Too often our curiosity about the religious faith and practices of our neighbors in "the global village" is stifled by the arcane language and philosophical hair-splitting that greets us when we open a book in search of answers to our questions. With our frustration in mind, Professors Lynn Stephens and Gregory Pence offer this insightful and engaging introduction to six of the world's major religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Rather than lead us through the labyrinthian history preceding the modern-day incarnations of these six traditions, Professors Stephens and Pence invite us to view the world, if only for a few moments, as we might through the eyes of someone whose religious life is very different from our own. By drawing our attention to a problem or "dilemma" central to the beliefs and rituals of a given tradition, Stephens and Pence enable us to understand how the experiences common to all of us - birth and love, faith and community, suffering and death - can become, in the actual living of these experiences, uniquely Christian or uniquely Buddhist or uniquely Jewish. For example, we learn about Christian moral thought as we puzzle
For young readers
Book data: Open Library