Understanding World Religions A Road Map for Justice and Peace [Hardcover]

Finally a book on worldviews that provides an honest and comprehensive discussion of issues that are most critical to the very survival of religion and civilization. The books focus on justice and peace as its guiding themes has greatly enhanced the value of studying world religions.This second edition is an excellent book and a must-read for students interested in a full-scope overview of the competing worldviewsboth religious and secularthat compete with one another in the current marketplace of ideas and ideologies.? The book is beautifully written, expertly researched, and replete with helpful diagrams, lists of terms, and bibliography.? Written from a humane and ethically nuanced perspective, the book demonstrates why a thoroughgoing and critical understanding of the animating worldviews that shape our era are crucial for a well-informed and engaged citizenry.? Original and highly recommendedDavid Whitten Smith and Elizabeth Geraldine Burr...are to be commended for writing a text covering many world religions and world views from the perspective 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.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.[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.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 verl“(