More than a quarter of the world's religions are to be found in the regions of Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, together called Oceania. The Religions of Oceania is the first book to bring together up-to-date information on the great and changing variety of traditional religions in the Pacific zone. The book also deals with indigenous Christianity and its wide influence across the region, and includes new religious movements generated by the responses of indigenous peoples to colonists and missionaries, the best known of these being the Cargo Cults' of Melanesia.
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The Indian religion of Jainism, whose central tenet involves non-violence to all creatures, is one of the world's oldest and least understood faiths. This book examines Jainism in its social and doctrinal context.

Theravada Buddhism is widely recognized as the classic introduction to the branch of Buddhism found in Sri Lanka and parts of South East Asia. The Buddha preached in north-east India in about the fifth-century BC. He claimed that human beings are responsible for their own salvation, and put forward a new ideal of the holy life, establishing a monastic Order to enable men and women to pursue that ideal. For most of its history the fortunes of Theravada, the most conservative form of Buddhism, have been identified with those of that Order. Under the great Indian emperor, Asoka, himself a...

This is a source book for the study of religions in Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries. It covers an important period in the history of religions in Britain, a period of challenge to religion and a period of change in the religious map of Britain. Each author is a specialist in a particular aspect of this history, and there are extensive bibliographies. The book demonstrates how pluralistic the map of religion has been in Britain, thereby challenging the view that Britain is and has been a predominantly single religion country. This religious pluralism is shown to apply within the...