When I signed onto Amazon yesterday Stephen Prothero’s new book, God Is Not One, was recommended. So, using my Kindle – which, by the way, I love, I downloaded it. So far so great.
Here’s an article I found giving you the background to the book. See what you think:
How does a religion teacher get an invitation to appear, in June, on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report? By writing a book saying that Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and others have preached about the shared, benign beliefs unifying all great religions — and then dismissing that message as garbage.
Stephen Prothero’s God Is Not One, which hits bookstores today, argues that the globe’s eight major religions hold different and irreconcilable assumptions. They may all push the Golden Rule, as progressives like to point out, but no religion really considers ethics its sole goal. Doctrine, ritual, and myth are crucial, too, and on these, writes the College of Arts & Sciences professor, there is no meeting of the religious minds. For example, Christians who think they’re doing non-Christians a favor by saying they too can be “saved” ignore the fact that Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Confucians either don’t believe in sin or don’t focus on salvation from it. (Hinduism, Daoism, and the African religion Yoruba round out the eight.)
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Good article? Have you read Prothero’s “American Jesus”?
Also recommended on this topic: William T. Cavanaugh’s “The Myth of Religious Violence”
Stanley Fish’s “Boutique Multiculturalism, or why liberals are incapable of thinking about hate speech” (full article link below):
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:F7NuNRqByiwJ:epa-web.soe.ucy.ac.cy/courses/EPA637/EPA%2520637%2520FALL%25202007/epa%2520637%25202007%2520readings/Boutique%2520multiculturalism.pdf+boutique+multiculturalism+fish&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgcEVUjfo2Z1p4y9msRgvkSg_SZ2j9SF6n2bWVwVLHlY1XKOGo5MBIHgASNm9C6hSh7jrqHpAyFrZIPlOaZBWWMUU9y3yEAlV4OwRmNAWqysEghpuxpjsKCw1Wt64pFfJ9T5hm2&sig=AHIEtbSB1FQB_9OqzhgRQ0ANrPphXsZqwA
great post as usual!
Orthodox, institutional religions are quite different, but their mystics have much in common. A quote from the chapter “Mystic Viewpoints” in my e-book at http://www.suprarational.org on comparative mysticism:
Ritual and Symbols. The inner meanings of the scriptures, the spiritual teachings of the prophets and those personal searchings which can lead to divine union were often given lesser importance than outward rituals, symbolism and ceremony in many institutional religions. Observances, reading scriptures, prescribed acts, and following orthodox beliefs cannot replace your personal dedication, contemplation, activities, and direct experience. Preaching is too seldom teaching. For true mystics, every day is a holy day. Divine revelation is here and now, not limited to their sacred scriptures.
Conflicts in Conventional Religion. “What’s in a Word?” outlined some primary differences between religions and within each faith. The many divisions in large religions disagreed, sometimes bitterly. The succession of authority, interpretations of scriptures, doctrines, organization, terminology, and other disputes have often caused resentment. The customs, worship, practices, and behavior within the mainstream of religions frequently conflicted. Many leaders of any religion had only united when confronted by someone outside their faith, or by agnostics or atheists. Few mystics have believed divine oneness is exclusive to their religion or is restricted to any people.
Note: This is just a consensus to indicate some differences between the approaches of mystics and that of their institutional religion. These statements do not represent all schools of mysticism or every division of faith. Whether mystical experiences vary in their cultural context, or are similar for all true mystics, is less important than that they transform each one’s sense of being to a transpersonal outlook on all life.