A perennial best-seller, this collection of readings remains a favorite of teachers of world religions for its impartial tone and its balance of major contemporary religious traditions with primitive, ancient, and esoteric religions....

The World's Religions offers a fascinating insight into a wide range of faiths, their history and their followers. In the richly illustrated new edition of this popular book, religions are described through their symbols, rituals, followers, architecture and art. References, statistics, maps and pictures have been updated and added. The text has been thoroughly revised to highlight recent developments, such as the spread of Islam, African-American and Hispanic-American religious experience, and women priests....

This book offers a balanced, wide-ranging, and realistic approach to the full range of worldviews, showing how, whether religious or secular, they define the human values that drive the engines of both continuity and change worldwide. It shows readers the dynamics of each tradition, and emphasizes that although the various traditions may all share similar aspects, they each assign varying levels of importance to specific areas. Explores the major religious traditions and secular ideologies (Marxism, nationalisms, scientific humanism) from six dimensions: experiential/emotional; narrative/mythic; doctrinal/philosophical; ethical/legal; ritual/practical; and social/organizational. For anyone interested in comparative worldviews, religious and secular....