Handbook of Religion: A Christian Engagement with Traditions, Teachings, and Practices
Overview
This comprehensive handbook provides a Christian perspective on religion and its many manifestations around the world. Written by top religion scholars from a broad spectrum of Christianity, it introduces world religions, indigenous religious traditions, and new religious movements. Articles explore the relationship of other religions to Christianity, providing historical perspective on past encounters and highlighting current issues. The book also contains articles by adherents of non-Christian religions, offering readers an insider’s perspective on various religions and their encounters with Christianity. Maps, timelines, and sidebars are included.
Key Features
- Features contributions from a huge amount of religious scholars, both Christian and non-Christian
- Discusses various world religions and their interactions with Christianity
- Includes maps, timelines, and sidebars to help enhance studies
Contents
- Introduction
- World Religions
- Indigenous Religions
- New Religious Movements
- Essays
Top Highlights
“Buddhism is a cross-cultural religion founded in India by a man named Siddhartha Gautama (563–483 BCE)” (Page 81)
“They are partisan to the extent that they focus on questions Christians ask about other religions; they are objective in the sense that they present the best scholarly understandings of what the other religions teach.” (Page 4)
“I suspect that my unhappy childhood relationship with Christianity had something to do with the decision to look beyond the Western orbit in my studies. Any intellectual curiosity at all was quite forbidden in the branch of Christianity in which I had been brought up. Suffice it to report that when I was excommunicated for the heresy of not being willing to believe that only Christians could go to heaven, I was told by the excommunicating pastor: ‘I knew even when you were a kid that I’d have trouble with you someday. You asked too many questions!’” (Pages 111–112)
“The Third Noble Truth teaches a way out of the endless round of rebirths. One breaks the cycle of existence by controlling one of the links of the chain, the desire (tanha) link. A full intuitive understanding of suffering and impermanence leads to a cessation of desire for an eternal self. Once desire for such an existence ceases, rebirth ends. The state that follows is called enlightenment when referring to an individual.” (Page 83)
“In practice, then, Buddhists seem to cope with existence on two levels, the level of samsara, or conditioned existence (rebirth), and the level of nirvana, or enlightenment (release from rebirth). At the samsaric level, Buddhist laypeople do things that earn them positive karma (merit) such as feeding and clothing monks (bhikkhus), and attending temple services for protection and veneration of the images of the Buddha.” (Page 84)
Praise for the Print Edition
This handbook of religion is not simply a catalog of the religions of the world, or even of religions as such, but a conceptual framing of religions that engages the evangelical perspective without excluding other views. A novel feature is the inclusion of essays by practitioners of other religions and of cultural and ideological movements. Statistics and maps of the spread of religions make the handbook a useful resource for teaching and study.
—Lamin Sanneh, professor of missions and world Christianity, Yale Divinity School; professor of history and professor of international and area studies, Yale University
The editors have orchestrated a remarkable handbook of religion that will bring our understanding of non-Christian religions and new religious movements to a new level. This handbook brings practitioners of other faiths alongside the best of evangelical scholarship to produce a magisterial volume that will serve the church well for decades. In the face of seemingly intractable questions and issues that religious pluralism inevitably presents to the church, this volume reflects the nuanced conversations that are now taking place around the world. The result is a volume that is historically informed, theologically vibrant, and engagingly practical. This is truly a landmark text.
—Timothy C. Tennent, president and professor of world Christianity, Asbury Theological Seminary
- Title: Handbook of Religion: A Christian Engagement with Traditions, Teachings, and Practices
- Authors: Terry Muck, Harold Netland, Gerald R. McDermott
- Publisher: Baker Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2014
- Logos Release Date: 2016
- Pages: 832
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Christianity and other religions; Religions; Cults
- ISBNs: 9781441220721, 9780801037764, 1441220720, 080103776X
- Resource ID: LLS:HNDBKRLGN
- Resource Type: text.monograph.handbook
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:33:41Z
About the Editors
Terry C. Muck (PhD, Northwestern University) has been a religious studies scholar for more than 35 years. Prior to his retirement, he served as executive director of the Louisville Institute after teaching for many years at Austin Presbyterian Seminary and Asbury Theological Seminary. Muck has authored or edited numerous books, including Christianity Encountering World Religions, Handbook of Religion, and Ministry and Theology in Global Perspective: Contemporary Challenges for the Church. He is cofounder and president of the Society for Buddhist Christian Studies and has been the lead writer for three Christian interfaith statements.
Harold A. Netland (PhD, Claremont Graduate University) is professor of philosophy of religion and intercultural studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he also directs the PhD in intercultural studies program. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including Encountering Religious Pluralism: The Challenge to Christian Faith and Mission, Dissonant Voices: Religious Pluralism and the Question of Truth, A Trinitarian Theology of Religions, and Buddhism: A Christian Exploration and Appraisal. He is also the coeditor of Globalizing Theology and Handbook of Religion.
Gerald R. McDermott (PhD, University of Iowa) is Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. He previously taught at Roanoke College and is an Anglican priest. McDermott is the author, coauthor, or editor of numerous books, including Famous Stutterers, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, God’s Rivals: Why Has God Allowed Different Religions?, Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions?, World Religions: An Indispensable Introduction, and A Trinitarian Theology of Religions.