Textbook for RS100 Introduction to Religious Thought RS 100.

-- Introduction to the Second Edition -- Human Experience and Religion -- Creating Order and Meaning -- Shaping Human Experience -- Order and Meaning -- The Symbolic Process -- Cultures and Cosmologies -- Experience and Imagination -- The Aryans and Vedic Religion -- The Haudenosaunee and Longhouse Religion -- Resources -- Religious Understandings of Life -- The Power of Life -- Land in Warlpiri Experience -- Freedom in Jewish Experience -- Sacred Space and Sacred Time -- Person, Self, and Experience -- Resources -- The Study of Religion -- Nature, Culture, and Religion -- Culture-A Shared Pattern for Living -- Studying Religion -- Defining Religion -- Science and Religion -- Symbolic Forms -- Resources -- Religious Action -- Ritual Action -- Religious Ritual -- Symbolic/Expressive Dimensions of Ritual -- Personal and Social Functions of Ritual -- Types of Religious Ritual -- Summary -- Resources -- Ethical Action -- Religious Ethics -- Religion as a Source of Ethics -- Norms for Moral Conduct -- Norms for Moral Character -- Social Ethics -- The Relationship between Symbolic and Practical Religious Action -- Ritual and Moral Pedagogy -- Ritual and Moral Redemption -- Ritual and Moral Transformation -- Summary -- Resources -- Religious Language -- Talking about the Sacred -- Religious Language and Figurative Language: Sides of the Same Coin -- Religious Metaphors: Here One Century, Gone the Next -- Myth -- Prophets Who Challenge the Status Quo -- Many Types of Religious Language -- Summary -- Resources -- Scriptures, Canons, and Creeds -- Scripture -- Why Scripture and Not the Bible? -- Reading Religious Literature -- Critical Reading for Meaning Inside and Outside a Religious Tradition -- The World within the Text -- Thinking with Scriptures -- Doctrines and Creeds -- Summary -- Resources -- Religious Change -- Personal Religious Change -- Personal Religious Change as Development -- Personal Religious Change as Conversion -- Development and Conversion in an Individual Life -- Personal Conversion and New Religions -- From Personal to Communal Religious Development -- Summary -- Resources -- Communal Religious Change -- Renewal and Reform within a Religion -- Social Change as a Catalyst for Religious Change -- Cultural Contact and Religious Change -- Religion as a Catalyst for Social Change -- Resistance to Change -- Summary -- Resources -- Religious Authenticity -- Alienation -- The Religious Legitimation of Cultural Biases -- Alienating Images of God -- The Tendencies of Religious Authorities to Control -- Religious Responses in the Face of Suffering -- Personal Sources of Alienation -- Responses to Alienation -- Cults -- Religion Understood as Totally Alienating -- The Ambiguity of Religion -- Summary -- Resources -- Reconcilling Religion -- Personal Reconciliation within the Community -- Conflicting Worldviews -- The Confession of Transgressions -- Reconciliation between Religious Groups -- Reconciliation to Oneself -- Buddhism and Inner Peace -- The Concept of Reconciliation in Review -- Conclusion -- Resources -- Glossary -- Index.