Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Comparative Religion

The deity Inari has been worshipped in Japan since at least the early eighth century and today is a revered presence in such varied venues as Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, factories, theaters, private households, restaurants, beauty shops, and rice fields. Although at first glance and to its many devotees Inari worship may seem to be a unified phenomenon, it is in fact exceedingly multiple, noncodified, and noncentralized. No single regulating institution, dogma, scripture, or myth centers the practice. In this exceptionally insightful study, the author explores the worship of Inari in...

Wars in the Persian Gulf and Yugoslavia have given new impetus to the ongoing debate in Japan concerning its postwar constitution and related issues of national security and world order. Although often overlooked in this debate, Japanese religious groups--especially some of the New Religions--have promoted peace as a major theme of their doctrine and activities, often explicitly supporting a pacifist position. This study, undertaken in the wake of the Persian Gulf War, looks at a representative group of New Religions and explores their concepts and practices of peace. Many of the Japanese...

What does Jesus mean to a Buddhist, or the Buddha to a Christian? What is it about the Buddha that is appealing to a Christian, or unappealing? In this volume 12 scholars, six of them Christian and six of them Buddhists, speak simply and from the heart about their personal relationship to the great religious leader from the other tradition. The diversity of views within each tradition could be a shock to the average Buddhist or Christian on the street. Buddhists argue about Buddha's nature, Buddha veneration, and the role the Buddha plays in human liberation. Christians argue about Jesus'...

Hailed as the best scholarship in its field, this survey traces apocalypticism's role in Western history from its origins to the close of the third millennium.

Continuum congratulates Joan J. Collins on being the recipient of the 1999 Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award

Praise for the Encyclopedia:
..".clear, rich, and provocative...it gathers available but widely scattered insights and interpretations into one convenient work....by virtue of it's general excellence and its breadth, this encyclopedia is certainly going to be indispensable for apocalyptic research...

Among the multitude of issues addressed by authors in the burgeoning field of science and theology the most fundamental is that of divine action in the world. How might believers best understand God as truly acting in the realms studied by the natural sciences? Several specific questions arise in this context: What implications do contemporary theories about the origins of the universe have for the doctrine of God as "Creator of heaven and earth"? When cosmologists and biologists talk about the evolution not only of galaxies and solar systems but also of various forms of life on earth,...

This book adopts the format of the editorsAE previous book, Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk about the Buddha. In that book eight scholar-practitioners--four of them Buddhist and four Christian--explored their relationship to the great religious figure of the other tradition. Then the remaining contributors, two from each tradition, addressed themselves, rebuttal fashion, to the views expressed. In the new book the subject is the differences and similarities between Buddhist meditation and Christian prayer. What can a Christian, for example, learn from the mental and physical...

In a world where religion often fuels ethnic and racial conflicts, and where passionate allegiance to rival creeds engenders violent antagonism among members of the same family, dwellers in the same neighborhood, citizens of the same country, no one can doubt the need to rethink the universalist claims of temple, church, and mosque.

For the past few decades, Christian theology tended to regard religious difference as a "problem" to be overcome. More recently there has been an effort, however tentative, to view the different religious traditions as rich legacies to be shared by the...

Readings in Indigenous Religions brings together classic and recent writings concerned with contemporary indigenous religions. These significant and important works contribute both to expert discussion of important religious and cultural issues and also to on-going debates about improved methods of research. The inclusion of examples of indigenous ideological, legal and fiction writing further enhances the volume's engagement with indigenous and scholarly perspectives, experiences and interests. Readings is divided into four Parts: Ontology, Performance, Knowledge and Land. Editorial...

Tracing the Way is the product of a lifetime of experience. In researching and compiling this book Hans Kung has traveled to every corner of the globe in search of God in his many guises. Kung casts an analytical eye over the major world religions and offers a view of the present and what that means when measured against the past. Kung surveys, as succinctly as possible, the historical stages of each world religion and analyses their major paradigms and paradigm shifts. For the present can be understood only in the light of constellations from the past which have persisted side by...