Understanding World Religions: A Road Map for Justice and Peace - Softcover

David Whitten Smith; Elizabeth Geraldine Burr

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0742550559 ISBN 13: 9780742550551

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007

Synopsis

Understanding World Religions studies major religions and worldviews current in today's world in order to seek their assistance in work for justice and peace, and to discourage their promotion of selfish privilege and war. Worldviews studied include Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Marxist, and Native American. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is given as a case study for how worldviews impact justice and peace. Further chapters explore Christian social teaching, liberation theologies, active nonviolence, and just war theory. Numerous examples (Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave, Thich Nhat Hanh, A.T. Ariyaratne, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Etty Hillesum, Marc Ellis, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, and Women in Black) provide concrete models for the reader to consider. The treatment is designed to excite interest and invite further study, rather than to offer a comprehensive picture.

About this title

About the Author:

David Whitten Smith is the founding director of the Justice and Peace studies program at the University of St. Thomas. Elizabeth Geraldine Burr, Ph.D., is a researcher and editor for the Justice and Peace Program at the University of St. Thomas.

Review:

David Whitten Smith and Elizabeth Geraldine Burr...are to be commended for writing a text covering many world religions and world views from the prspective of peace and justice....The book's attempt to introduce various religious and non-religious worldviews from a universal moral perspective is a worthy one....Understanding World Religions is a passionate and timely text. (Peace And Justice Studies)

Smith does a really good job of summarizing the major world religions, including Marxism, liberation theology, and views on just war and the Israel-Palestine conflict. This made for a good textbook. (Good Reads Reviews (Online))

Understanding World Religions is an edited culmination of years of photocopied texts and student research that the authors have written and collected in the absence of an appropriate college-level textbook for teaching religious and ideological worldviews before the post-9/11 academic trend to do so. . . . [This] book easily stands out as the most up-to-date, approachable, and comprehensive volume with its mission and with the necessary admittance in its preface and advertised description as being conceived and written from a normative, values-based perspective that invalidates impartiality and advances social action-in the form of writing-for peace. (Journal Of Religion, Conflict And Peace)

Along with very accessible descriptions of the various sets of beliefs, which the authors manage to deliver with a remarkable lack of bias, they also provide a very good bibliography that includes significant materials on comparative religion, peace work and justice issues. They also include a comprehensive glossary. (Arba)

The strengths of the book are multi-fold: a robust introduction with the plan for each chapter, followed by extensive accounts of different world views with summary, key terms, discussion questions, notes and suggestions for further reading. The style of writing and choice of topics are absorbing and at the same time challenging to those who would delve further into the issues raised.... Understanding World Religions is an indispensable and rich resource for not only students of justice and peace studies but also for any reader who has an inclination towards the advancement of social justice, world peace and the enhancement of human welfare. (International Journal On World Peace)

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0742550559
• ISBN 13: 9780742550551
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 444