| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £4.35
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in A World Religions Reader (Wiley Desktop Editions) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £4.35, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Product Description
Review
"This new edition of the World Religions Reader expands an already useful textbook – making it an improved resource for introducing world religions. By presenting excerpts from sacred texts and voices from within the traditions, this book provides more than mere facts about various beliefs; it allows insight into the worldviews and ethical concerns of adherents, making it the most valuable Reader on World Religions to date to any student or teacher that seeks to study or teach the religious traditions of the world." S. Wesley Ariarjah, Drew University
"An accessible and sympathetic introduction to the world′s religions as understood by their adherents." Ingrid Mattson, Hartford Seminary, USA
“This is the Reader I have long been looking for. It will enhance and enliven any standard textbook by enabling students not just to understand but to feel, not just to study but to pass over to, what these religious communities have been and what they offer our contemporary world.” Paul F. Knitter, Union Theological Seminary, New York (of a previous edition)
Product Description
Providing a comprehensive exploration of the teachings and beliefs of the world’s living faiths, the third edition of this popular book has been revised and updated to reflect the vibrant role religion plays in the twenty–first century. The World Religions Reader:
- Explores the unique nature of various faiths by introducing their traditions and rituals, ethical dimensions, and modern expressions
- Combines excerpts from sacred texts with reflections from a range of classic and contemporary thinkers – from the Bhagavad Gita and the Qur′an to Maimonides and Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Significantly expands material on Christianity, with a greater emphasis on the diversity of the tradition as expressed in Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism
- Broadens its coverage with new chapters on Emerging Religions, Jainism, Zoroastrianism and Indigenous Religions
- Considers the profound impact of 9/11 on the major religions and the effect it has had on our perceptions of others, and on interfaith communication
- Includes numerous reader–friendly features, such as key terms sections, summary reviews of major beliefs and significant events, a glossary, and revision and comparative questions.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Each chapter of this book details individual religions. The author not only draws upon his own knowledge but also fellow Theologians. Written in an easily understood manner, this author manages at times to display his obviously humerous nature, whilst presenting extremely informative information. The contents do not only explain the need for ritual within certain cultures, but the reasons why they exist. Such a detailed piece of work can only lead to a much greater tollerance by all of world religions.
Format:Paperback
Great book, really provides the underlying concepts of all major world religions. If you want to deepen your knowledge, you immediately know which books to read as excerpts from the most influential books to every religion are provided.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
egalitarian overview
21 Aug 2006
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A World Religions Reader is a very positive look at the major world beliefs ranging from Atheism and Buddhism to Islam and Judaism. Markham presents all these world views decked up like prom queens. One begins to wonder while reading the book how the world could be such a jacked up place with all these beautiful and enlightened belief systems all around us.
The book is very egalitarian in that each different world view is presented by people who hold fast to them as being absolutely true. Every view gets its fair shot to persuade you. The book makes no attempts to show that one belief system may be more correct than another, that one may be more coherent than another or that one may have more harmful effects than another. It seems that, above all; the editor was trying to be fair and inoffensive to everyone. The book is really a World Religions 101 in that many major views are presented but none in great depth. If the goal of the book was to create a platform for each major belief system to present itself, then I suppose the book was successful in accomplishing its goal. If it was to critically show them "warts and all" then it failed like a bat taking an eye exam.
The book is informative to a point and is therefore worth a read for those approaching interfaith dialogues or for those trying to figure out why in the world someone would actually want to convert to Shintoism. I felt that Judaism was the most beautifully presented. Half way through I felt like joining a synagogue but then thought that they might have some policy against taking Pentecostal missionaries.
Personally I found it very interesting that so many of the writers used Christianity as its point of comparison. Many of the writers would point out that a certain belief or practise in their faith was either like or unlike a belief or practise in Christianity. I also found it a bit odd that so much attention was given to liberal theology in the chapter on Christianity as throughout history and even into the present such groups only tend to make up a small, white quibbling minority which is often viewed as heretical by the rest of the world body.
The book is very egalitarian in that each different world view is presented by people who hold fast to them as being absolutely true. Every view gets its fair shot to persuade you. The book makes no attempts to show that one belief system may be more correct than another, that one may be more coherent than another or that one may have more harmful effects than another. It seems that, above all; the editor was trying to be fair and inoffensive to everyone. The book is really a World Religions 101 in that many major views are presented but none in great depth. If the goal of the book was to create a platform for each major belief system to present itself, then I suppose the book was successful in accomplishing its goal. If it was to critically show them "warts and all" then it failed like a bat taking an eye exam.
The book is informative to a point and is therefore worth a read for those approaching interfaith dialogues or for those trying to figure out why in the world someone would actually want to convert to Shintoism. I felt that Judaism was the most beautifully presented. Half way through I felt like joining a synagogue but then thought that they might have some policy against taking Pentecostal missionaries.
Personally I found it very interesting that so many of the writers used Christianity as its point of comparison. Many of the writers would point out that a certain belief or practise in their faith was either like or unlike a belief or practise in Christianity. I also found it a bit odd that so much attention was given to liberal theology in the chapter on Christianity as throughout history and even into the present such groups only tend to make up a small, white quibbling minority which is often viewed as heretical by the rest of the world body.
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
