Living Religions: A Brief Introduction is a brief edition of Living Religions, fourth edition. It presents a stimulating survey of today's religious world. Exploring the historical developments and teachings of traditional faiths, indigenous religions, and new religious movements, this brief edition considers how each of these traditions has evolved into contemporary beliefs and practices. It examines the changing nature of each religion, the spread of religious pluralism, and the movement toward interfaith dialogue.

With the help of a team of specialist consultants in each faith, and drawing on a wealth of scholarly research and firsthand source material, Mary Pat Fisher gives a fresh and challenging insight into how believers of today's faiths perceive their religion and its role in the changing world in which they live.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Seven feature boxes on religious figures in public life.
• Quotes from contemporary teachers and practitioners of each faith.
• Coverage of the role of women in each tradition.
• Coverage of the socio-political context of contemporary religious practice.
• Map and timeline providing the geographical and historical context for each religion.

• Each chapter focuses on a different religion—Looking first at its historical development and teachings, and then exploring how these traditions have evolved into contemporary beliefs and practices.

  • Gives students the ability to see each different religion unfold up through the current day while allowing professors to show how incidents in the early development of a religion were responsible for its present state of being.

• Thoroughly updated with the help of an internationally respected team of specialist advisors.

  • Provides students with an accurate, up-to-date and unique perspective of each religion by having a team of specialist consultants review and add new findings based on research and changes in religious situations over the last few years.

• First-person interviews with followers of each faith.

  • Allows students to see how religion comes alive by reading these first-hand accounts of the followers of certain faiths.

• “Religion in Public Life” boxes added to some chapters—Includes boxes on Winona LaDuke, Dr. Karan Singh, Dalai Lama, Janice Perlman, Desmond Tutu, Farid Esack and Baba Virsa Singh.

  • Gives students a look at the religious background of important figures who have impacted today's political history.

• Enhanced coverage of women throughout—Includes new sections on women in the chapters on Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity.

  • Allows professors to be able to easily include more coverage of women's role and impact in various religions.

• Coverage of the religions of Eastern Europe plus the contemporary condition of religions in the former Soviet Union.

  • Enables professors to teach Christianity as it appears in these newly formed countries.

• Timelines for religions' histories.

  • Provides students with a historical and geographical context for selected religions.