each chapter ends with questions for discussion.

Because religion is so central to the lives and experience of the vast majority of people throughout the world, it figures very prominently in a variety of ways in interhuman relations. Unfortunately, ‘religion’ often appears to be one of the potent sources of mistrust, discord and strife between and among individuals, groups and cultures. What frequently lies at the root of such suspicion and dissension is general ignorance concerning the religious other, a lack of knowledge about his or her beliefs, aspirations and views of the good and morally honorable life. And even if people have some factual knowledge about other religions, they regularly display little understanding of them and their adherents. Learning both to know and understand people of other faiths and their religions is absolutely requisite to the realization of paradigms of coherent and intelligent ‘convivance,’ that is, living together in sensible, peaceable and cooperative harmony. An effective agency for fostering such knowledge and understanding is the discipline of theology of religions, which examines how religions have and ought to view other religions. And it is particularly the practice of comparative theology of religions which bears the most promise in this regard. The present symposium consists of precisely this kind of comparative exercise and may be viewed as an important contribution to the development of a new project which endeavors to enlarge the horizon and broaden the focus and reflection of theology of religions as that has been gradually developed during the last few decades, a new enterprise, in other words, which seeks to universalize and mutualize theology-of-religions discourse. One of the important things this volume shows is that the views religions have of other religions differ from one another in very substantial ways, which is explained by the fact that they derive from diverging paradigms of faith, belief and ritual and specific cultural and social contexts. This textbook demonstrates how strongly different Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto and Confucian views are from those of Islam, Judaism and Christianity, which latter in turn also exhibit considerable differences among themselves. These differences are greater than people immersed in their own cultures often realize or expect. It is becoming ever more clear that ignorance of or disinclination to acknowledge or refusal to accept these real differences constitute major root causes of serious conflicts in the world. The essays in this book, written by representatives of the major world religions, offer descriptive and/or prescriptive appraisals of other religions in general or one other religion in particular from the perspective of the religion of the author concerned. It is hoped that this unique exercise in intercultural theology of religions will generate insights and new forms of understanding which can be used by religious leaders and other educators to help correct the disposition toward religious haughtiness, insularity and communalism and the dangerous leanings toward interreligious suspicion, antipathy and animosity which are all too often evident in our contemporary societies.

Friendship is an outcome of, as well as a condition for, advancing interfaith relations. However, for friendship to advance, there must be legitimation from within and a theory of how interreligious relations can be justified from the resources of different faith traditions. Friendship Across Religions explores these very issues, seeking to develop a robust theory of interreligious friendship from the resources of each of the participating traditions. It also features individual cases as models and precedents for such relations—in particular, the friendship of Gandhi and Charlie Andrews, his closest personal friend. Contributors: Balwant Singh Dhillon, Timothy J. Gianotti, Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Maria Reis Habito, Ruben L. F. Habito, Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Stephen Butler Murray, Eleanor Nesbitt, Anantanand Rambachan, Meir Sendor, Johann M. Vento, and Miroslav Volf