Encountering World Religions: A Christian Introduction

The diversity of the world's religions has come to the West, but believers are often ill-equipped for any kind of serious engagement with non-Christians. In Encountering World Religions, professor and author Irving Hexham introduces all the world's major religious traditions in a brief and understandable way. Hexham outlines key beliefs and practices in each religion, while also providing guidance on how to think critically about them from the standpoint of Christian theology. African, yogic, and Abrahamic traditions are all covered. Accessible and clear, Encountering World Religions will provide formal and lay students alike with a useful Christian introduction to the major faiths of our world.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Understanding Precedes Engagement 1. Welcome Back to the First Century 2. The Christian Enemy 3. Uncanny Encounters 4. The Neglected Richness of African Traditions 5. Africa’s Christian Heritage 6. The Yogic Experience 7. Hindu Narratives and the Problem of History 8. The Nothingness of Buddhism 9. Trapped in Samsara 10. The Revival of Chinese Confucian and Taoist Traditions 11. The Sikhs 12. Judaism 13. The Holocaust and the Problem of Jewish Conversion 14. The Rise of Islam 15. Islamophobia and the Reality of Islamic Revolutions Conclusion: Christianity Is Different

About the Author :
Irving Hexham is professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary and adjunct professor of World Christianity at Liverpool Hope University. He has published twenty-seven academic books, including The Concise Dictionary of Religion, Understanding Cults and New Religions, and Religion and Economic Thought, plus eighty major academic articles and chapters in books, numerous popular articles, and book reviews. Recently he completed a report for the United Nations’ refugee agency on religious conflict in Africa and another for the Canadian Government’s Department of Canadian Heritage on Religious Publications in Canada. He is listed in Who’s Who in Canada and various scholarly directories. In 2008, he was honored at the historic Humboldt University in Berlin with a Festschrift, Border Crossings: Explorations of an Interdisciplinary Historian (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag).

Review :
As a good teacher, Hexham is not afraid to offer the kind of opinion or insight that is bound to provoke discussion and debate. This book is the fruit of many years of trying to encourage university students to engage meaningfully with the study of religion. Hexham is well known to his many readers through his publications on religious studies, both as a general field of research, as well as represented in various movements, both local and worldwide. Hexham offers an introduction to the study of religions based on his years of teaching the subject, an impressive multicultural knowledge of various religious traditions. Hexham's book is a resource that brings clarity to the vast world of religious beliefs. This needs to be on the bookshelf of every Christian leader.