Category: Comparative Religion

Deals a different comparative exploration of the function of culture in Islam and Christianity.The concept of 'tradition' has loved a number of senses and definitions in Islam and Christianity, yet either have cleaved at sure instances to a supposedly 'golden age' of culture from the prior. the writer indicates there was a series of thinkers from classical Islam to the 20 th century who percentage a typical curiosity in ijtihad (or autonomous thinking). Drawing on earlier and current facts, and utilizing Christian culture as a spotlight for distinction and comparability, the writer highlights the likely paradoxical concord among culture and itjihad in Islam.The writer attracts on numerous basic and secondary resources together with modern newspaper and journal

By David Chidester

By V.S. Naipaul

Like every of V. S. Naipaul’s “travel” books, The Masque of Africa includes a a lot better narrative and objective: to pass judgement on the results of trust (in indigenous animisms, the international religions of Christianity and Islam, the cults of leaders and legendary background) upon the growth of civilization.

From V. S. Naipaul: “For my commute books I trip on a topic. And the subject of The Masque of Africa is African trust. I start in Uganda, on the heart of the continent, do Ghana and Nigeria, the Ivory Coast and Gabon, and finish on the backside of the continent, in South Africa. My subject matter is trust, no longer political or low-cost existence; and but on the backside of the continent the political realities are so overwhelming that they've to be taken into account.
“Perhaps an unstated element of my inquiry used to be the potential for the subversion of previous Africa by means of the methods of the skin global. The subject matter held until eventually I obtained to the South, whilst the conflict of the 2 methods of pondering and believing grew to become a ways too one-sided. The skyscrapers of Johannesburg didn’t relaxation on sand. The older global of magic felt fragile, yet while had an everlasting caliber. You felt that it can live on any calamity.
“I had anticipated that over the good dimension of Africa the practices of magic may considerably range. yet they didn’t. The diviners in every single place desired to ‘throw the bones’ to learn the longer term, and the belief of ‘energy’ remained a continuing, to be tapped into via the ritual sacrifice of physique elements. In South Africa physique components, as a rule of animals, but in addition of fellows and ladies, made a mix of ‘battle medicine.’ To witness this, to accept a few thought of its strength, used to be to be taken a long way again to the start of things.

“To achieve that starting was once the aim of my book.”

The Masque of Africa is a masterly fulfillment through one of many world’s keenest observers and one in every of its maximum writers.

By Jorge N. Ferrer

A partaking substitute to the experimentalism and perennialism dominant in transpersonal psychology.

Premodern and early smooth yoga contain innovations with quite a lot of goals, from turning inward searching for the real self, to turning outward for divine union, to channeling physically power in pursuit of sexual excitement. Early smooth yoga additionally encompassed countercultural ideals and practices. by contrast, this present day, smooth yoga goals on the enhancement of the mind-body advanced yet does so based on modern dominant metaphysical, future health, and health paradigms. accordingly, yoga is now part of pop culture. In Selling Yoga, Andrea R. Jain explores the popularization of yoga within the context of late-twentieth-century client tradition. She departs from traditional techniques via undermining essentialist definitions of yoga in addition to assumptions that yoga underwent a linear trajectory of accelerating popularization. whereas a few stories trivialize popularized yoga platforms by way of decreasing them to the mere commodification or corruption of what's perceived as an in a different way fastened, real process, Jain means that this dichotomy oversimplifies the heritage of yoga in addition to its meanings for modern practitioners.

By discussing a big selection of recent yoga varieties, from Iyengar Yoga to Bikram Yoga, Jain argues that popularized yoga can't be dismissed--that it has a number of non secular meanings and capabilities. Yoga manufacturers destabilize the elemental software of yoga commodities and assign to them new meanings that characterize the success of self-developmental wishes frequently deemed sacred in modern buyer culture.

 This e-book addresses concerns crucial to today’s Catholic Church, concentrating on the connection among a variety of religions in several contexts and areas internationally. the various array of participants current  an inclusively interfaith company, investigating quite a lot of encounters and views. The essays contain ways from the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Bahá’í traditions, in quite a few geographic contexts. participants ponder Muslims within the West, Christian-Buddhist social activism, and on chinese language, Indian, and eastern religions. the amount additionally explores the stories of groups which are usually marginalized and neglected akin to the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia and the Karen tribal peoples of Thailand. members study the works of the Focolare, Gülen, and Risshō Kōsei-kai routine, and combine the imaginative and prescient of Raimon Panikkar and Ken Wilber. Chapters contain discussions of discussion files reminiscent of Nostra Aetate and Dabru Emet, and methodologies equivalent to Receptive Ecumenism, Comparative Theology, and Scriptural Reasoning. between different pursuits, the e-book seeks to supply glimpses into interfaith dialogues internationally and look at what Christians can study from different religions and international contexts.   

By Ravi Zacharias

In a global with such a lot of religions, why Jesus?

We live in a time if you can think whatever, so long as you do not claim it to be precise. within the identify of “tolerance,” our postmodern culture embraces every thing from japanese mysticism to New Age spirituality. yet as Ravi Zacharias issues out, such unquestioning attractiveness of all issues non secular is absurd. All religions, it appears that evidently and easily, can't be true.

Jesus between different Gods offers the solutions to the main primary claims about Christianity, such as:

• Aren’t all religions essentially the same?
• Was Jesus who He claimed to be?
• Can one examine the lifetime of Christ and display conclusively that He was and is the best way, the reality, and the life?

In each one bankruptcy, Zacharias considers a different declare that Jesus made after which contrasts the fact of Jesus with the founders of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism with compelling perception and passionate conviction. as well as a magnificent breadth of examining and examine, he stocks his own trip from melancholy and meaninglessness to his discovery that Jesus is who He stated He is.

“In Jesus between different Gods, Ravi Zacharias demonstrates that he's essentially the most intellectually gifted as good as spiritually delicate writers of today’s top apologists for the Christian religion. Zacharias brings alive the original strength of the claims of Jesus approximately himself and the utter relevance of his message today for the human condition.”

 — David Aikman, writer of Great Souls

By Shaul Magid

By Bruce Grelle