Comparative Religion category: 1410 books

September 11, 2001, was a tragic introduction for many Americans to Muslims and the religion of Islam. Americans have many questions about Islam but most have not studied the issue in depth. Today, Lions and Rotary clubs invite speakers on Islam, university campuses sponsor lectures on Islam and churches...

“In every generation, there are always a few who understand; Always understand… even if you remain among the few” RMK There are many obstacles one must overcome when searching for validity and reliability in the traditional religions of our world. For instance, since Judaism claims that God created...

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...

As religiously grounded moral arguments have become ever more influential factors in the national debate-particularly reinforced by recent presidential elections and the creation of the faith-based initiative office in the White House-journalists' ignorance about theological convictions has often...

A provocative report on recent research indicating that the decline of organized religion in the US is happening at a much faster pace than is generally recognized. At the same time, the proportion of people identifying themselves as atheist, agnostic, or "spiritual but not religious" continues to climb steadily.

Suicide in the forms of martyrdom, self-sacrifice, or self-immolation is perennially controversial: Should it rightly be termed suicide? Does religion sanction it? Should it be celebrated or anathematized? At least some idealization of such self-chosen deaths is found in every religious tradition...

Finally, social scientists have begun to attempt to understand religious behavior rather than to discredit it as irrational, ignorant, or foolish—and Rodney Stark and Roger Finke have played a major role in this new approach. Acknowledging that science cannot assess the supernatural side of religion...

An exploration into the lives of people who embrace two or more religious traditions, and what this growing community tells us about change in our society Named a best book of 2018 by Library Journal In the United States, we often assume religious and spiritual identity are pure, static,...

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. (Gen. 1:26) It has become a commonplace that Biblical...

Traditionally, university students have gained access to world religions by reading primary texts. Discovering World Religions at 24 Frames Per Second takes students beyond the written page, offering an exploration of the same religious traditions through the study of feature films. The many definitions...

In the West, the varied body of texts and traditions known as Tantra for more than two centuries has had the capacity to scandalise and shock. For European colonisers, Orientalist scholars and Christian missionaries of the Victorian era, Tantra was generally seen as the most degenerate and depraved...

Religion has fallen into the trap of ego, with rival believers thrust into confrontation by false notions that other faiths have minimal value. Joaquim Huang marshals evidence from the sciences and interfaith learning to demonstrate that the clash of religions is caused by a dominance of ego players...

Pantheism differs from the systems of belief constituting the main religions of the world in being comparatively free from any limits of period, climate, or race. For while what we roughly call the Egyptian Religion, the Vedic Religion, the Greek Religion, Buddhism, and others of similar fame have...

In this innovative and deeply felt work, Bron Taylor examines the evolution of "green religions" in North America and beyond: spiritual practices that hold nature as sacred and have in many cases replaced traditional religions. Tracing a wide range of groups—radical environmental activists,...