This Is A New Release Of The Original 1887 Edition.

Can religion be compatible with liberal democracy? World Religions and Democracy brings together insights from renowned scholars and world leaders in a provocative and timely discussion of religions' role in the success or failure of democracy. An essay by Alfred Stepan outlines the concept of "twin tolerations" and differentiation, and creates a template that can be applied to all of the religion-democracy relationships observed and analyzed throughout the volume. "Twin tolerations" means that there is a clear distinction and a mutual respect between political authorities and religious leaders and bodies. When true differentiation is accomplished, the religious sector enjoys freedom of activity and the ability to peacefully influence its members but does not wield direct political power. A country's ability to implement the principle of differentiation directly affects the successful development of democracy.

Part two focuses on eastern religions -- Confucianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism -- and includes contributions from Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The third part addresses democracy in relationship to Judaism and the three branches of Christianity -- Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. Sociologist Peter Berger offers a global perspective of Christianity and democracy.

The volume's final section discusses what is perhaps the most challenging example of the struggling relationship between religion and democracy today: Islam and the governments of the Muslim nations. Abdou Filali-Ansary, Bernard Lewis, and others present a comprehensive exploration of Muslim thought and faith in an increasingly secular, modern world. It is inthis volatile political and religious climate that solutions are most urgently needed but also most elusive.

Contributors: Alfred Stepan, Hahm Chaibong, Francis Fukuyama, Pratap Mehta, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Hillel Fradkin, Daniel Philpott, Tim Shah, Robert Woodberry, Elizabeth Prodromou, Peter Berger, Abdou Filali-Ansary, Bernard Lewis, Robin Wright, Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Radwan A. Masmoudi, Laith Kubba, Ladan Boroumand, Roya Boroumand.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic, timeless works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

This is an endeavor of a Western Christian Episcopalian] to find teachings of the Church in the East since 1054CE. Many of these are taken from the time spent during seminary and doctrinal classes.

Religiously motivated violence caused by the fusion of state and religion occurred in medieval Tibet and Bhutan and later in imperial Japan, but interfaith conflict also followed colonial incursions in India, Sri Lanka, and Burma. Before that time, there was a general premodern harmony among the resident religions of the latter countries, and only in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries did religiously motivated violence break out. While conflict caused by Hindu fundamentalists has been serious and widespread, a combination of medieval Tibetan Buddhists and modern Sri Lankan, Japanese, and Burmese Buddhists has caused the most violence among the Asian religions. However, the Chinese Taiping Christians have the world record for the number of religious killings by one single sect. A theoretical investigation reveals that specific aspects of the Abrahamic religions-an insistence on the purity of revelation, a deity who intervenes in history, but one who still is primarily transcendent-may be primary causes of religious conflict. Only one factor-a mystical monism not favored in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-was the basis of a distinctively Japanese Buddhist call for individuals to identify totally with the emperor and to wage war on behalf of a divine ruler. The Origins of Religious Violence: An Asian Perspective uses a methodological heuristic of premodern, modern, and constructive postmodern forms of thought to analyze causes and offer solutions to religious violence.

"The contributors to this volume have found the language and concepts by which to interpret Leonard Howell and the origins of the Rastafari movement in the 1930s. This volume is richly documented from the archives, and from interviews, and is informed by multidisciplinary methods, so the reader is treated to an authoritative and comprehensive collection of essays. "Leonard Howell was persecuted over five decades by the British colonial state and by Jamaican governments since independence in 1962. It is in this context that Howell defined the main tenets of the movement, a movement that has now spread globally. All the major themes of his thinking, such as African redemption, the divinity of Haile Selassie, repatriation, and the struggle for freedom and self-reliance are discussed. Howell challenged British colonialism and Jamaican elites in a very different way from the approaches used by the middle-class intelligentsia. He focused, rather, on a new way of seeing God, King and self, thus creating an alternative way of being in the world. Developing Marcus Garvey's focus on Africa, Leonard Howell and his followers reclaimed their ancestral identity from the dehumanized condition left by British slavery and colonialism. Howell's communal settlement on `Pinnacle' was an alternative communal space for Rastafari artisans, musicians and peasant farmers."-Rupert Lewis, Professor Emeritus, Department of Government, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica