In the end, however, the rankings presented here focus first and foremost on contemporary impact—to what extent each religion moves us and shakes us and sends us scrambling after words. I wanted them to understand how some Christians bent the words of the Bible into weapons aimed at Jews and how these weapons found their mark at Auschwitz and Dachau. In fact, they include it among their seven sacraments. Much is missing here. Included in this book are the great religions of the Middle East (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), India (Hinduism and Buddhism), and East Asia (Confucianism and Daoism). But at the root of every sin is our rebellious desire to possess attributes that belong to God alone. Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com. Religious paths do diverge, Huston Smith admits, in the foothills of dogma, rites, and institutions.⁴ To claim that all religions are the same, therefore, is not to deny the differences among a Buddhist who believes in no god, a Jew who believes in one God, and a Hindu who believes in many gods. That growth suggests its coming importance. In fact, they include it among the Five Pillars of Islam. Timely and persuasive, No god but God is an elegantly written account that explains this magnificent yet misunderstood faith. That's a tall order, and sometimes it gets kind of dense, but given the task, Prothero did a great job. In God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World, New York Times bestselling author of Religious Literacy and religion scholar Stephen Prothero argues that persistent attempts to portray all religions as different paths to the same God overlook the distinct problem that each tradition seeks to solve. Religion may or may not move mountains, but it is one of the prime movers in politics worldwide. In fact, no one religion claims more than a third of what is an intensely competitive global religious marketplace. A religion is a system of stories, and there is no better way to engage with the world’s religions than through the stories that animate their beliefs and practices. No more than 5 pages. In Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, Nabeel Qureshi recounted his dramatic journey, describing his departure from Islam and his decision to follow Christ. Is he hidden? I had to draw the line somewhere, however, and I drew it on this side of the world’s 25 million or so practitioners of Sikhism. Prothero makes allusions to those who would blur the difference between religions as atheists as well. Hindus worship a dizzying variety of gods in a dizzying variety of ways. Over this same period, Islam’s numbers have skyrocketed—from 12 percent of the world’s population in 1900 to 22 percent today.¹⁷ According to the World Religion Database, Islam is growing 33 percent faster than is Christianity, largely thanks to high birth rates in Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Egypt, Iran, and other countries where Islam predominates.¹⁸ So while Christianity’s market share has stalled, Islam’s is racing ahead at a breakneck pace. We were never meant to be God. . But pretending that the world’s religions are the same does not make our world safer. So they, too, absolved themselves of any responsibility for reckoning with the dark side of their tradition. Neither is Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Wicca, or the Baha’i faith. The world’s religions, they argued, are different paths up the same mountain. He doesn't cover that and I thought it was the point of the book. Alongside "reading, writing, and arithmetic," religion ought to become the "Fourth R" of American education. But religion also gave us abolitionism and the civil rights movement. Instead, he shows that the differences between the major religions are far greater than we think: they each ask different questions, tackle different problems, and aim at different goals. And it has resisted coalition troops in Iraq. These differences may not matter to mystics or philosophers of religion, but they matter to ordinary religious people. After I wrote Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—and Doesn’t (2007), I received many letters and emails from readers confessing their ignorance of the world’s religions and asking for a single book they could read to become religiously literate. This four-step approach is admittedly simplistic. Shinto is not covered. Videos and an award-winning adaptive learning tool, InQuizitive, further engage students and help them master core objectives and develop their own religious literacy. Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu extremist convinced that he had given too much quarter to Muslims when he agreed to the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan. If an s with a mark underneath or atop it is pronounced like sh, then it appears here as sh: the Hindu god Shiva instead of Śiva, the Hindu goal of moksha instead of mokşa. Save God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter For Later, The shadowofthewind review was not helpful. Bonuses include a Q&A with Nabeel Qureshi and downloadable videos that answer important questions about Islam and Christianity. For some, religion serves as a guide for moral behavior. Just as there are tall people in short families (none of the men in Michael Jordan’s family was over six feet tall), there are religions that deny the existence of God and religions that get along just fine without creeds. HarperOne (2010) In God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World, New York Times bestselling author of Religious Literacy and religion scholar Stephen Prothero argues that persistent attempts to portray all religions as different paths to the same God overlook the distinct problem that each tradition … On this score Judaism may well be the greatest, since it gave birth to both Christianity and Islam. . Religious Studies scholars are quick to point out that there are many Buddhisms, not just one. Especially when it comes to religion, young Americans at least are far more likely to say I feel than I think or (God forbid) I believe. 12 Major World Religions offers an impartial look at where each of these belief systems intersects, how they differ, and why some have been―or are currently―misunderstood. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, The Return of the King: Book Three in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I enjoyed this book and agree with its premise. When Huxley’s guru Swami Prabhavananda says that all religions lead to God, the God he is imagining is Hindu. In textbooks on the world’s religions, this tradition is often lumped in with Native American, Australian, and other African primitive or primal religions. The content is so brief and goes over only the barest of fundamentals, the founder, how it spread, and core beliefs. Big Nate: What's a Little Noogie Between Friends? He suggests that Atheism is not as influential as the great religions, and while that might be true, Atheism is growing in influence. Muslims have long insisted that only God is great. From the Hardcover edition. The author intends to enlighten his audience by briefly covering eight major religions. the exemplars who chart this path are arhats (for Theravada Buddhists), bodhisattvas (for Mahayana Buddhists), or lamas (for Vajrayana Buddhists). In God Is Not One, bestselling author Stephen Prothero makes a fresh and provocative argument that, contrary to popular understanding, all religions are not simply 'different paths to the same God.' And most important, is it worth sacrificing everything for the truth? That also doesn't counter much of the purpose of authors and leaders attempting to find harmony among religions. It would be impossible to find anywhere in the world, writes Catholic theologian Hans Küng, a sincere Jew, Muslim or atheist who would not regard the assertion that he is an ‘anonymous Christian’ as presumptuous.¹⁰. Delving into the different problems and solutions that Islam, … In God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World, New York Times bestselling author of Religious Literacy and religion scholar Stephen Prothero argues that persistent attempts to portray all religions as different paths to the same God overlook the distinct problem that each tradition seeks to solve. They do not teach the same doctrines. Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bible holds the answers to all or most of life's basic questions, yet only half of American adults can name even one of the four gospels and most Americans cannot name the first book of the Bible. Many, perhaps most, of the world’s greatest paintings, novels, sculptures, buildings, and musical compositions are also religiously inspired. She examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. The beginning of the twenty-first century saw dozens of bestselling books in both Europe and the United States by so-called New Atheists. All profits that go to the author from the sale of this publication will be donated to helping the homeless. They are not describing the world but reimagining it. ... View the article PDF and any associated supplements and figures for a period of 48 hours. As my colleague Adam Seligman has argued, the notion of religious tolerance assumes differences, since there is no need to tolerate a religion that is essentially the same as your own.⁷ We pretend these differences are trivial because it makes us feel safer, or more moral. No religion, however, sees ethics alone as its reason for being. So generalizing about the overall effects of religion is a hazard of its own. . But Gandhi’s strategy of satyagraha, or nonviolent resistance, was inspired by religion too, deeply influenced by the Jain principle of ahimsa (noninjury) and by the pacifism of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. His argument could hardly be more topical. Obviously, Christians do not go on pilgrimage to Mecca, and Muslims do not practice baptism. This edition includes an introduction reviews the most recent scholarship on Jesus and its implications for both history and theology. In the twenty-first century alone, religion has toppled the Bamiyan statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan and the Twin Towers in New York City. Experience is central in Daoism and Buddhism. Without religion, there would be no Alhambra or Angkor Wat, no reggae or Gregorian chant, no Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci or Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot, no Shusaku Endo’s Silence or Elie Wiesel’s Night. In the face of religious bigotry and bloodshed, past and present, we cannot help but be drawn to such vision, and such hope. . As the modern age opened, Islam was ascendant, taking Constantinople in 1453 and rapidly expanding over the next few centuries across Europe and the Middle East into North Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. The spiritually curious searching for new questions or new answers will find plenty of both in the lives of the Hindus, Confucians, and Jews explored in this book. His tone remains objective and his focus is on helping the reader appreciate the differences between religions without favoring one over another. As she does so, she explains the images of Jesus in terms of the strategies and purposes of the writers Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Christians see sin as the problem, and salvation from sin as the religious goal. "Brilliant and lucidly written, full of original and fascinating insights. I found this response terrifying, and I still do, since failing to grasp how Nazism was fueled by ancient Christian hatred of Jews as Christ killers allows Christians to absolve themselves of any responsibility for reckoning with how their religion contributed to these horrors. One of the virtues of this simple scheme, however, is that it helps to make plain the differences across and inside the religious traditions. God may be one according to the Abrahamic religions, but when it comes to the mathematics of divinity, one is not the only number. From the Hardcover edition. STEPHEN PROTHERO is the New York Times bestselling author of Religious Literacy and God Is Not One, a professor of religion at Boston University, and a senior fellow at the Smithsonians National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. However, since the use of A.D. and B.C. And as every American and European soldier who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan can attest, Shia and Sunni Islam are in many respects quite distinct. . One source of its success is Smith’s earnest and heartfelt proclamation of the essential unity of the world’s religions. And we must admit that there are situations where a lack of understanding about the differences between, say, Sunni and Shia Islam produces more rather than less violence. Please note that some e-reader devices do not accommodate video play. So this book aims to present the eight great religions not in isolation but in contact, and comparison. Meanwhile, the worldwide Anglican Communion splinters over homosexuality, and in the United States hot-button issues such as abortion and stem-cell research drive Protestants into two opposing camps. In the tradition of Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris’s recent bestseller, The End Of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. 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