Anatomy of the Sacred: An Introduction to Religion (6e)

For one-semester, undergraduate courses in Introduction to Religion and Comparative Religion.

This comprehensive text introduces students to the nature and variety of religious phenomena, belief, and practice.  It shows the  ways religion is studied, a cross-cultural study of the variety of history forms of religious belief and practice, such as deity conceptions at the divine myth, ritual scripture, rites of passage, views of the human problem evil, and the ways and goals of an examination of the challenges faced by religion today.

Anatomy of the Sacred: An Introduction to Religion, 6th Edition

PART I) THE STUDY OF RELIGION:

1) What is Religion?

2) Ways of Studying Religion

 
PART II) UNIVERSAL FORMS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND EXPRESSION

3) The Sacred and the Holy
4) Sacred Symbol, Myth, and Doctrine

5) Sacred Ritual
6) Sacred Scripture
7) Society and the Sacred: The Social Formations and Transformations of Religion

PART III) UNIVERSAL COMPONENTS OF A RELIGIOUS WORLDVIEW
8) Deity: Concepts of the Divine and Ultimate Reality
9) Cosmogony: Origins of the Natural and Social Order
10) Views of the Human Problem
11) Theodicy: Encountering Evil

12) Ethics: Patterns of Moral Action

13) Soteriology: Ways and Goals of Salvation and Liberation

PART IV) THE SACRED AND THE SECULAR IN MODERNITY

14) Secularization - New Religious Revitalization Movements - COntemporary Religious Fundamentalism

15) Contemporary Challenges to Traditional Religion: The Status and the Roles of Women - Relations Between Religion and the State

New features found in the 6th edition:

• A new chapter on ways of studying religion, and concluding chapters on the responses of religion to modernity, including the rise of secularism and pluralism, and women in religion and challenges to it; and the often contentious issues between religion and the modern state, with special attention to America.
• Revisions and additions to several chapters: on new age movements, Wicca, Panentheism, Intelligent Design and the religion and science debate, Buddhist emptiness, the role of women in Hinduism and Buddhism.   
• Extensive discussion of gender–In the concluding chapter using contemporary examples from Roman Catholicism, and Islam.

• Presents a more thorough treatment of the growing importance of gender's role in the history of religion.

• More illustrative material from contemporary religious life–From New Age cults and contemporary Islam, and in cosmology.

  • Provides a more in-depth study of contemporary religions while maintaining examples from archaic, ancient, and lesser-known religions.

• Updated Key Words, Overviews, and Study Questions –For each chapter.

  • Helps students distinguish between essential names, terms, concepts, and the names or words necessary for illustration, as well as provides learning aids by outlining and reviewing key material.

• Thoroughly revised Suggestions for Further Reading.

  • Introduces students to some of the best recent scholarly literature available on a wide range of topics.

Hallmark features of Anatomy of the Sacred: An Introduction to Religion: 

• A focus on commonly asked questions.

  • Allows students to explore: What is religion? How do religions offer different answers to basic human questions? What shared characteristics can be found in comparing religious beliefs and practices?

• A cross-cultural approach—Includes examples throughout.

  • Affords students the opportunity to explore various beliefs and practices such as ritual, scriptures, and ethics. It shows the similarities and differences among the world's great religions.

• Up-to-date scholarship—By scholars such as Mircea Eliade, Carl Jung, Victor Turner, and René Gerard.

  • Discusses topics of the sacred, religious symbolism and myth, ritual, and the social dimension of religion in terms of recent research but accessible to undergraduates.

• An exploration of why humans are religious.

  • Emphasizes the nature of religion, its uniqueness to humans, and the reasons to study it.

• Universal forms of religious experience and expression.

  • Discusses the experience of the sacred or holy, the nature of religious symbolism, myth and doctrine, ritual, scripture and the social significance of religion.

• A comparative analysis of seven fundamental dimensions that make up a religious world view.

  • Explores deity, cosmogony, the human problem, ethics, theodicy, and the ways and goals of salvation or enlightenment.

• A wide range of primitive, ancient, and modern religions.

  • Assembles for students material of eastern and western great historical and living religious traditions.