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Author: Tim Baker
Publisher: Thomas Nelson Inc
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780785247630
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPresents brief descriptions of over one hundred world religions, secular worldviews, cults, and occult practices from a Christian point-of-view, covering the basic beliefs, a short history, and examples in pop culture.
Author: David W. Shenk
Publisher: Herald Press
Published: 1995-09-08
Total Pages: 416
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDavid W. Shenk covers the major current human options for making meaning out of life. Shenk identifies more local religious options and four truly global options -- Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Marxism. Global Gods is a fresh approach to comparative religions. It is a substantial contribution to the developing literature and widespread interest concerning the role of religion in human society.
Author: Suzanne Neusner
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Published: 2003-05-06
Total Pages: 292
ISBN-13: 9781589013315
DOWNLOAD EBOOKResisting the tendency to separate the study of religion and politics, editor Jacob Neusner pulls together a collection of ten essays in which various authors explain and explore the relationship between the world's major religions and political power. As William Scott Green writes in the introduction, "Because religion is so comprehensive, it is fundamentally about power; it therefore cannot avoid politics." Beginning with the classical sources and texts of Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism and Hinduism, God's Rule begins to explore the complex nature of how each religion shapes political power, and how religion shapes itself in relation to that power. The corresponding attention to differing theories of politics and views towards non-believers are important not only to studies in comparative religion, but to foreign policy, history and governance as well. From early Christianity's relationship to the Roman Empire to Hinduism's relationship to Gandhi and the caste system, God's Rule provides a basis of understanding from which undergraduates, seminarians and others can begin asking questions of relationships "both unavoidable and systematically uneasy."
Author: Reza Aslan
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2017-11-07
Total Pages: 321
ISBN-13: 0553394738
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of Zealot explores humanity’s quest to make sense of the divine in this concise and fascinating history of our understanding of God. In Zealot, Reza Aslan replaced the staid, well-worn portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth with a startling new image of the man in all his contradictions. In his new book, Aslan takes on a subject even more immense: God, writ large. In layered prose and with thoughtful, accessible scholarship, Aslan narrates the history of religion as a remarkably cohesive attempt to understand the divine by giving it human traits and emotions. According to Aslan, this innate desire to humanize God is hardwired in our brains, making it a central feature of nearly every religious tradition. As Aslan writes, “Whether we are aware of it or not, and regardless of whether we’re believers or not, what the vast majority of us think about when we think about God is a divine version of ourselves.” But this projection is not without consequences. We bestow upon God not just all that is good in human nature—our compassion, our thirst for justice—but all that is bad in it: our greed, our bigotry, our penchant for violence. All these qualities inform our religions, cultures, and governments. More than just a history of our understanding of God, this book is an attempt to get to the root of this humanizing impulse in order to develop a more universal spirituality. Whether you believe in one God, many gods, or no god at all, God: A Human History will challenge the way you think about the divine and its role in our everyday lives. Praise for God “Timely, riveting, enlightening and necessary.”—HuffPost “Tantalizing . . . Driven by [Reza] Aslan’s grace and curiosity, God . . . helps us pan out from our troubled times, while asking us to consider a more expansive view of the divine in contemporary life.”—The Seattle Times “A fascinating exploration of the interaction of our humanity and God.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “[Aslan’s] slim, yet ambitious book [is] the story of how humans have created God with a capital G, and it’s thoroughly mind-blowing.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “Aslan is a born storyteller, and there is much to enjoy in this intelligent survey.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Author: Glenn Stanfield Holland
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 348
ISBN-13: 9780742562264
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExplores the religious practices and traditions of ancient Middle Eastern cultures, discussing pyramids, tombs, and Egyptian temples, and describing the gods, rulers, beliefs about afterlife, and worship rituals of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Syria-Palestine.
Author: Lester R. Kurtz
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2015-04-01
Total Pages: 417
ISBN-13: 1483386457
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn a world plagued by religious conflict, how can the various religious and secular traditions coexist peacefully on the planet? And, what role does sociology play in helping us understand the state of religious life in a globalizing world? In the Fourth Edition ofGods in the Global Village, author Lester Kurtz continues to address these questions. This text is an engaging, thought-provoking examination of the relationships among the major faith traditions that inform the thinking and ethical standards of most people in the emerging global social order. Thoroughly updated to reflect recent events, the book discusses the role of religion in our daily lives and global politics, and the ways in which religion is both an agent of, and barrier to, social change.
Author: Ara Norenzayan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2015-08-25
Total Pages: 264
ISBN-13: 0691169748
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExamines how the belief in gods has lead to cooperation and sometimes conflict between groups. The author also looks at how some cooperative societies have developed without belief in gods.
Author: Zeba A. Crook
Publisher: Equinox Publishing (UK)
Published: 2019
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781781798065
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn some ways, this book fits into the long tradition of textbooks on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It seeks to teach the basics both of the study of religion and the study of the religions themselves. For each religion, it presents the trajectories of development over time, the main theological debates and claims, the sacred writings, and the common practices and holy days. Yet, in other ways, this book is like no other introductory textbook on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Rather than claim to show the "essence" of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, this book shows the diversity within Jewish, Christian, and Islamic experience, theological dispute, and practice. Rather than rely solely on the traditional theorists of religion, the "giants," this book updates the approach, relying also on the newest critical thinkers on defining, classifying, and studying religion. Rather than present Latter-Day Saints and Baha'i Religion as among the New Religious Movements, this book treats them as part of the continuing history of religion, growing out of and within Christianity and Islam respectively. Religion, in other words, is not a thing of the past. It's happening right now, all around us.
Author: Neil MacGregor
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2018-09-17
Total Pages: 512
ISBN-13: 0241308305
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFollowing the award-winning BBC Radio 4 series, a panoramic exploration of peoples, objects and beliefs from the celebrated author of A History of the World in 100 Objects and Germany 'Riveting, extraordinary ... tells the sweeping story of religious belief in all its inventive variety. The emphasis is not on our differences, but on shared spiritual yearnings' Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times, Books of the Year One of the central facts of human existence is that every society shares a set of beliefs and assumptions - a faith, an ideology, a religion - that goes far beyond the life of the individual. These beliefs are an essential part of a shared identity. They have a unique power to define - and to divide - us, and are a driving force in the politics of much of the world today. Throughout history they have most often been, in the widest sense, religious. Yet this book is not a history of religion, nor an argument in favour of faith. It is about the stories which give shape to our lives, and the different ways in which societies imagine their place in the world. Looking across history and around the globe, it interrogates objects, places and human activities to try to understand what shared beliefs can mean in the public life of a community or a nation, how they shape the relationship between the individual and the state, and how they help give us our sense of who we are. For in deciding how we live with our gods, we also decide how to live with each other. 'The new blockbuster by the museums maestro Neil MacGregor ... The man who chronicles world history through objects is back ... examining a new set of objects to explore the theme of faith in society' Sunday Times
Author: Gerald R. McDermott
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2009-08-20
Total Pages: 181
ISBN-13: 0830875360
DOWNLOAD EBOOKGerald R. McDermott explores the question, "Why are there other religions?" He looks at teaching from the Old and New Testaments and from a number of key teachers from the early church to suggest an answer to this perplexing but intriguing question.
