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.
Endorsements
"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
"Three exceptional scholars of deep Christian commitment in our global era of complex, interactive religious diversity have gifted us with a handbook rich enough in perspective, content, and method to satisfy historians of comparative religion, contemporary theologians of world Christianity, and evangelists in Christian mission anywhere in the world--a formidable task, which they have accomplished with considerable insight. As editors, Muck, Netland, and McDermott have gathered a team of fifty-five contributors to present, in a cogent, well-organized manner, what Christians--in their own questions--seek to know about non-Christian traditions. More than this, the handbook also provides important overviews on the study of religion and Christian theology of religion as well as topical essays on religion and science, gender, politics, violence, environment, among others. Deeply informed by a historical approach giving attention to indigenous or 'original' traditions that endure interactive change over time (through the coming and going of dominant religious movements as well as new religious movements) this handbook fills a void. While there are many textbooks introducing world religions, none does so with (1) the depth of scholarship, including real voices of religious adherents, and (2) the range of Christian hope to which this handbook bears witness. This would be an ideal textbook for my course Engagement with Other Faiths at Fuller Theological Seminary."
Diane B. Obenchain, professor of religion and director of the China program, Fuller Theological Seminary