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    Our Religions: The Seven World Religions Introduced by Preeminent Scholars from Each Tradition
    Unavailable
    Our Religions: The Seven World Religions Introduced by Preeminent Scholars from Each Tradition
    Unavailable
    Our Religions: The Seven World Religions Introduced by Preeminent Scholars from Each Tradition
    Ebook877 pages19 hours

    Our Religions: The Seven World Religions Introduced by Preeminent Scholars from Each Tradition

    By Arvind Sharma

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    An essential introduction to the world's living religions by experts from each tradition -- published in conjunction with the 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 15, 2011
    ISBN9780062064264
    Unavailable
    Our Religions: The Seven World Religions Introduced by Preeminent Scholars from Each Tradition
    Author

    Arvind Sharma

    Formerly of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Arvind Sharma is the Birks Professor of Comparative Religion in the School of Religious Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He has also taught in universities in Australia (Queensland, Sydney), the United States (Northeastern, Temple, Boston, Harvard) and India (Nalanda). He has also published extensively in the fields of Indology and comparative religion. He was instrumental, through three global conferences (2006, 2011, 2016), in facilitating the adoption of a Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the World's Religions. Books authored by him include Gandhi: A Spiritual Biography, Hinduism and Its Sense of History, Religious Tolerance: A History and The Ruler's Gaze: A Study of British Rule over India from a Saidian Perspective. He is contributing editor of Our Religions: The Seven World Religions Introduced by Preeminent Scholars from Each Tradition, and series editor of the Encyclopedia of Indian Religions.

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    Reviews for Our Religions

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      I have an MA in Comparative Religion, and I still found this a challenging book to get through. It was very dense, and sometimes the authors focused on issues more of interest to religious scholars than to general readers.

      I suspect that individual reactions to this book will vary widely based on the degree of the reader's experience in religious studies and interest in the individual religions profiled. My personal reactions the various chapters:

      Hinduism: Interesting and educational
      Buddhism: Hard to get through (but I've always been challenged by Buddhist thinking)
      Confucianism: Fascinating and inspiring
      Taosim: Apologies to the author, but I skipped it
      Judaism: Frustrating. The author framed the discussion in terms of oppression and resentment and promise -- which may be accurate (I don't know) but never really explained to me what it was like to practice Judaism. Of course, part of the point of the chapter was that, unlike other faiths, Judaism has an ethnic as well as a spiritual component, and he needed to address that.
      Christianity: Enjoyed it a lot. I thought it was an excellent expression of both the diversity and unity of Christianity.
      Islam: Very interesting and eye-opening.

      If I could give this half-stars, this would be 3-1/2, but I rounded up because of the overall quality and ambition of the collection.

      The book was published in 1994, and I would love to see another edition, hopefully one which also includes indigenous and neo-pagan faiths, which have become the focus of scholarly work.