Relationship Between the World’s Major Religions

Relationship Between the World’s Major Religions

  1. What is the relationship between the world’s religions? Are they all equally true? Are they all false? Do they all have some truths in them, but not others? Is one religion more true to you than the others are? If so, why.
  1. Pick one Religious Figure: Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, or Confucius. What does the life of this person teach us about what it means to be religious? Have the religious traditions around this person been faithful to his message?
  2. Western Religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) think of God as a Person. This means that they think God as an intellect, a will, and maybe even feelings. Eastern Religions (such as Taoism or the more philosophical branches of Hinduism) think of the divine as something far less person-like. For them the divine is basically the all-inclusive ground of all being, reality at it’s ultimate level, of which all things are but finite manifestations. Do you prefer one of these conceptions of the divine to the others? If so, Why?
  3. Most of the world’s religions have, at one time or another, assigned women to a subordinate place. Women have not played a major role in leadership and have not been central to these religious traditions. Recently many of the world religions have attempted to change this. What needs to be done to make religion fully inclusive of and empowering for women? Can religion be changed to fully include women? Why or why not?
  4. Take a personal field trip to a place of worship. Make sure that that the place you visit is not your particular religion. Describe the experience? What did the place of worship look like? What rituals did they use? How did you feel? In what ways was this new or different from your own religious tradition?

Grading Guidelines:

  • Write in first person ( use “I” and “me”)
  • You can lose points for spelling, grammar, and mechanics. Not many, but some. Make sure to proof read and spell check your paper.
  • The Paper must be typed and double spaced. Please no extra spaces between paragraph.
  • Keep to times new roman 12pt font and 1 inch margins for your paper. I will doc some points if this is not adhered to.
  • Your paper MUST be 3 FULL pages, 4-6 pages is acceptable, don’t go beyond page 7.
  • Be sure that your name is on the paper, and that all pages are numbered.
  • Finally, be sure that your paper is structured in the essay format: this means you MUST have a clear intro, body, and conclusion.

 

Answer preview:

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