This popular textbook has been thoroughly revised and updated to reflect recent global developments, whilst retaining its unique and compelling narrative-style approach. Using ancient stories from diverse religions, it explores a broad range of important and complex moral issues, resulting in a truly reader-friendly and comparative introduction to religious ethics.A thoroughly revised and expanded new edition of this popular textbook, yet retains the unique narrative-style ap...

Karen Armstrong explains how to practise the religion of compassion that her last books have preached.In November 2009 Armstrong and TED launched The Charter of Compassion, which states that "We call upon all men and women to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion...to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings — even those regarded as enemies." To date, it's been signed by over 48,000 people on the Web, including such figures as The Dal...

The World’s Religions, by beloved author and pioneering professor Huston Smith (Tales of Wonder), is the definitive classic for introducing the essential elements and teachings of the world’s predominant faiths. This essential guide to comparative religion covers Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, as well as regional native traditions.This revised and updated edition provides sympathetic descriptions of the various traditions, ...

“This book could well be the most highly readable, accurate, and up-to-date introduction to the world’s major religions.” - Harvey Cox, Hollis Research Professor of Divinity, Harvard University, and author of The Future of FaithIn God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World, New York Times bestselling author of Religious Literacy and religion scholar Stephen Prothero argues that persistent attempts in modern theo...

No country, no culture, no person today is untouched by what happens in the rest of the world. Technological innovation, environmental degradation, economic gain & loss, nuclear weapons, instant communication have all created unprecedented familiarity among the world’s many cultures. With this historic development, the Dalai Lama understands that the essential task of humanity in the 21st Century is to cultivate peaceful coexistence.Many believe in the inevitability of an escalatin...

Is your heart on fire for God?Passionate Conviction brings together the most popular and heart-stirring presentations in defense of Christianity from the annual fall conference on apologetics held in association with the Evangelical Philosophical Society, the C. S. Lewis Institute, and the Christian Apologetics program at Biola University.Applicable to pastors, serious-minded lay people, and university and high school students, these twenty essays are group...

It has been suggested that 'spirituality' has become a word that 'can define an era'. Why? Because paradoxically, alongside a decline in traditional religious affiliations, the growing interest in spirituality and the use of the word in a variety of contexts is a striking aspect of contemporary western cultures. Indeed, spirituality is sometimes contrasted attractively with religion, although this is problematic and implies that religion is essentially dogma, moralism, institutions, buildi...

From the Native American tribal faiths and the Judeo-Christian traditions to Scientology and other nascent religions, man's search for God takes many fascinating forms. In this easy-to-use and comprehensive guide, you'll explore the intriguing dogma and rituals, cultural convictions, and often-checkered backgrounds and histories of the world's religions. This mystical tour of major and minor religions, both ancient and contemporary, includes:How religions deal with the issue ...

The spiritual teachings of many faith traditions can help you step beyond the limits of any one tradition to the reality that can't be named.The fastest growing spiritual movement in the United States today is that of the religiously unaffiliated. These spiritual seekers make up 20 percent of the adult American population; they are the spiritual equivalent of political independents. Refusing to limit themselves to one religion or another, these seekers without bord...

A comprehensive survey of how religions understand death, dying, and the afterlife, drawing on examples from Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Shamanic perspectives.Considers shared and differing views of death across the world's major religions, including on the nature of death itself, the reasons for it, the identity of those who die, religious rituals, and on how the living should respond to deathPlaces emphasis on the varying concepts of t...

Founders of Faith explores the lives of the Founders of the world’s major religions—including Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and the Bahai Faith—and reveals that they are linked by sets of striking patterns. These patterns suggest that our world’s religions share universal teachings and have a common divine source. Author Harold Rosen explains how the Founders of the major religions function as the Teachers of Humanity. It summarizes the patterns...

Though he lived in the thirteenth century, Meister Eckhart’s deeply ecumenical teachings were in many ways modern. He taught about what we call ecology, championed artistic creativity, and advocated for social, economic, and gender justice. All these elements have inspired spiritual maverick Matthew Fox and influenced his Creation Spirituality. Here, Fox creates metaphorical meetings between Eckhart and Teilhard de Chardin, Thich Nhat Hanh, Carl Jung, Black Elk, Rumi, Adrienne Rich, and ot...