Research Guides: Diversity Initiatives in the Library: January-World Religions

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Articles of Interest

Freedom of Religion: America's Greatest Invention: While much of the world still faces restrictions on religion, America's unique approach brought about both religious freedom and spiritual vibrancy The concept of religious freedom is not unique to America, but the specific model that America created is unusual and often misunderstood. It goes beyond tolerance, equal rights or separation of church and state. America's unique approach to religious freedom is one of its greatest inventions. The more successful American paradigm has emerged over many years, shaped through civil disobedience, elections, lawsuits, coalition building, and bloodshed. Won through great struggle, religious freedom achieved an exalted status as a core element of our national identity. In allowing Americans to follow their souls' yearnings, religious freedom has become a sacred liberty.
The Future of Religious Leadership: World Religions in Conversation This essay offers a critical reading in The Future of Religious Leadership: World Religions in Conversation, a collection of articles edited by Alon Goshen-Gottstein. The essay suggests a few ways of reading this book. In one way, it should be appreciated as a history of ideas, allowing us to trace the development of the concept of leadership in various religions, allowing us to understand how leadership came to be what it is today. The question posed to all the authors who wrote texts for this book pertained not only to the significance of leadership in their respective religions, but to the future of religious leadership. They were asked to address the challenges they have faced, the ways in which they have contended with them, and, equally important, the manner in which they have dealt with the cumulative significance of the many challenges to a new formulation of leadership in the future. Therefore, before readers embark on their encounter with each of the different accounts contained in the book, it is important to start by first considering the significance of the project as a whole. To this end, this review begins by presenting the book’s potential readers with its major challenge, which also appears to have been the goal of compiling all of its essays into one text: identification of the shared elements of the challenges facing the different religious leaderships. Phrased more precisely, it is the argument that the future of religious leadership depends entirely on interreligious discourse. It is the divergence into interreligious study and interreligious theology—which the book’s authors and editors regard as necessary at this point in time—that constitutes the primary motive for the anthology’s compilation into a single major project.
Meaning-making, suffering, and religion: a worldview conception. Park's meaning-making model suggests that events such as the loss of a loved one may cause distress because people's appraised meaning of the difficult event may challenge their global orienting systems. Meaning-making alleviates distress by reducing this discrepancy. Research has shown the important role that religions often play in the meaning-making process. However, this body of research has largely been limited by a reluctance to address the religious content of meaning-making processes and outcomes. Here we advocate for inclusion of religious beliefs in the study of meaning-making in suffering, and recommend the construct of worldview as a promising resource for this endeavour. Finally, we illustrate the promise of this approach by exploring the contrasting worldviews of three religious traditions: Buddhism, Christianity, and atheism. We trace the ontological, anthropological, axiological, and praxiological assumptions in these worldviews, contrast them, and note the implications for research.
Religion and the World Health Organization: an evolving relationship Much has been written about WHO. Relatively little is known, however, about the organisation’s evolving relationship with health-related personal beliefs, ‘faith-based organisations’ (FBOs), religious leaders and religious communities (‘religious actors’). This article presents findings from a 4-year research project on the ‘spiritual dimension’ of health and WHO conducted at the University of Zürich. Drawing on archival research in Geneva and interviews with current and former WHO staff, consultants and programme partners, we identify three stages in this relationship. Although since its founding individuals within WHO occasionally engaged with religious actors, it was not until the 1970s, when the primary healthcare strategy was developed in consultation with the Christian Medical Commission, that their concerns began to influence WHO policies. By the early 1990s, the failure to roll out primary healthcare globally was accompanied by a loss of interest in religion within WHO. With the spread of HIV/AIDS however, health-related religious beliefs were increasingly recognised in the development of a major quality of life instrument by the Division of Mental Health, and the work of a WHO expert committee on cancer pain relief and the subsequent establishment of palliative care. While the 1990s saw a cooling off of activities, in the years since, the HIV/AIDS, Ebola and COVID-19 crises have periodically brought religious actors to the attention of the organisation. This study focusses on what we suggest may be understood as a trend towards a closer association between the activities of WHO and religious actors, which has occurred in fits and starts and is marked by attempts at institutional translation and periods of forgetting and remembering.
Tolerance between religions through the role of local wisdom and religious moderation

Films and Videos

Beliefs and Believers by Governors State University Staff
Call Number: BL 80.2 .S56 2006
ISBN: 9780757533075
Publication Date: 2006-07-18

Let's Look at World Religions (Films on Demand: Digital Rights Group Limited)

Religion, a world history by Delumeau, Jean
Call Number: BL 48 .R45 2003
Publication Date: 2003

Religion and America's Role in the World: An Anthology (Films on Demand: Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly)
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Segments include:

• Religion and America’s Role in the World—A Report
• Young Evangelical Engagement in the World—A Report
• Allen Hertzke—An Interview
• Anna Greenberg—An Interview
• Panel Discussion—Religion and America’s Role in the World
• Madeleine Albright on Religion, Foreign Policy, and World Affairs
• Making Foreign Aid Work—A Report
• David Price on Obama and the Muslim World
• Religion and Peace in the Middle East—A Report
• Food Aid Ethics—A Report
• Anne-Marie Slaughter on Faith, Values, and Foreign Policy
• Tod Lindberg on Religion, Politics, and Foreign Policy

Religions of the world our world faiths by D'Anna, D. Michael
Call Number: BL 51 .R45 2005
Publication Date: 2005
Roots of religion by Discover Channel
Call Number: DS 72 .R66 2005
Publication Date: 2005

Other Resources

Books

Disability and World Religions by Darla Y. Schumm (Editor); Michael Stoltzfus (Editor)
Call Number: BL 65 .B63 D573 2016
ISBN: 9781481305211
Publication Date: 2016-08-01
Women in World Religions [2 Volumes] by Susan de Gaia (Editor)
Call Number: BL 458 .W5835 2019 v.1
ISBN: 9781440848490
Publication Date: 2018-11-16
Brown, white, black : an American family at the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and religion by Nishta J. Mehra
Call Number: BL 2525 .L553 2017
ISBN: 9781250133557
Publication Date: 2019-02-05
Stewards of Eden by Sandra L. Richter
Call Number: BT 695.5 .R525 2020
ISBN: 9780830849260
Publication Date: 2020-02-25
The Twentysomething Soul by Tim Clydesdale; Kathleen Garces-Foley
ISBN: 9780190931353
Publication Date: 2019-08-02

eBooks

Issues in Religion and Education by Lori G. Beaman (Volume Editor); Leo Van Arragon (Volume Editor)
Call Number: EBOOK
ISBN: 9789004289819
Publication Date: 2015-01-01
Religious Tolerance in World Religions by Jacob Neusner (Editor); Bruce Chilton (Editor)
Call Number: EBOOK
ISBN: 9781599472126
Publication Date: 2009-04-01
Rethinking Ghosts in World Religions by Mu-Chou Poo (Editor)
Call Number: EBOOK
ISBN: 9789047424840
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Drawn to the Gods by David Feltmate
Call Number: EBOOK
ISBN: 9781479822188
Publication Date: 2017-04-11
Understanding Religion and Popular Culture by Terry Ray Clark (Editor); Dan W. Clayton (Editor)
Call Number: EBOOK
ISBN: 9780203119570
Publication Date: 2012-05-04