List Books » God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter
Authors: Stephen Prothero, Paul Boehmer
ISBN-13: 9780062016027, ISBN-10: 0062016024
Format: MP3 Book
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Date Published: April 2010
Edition: Unabridged
Stephen Prothero is the chair of the religion department at Boston University. His book American Jesus was named one of the best religion books of 2003 by Publishers Weekly and one of the year's best nonfiction books by the Chicago Tribune. He writes and reviews for the New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Salon, and other publications. He holds degrees from Harvard and Yale.
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, dizzying scientific and technological advancements, interconnected globalized economies, and even the so-called New Atheists have done nothing to change one thing: our world remains furiously religious. For good and for evil, religion is the single greatest influence in the world. We accept as self-evident that competing economic systems (capitalist or communist) or clashing political parties (Republican or Democratic) propose very different solutions to our planet's problems. So why do we pretend that the world's religious traditions are different paths to the same God? We blur the sharp distinctions between religions at our own peril, argues religion scholar Stephen Prothero, and it is time to replace naÏve hopes of interreligious unity with deeper knowledge of religious differences.
In Religious Literacy, Prothero demonstrated how little Americans know about their own religious traditions and why the world's religions...
Expressing his astonishment, Prothero (Religious Literacy) arrives late at the party that has been celebrating for years the diversity and plurality of the world's religions. Although he is correct in asserting that an entire generation of scholars, teachers, and interested readers have claimed in the interest of religious tolerance that the world's religions were simply different paths to the same one God, such a claim functions as little more than a red herring in what is otherwise a useful introduction to the world's religions. Once past that assertion, Prothero sets up a helpful model for examining each religion on its own terms: he explores a problem that dominates the religion, the religion's solution to the problem, the technique the religion uses to move from problem to solution, and the exemplar who charts a path from problem to solution. For example, in Buddhism the problem is suffering; the solution is nirvana; the technique is the Noble Eightfold Path; and the exemplars are the arhats, bodhisattvas, and lamas. Despite his naïveté about contemporary interreligious dialogue, Prothero's survey is a useful introduction to eight of the world's great religions.
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A Note on Dates and Diacriticals
Introduction 1
Ch. 1 Islam: The Way of Submission 25
Ch. 2 Christianity: The Way of Salvation 65
Ch. 3 Confucianism: The Way of Propriety 101
Ch. 4 Hinduism: The Way of Devotion 131
Ch. 5 Buddhism: The Way of Awakening 169
Ch. 6 Yoruba Religion: The Way of Connection 203
Ch. 7 Judaism: The Way of Exile and Return 243
Ch. 8 Daoism: The Way of Flourishing 279
Ch. 9 A Brief Coda on Atheism: The Way of Reason 317
Conclusion 331
Acknowledgments 341
Notes 343
Index 375