The Spiritual Heritage of the Human Race: An Introduction to the World's Religions

by Suheil Bushrui, Mehrdad Massoudi

Overview

An expansive look at faith in all its guises.

As societies around the world become more interconnected, the question of how we engage with and understand cultural and religious diversity is increasingly important. As part of a growing effort to live together peacefully in a global society - embracing our cultural diversity while respecting our common humanity - this book presents a variety of religious paths that have linked human beings with the sacred. Drawing on religious and spiritual traditions of the past and the present, Professor Suheil Bushrui, in collaboration with Mehrdad Massoudi, Michael Dravis, James Madaio, and Michael Russo, explores the commonalities of religions while respecting the differences that make each spiritual path distinct. In doing so, Bushrui not only offers a foundation for inter-religious dialogue, but also an increased understanding of our common innate yearning for wholeness, transcendence, and unity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781851685745
Publisher:	Oneworld Publications
Publication date:	11/01/2009
Pages:	466
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Suheil Bushrui is the foremost translator and interpreter of Anglo-Irish literature in the Arab world, and has published critical studies in Arabic and English on W. B. Yeats, John Millington Synge, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. He was the first Arab national to be appointed to the Chair of English and Anglo-Irish Literature at the American University of Beirut, and has also served as Chairman of the International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature (ISAIL). He is currently the Baha'i Chair for World Peace in the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM) at the University of Maryland.

Dr Mehrdad Massoudi is a full-time researcher at the Department of Energy and an adjunct professor at the Biomedical Engineering Department, Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and author of numerous articles on world religions.

Editorial Reviews

"In a truly inter-dependent world the need for religious understanding and respect is pre-eminent. This book not only makes this clear but also provides a foundation upon which such an understanding can be built"

David Cadman - Fellow of The Temenos Academy

"This compelling book provides vivid and eloquent details for anyone interested in religious or interfaith studies to see how all the world’s religions and sacred traditions form a common spiritual heritage."

Robert Atkinson - Professor of Human Development and Religious Studies at the University of Southern

This wonderful book will encourage us to appreciate and rejoice in the spiritual heritage which we now share.

Marcus Braybrooke

In this book based on his acclaimed classes at the University of Maryland, Bushrui, a Baha'i professor of the history of religions, empathetically describes each major world religious path and shows its connection to the spiritual quest of humanity from earliest ages. In collaboration with four other experts, the author begins with traditions of the first peoples, moves through the major world religions and ends with the Baha'i faith, which views many of the world's significant religious teachers-Zoroaster, Buddha, Abraham, Jesus, Muhammad-as messengers of the divine who preceded founder Baha'u'llah. General readers interested in religion will find a helpful travel guide to today's global religious community in this book, neither lightweight nor unnecessarily dense. The origins and founders of each religion are presented along with explanatory passages from other works. With notes and an extensive bibliography, readers will find this book a well-grounded starting point for understanding the interrelationships, commonalities and differences of faiths, and for seeing development of religious expression through time. (Nov.)

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