Comparative Religion

Religion can be difficult to define. Most people say, "I know it when I see it." But what is the "it" you see? This lecture introduces an approach to help you answer this question and also addresses both subjectivity and the importance of understanding human religiousness.

You learn 12 common features found in all religions and begin gaining the foundation for broader inquiries about similarities and differences among Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, including those that occur not only between faiths, but within the same one.

Following a brief overview of some prominent single-discipline attempts to explain religion's origins, you explore three broader frameworks for understanding: Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy, Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and The Profane, and Wilfred Cantwell Smith's The Meaning and End of Religion.

Eliade's observations about how different religions distinguish between the sacred and the profane (ordinary) and assign sacred meaning to times, places, and objects come alive for you through examples drawn from several of those religions.

Foundational religious leaders fulfill vital purposes in all religions. In the first of two lectures devoted to such sacred people, you learn the different roles played by figures like Confucius, Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha), Isaiah, Jeremiah, Muhammad, Jesus, and Krishna.

You explore some of the more familiar figures charged with carrying out essential functions and rituals in their religious communities and learn how their roles have evolved. You also encounter the shaman, a lesser-known figure found not just in tribal cultures but in the great world religions as well.

Symbols are how human beings communicate. This lecture reveals to you how different religions employ these essential tools, not only through "representational" symbols whose meanings must be learned, but especially through "presentational" symbols whose meanings are experienced on a deeper level.

A religion's sacred stories are profoundly true to those who embrace them. One type—the creation story—is common to all religions, which have given us hundreds of such stories and myths. You learn their categories and the four functions they serve.

What happens when a religion's founding figures and first adherents are gone, and divergent views arise among later generations? By looking at the early history of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, you see how adherents of the three great missionary religions developed frameworks for sustaining their faiths.

In examining the processes by which authoritative scriptures of the three Abrahamic religions became fixed, you see common approaches and distinctive differences. And you learn that even within the same faith, differences persist over what constitutes authoritative texts and how to interpret them.

The massive body of literature deemed sacred by Hindus and Buddhists can be as bewildering as the number of ways in which they are understood and used. This lecture gives you a demystifying guide to the major types of sacred literature.

Nearly all religions include some concept of divinity, each fitting into one of four distinct categories. But you quickly see that the lines of separation can be fluid, and the question, "What do we mean when we say God?" can be more provocative than you might imagine.

You explore the rituals that mark key stages in life—birth, childhood, coming of age, marriage, and death—and see striking similarity across all religions, as seen in the rituals of baptism, bar mitzvah, Buddhist and Christian ordination, and funerals.

In a lecture that may forever change your perception of Passover, Christmas, or noon prayers at the mosque, you learn how calendar-based rituals use sacred stories, time, space, and objects to fulfill important pedagogical, sociological, and psychological functions.

At first glance, ancient practices involving animal or human sacrifice are shocking to modern sensibilities. An examination of ritual sacrifice reveals common understandings and outcomes and leaves you with new insight into why people—even today—engage in sacrificial rituals.

Every religion is predicated on the notion that the world we experience is not ideal and tries to explain the nature and purpose of existence. This lecture provides a framework for the next five lectures, including a consideration of the universal problems of evil and injustice.

Although Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share many roots, the three Abrahamic traditions approach the human predicament in different ways. This lecture offers you the chance to observe through a new lens the ways in which the three faiths approach issues like sin, sacrifice, and ultimate accountability.

Although Hinduism and Buddhism encompass hundreds of varying traditions, all address the "illusion of reality" as the predicament trapping people in the cycles of death and rebirth. This lecture explains this cyclical perspective and how it differs from the linear viewpoint of the Abrahamic traditions.

Are the goals of existence only otherworldly? Can any be experienced here and now? You learn that no matter how the different religions conceive of the afterlife, they are united in a shared understanding that ultimate meaning must be found beyond physical existence.

Religion provides four basic paths by which faithful followers may pursue the ultimate goals: the ways of faith, devotion, disciplined action, and meditation. This lecture explores the first two, using examples drawn from Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

Disciplined action is the most widely practiced path, shown to you here in the legal traditions of Islam and biblical Israel and the rigid Hindu caste system. You also examine disciplined meditation, a form of action practiced by Buddhists and Hindus.

Virtually all religions include adherents whose religious practice centers on the mystical path. Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, the lines separating religions become blurred or erased. You explore several key commonalities and differences among Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim mystics.

As religions begin to grow, structure becomes a requirement, whether for perpetuation, organization, or doctrinal clarification. You see how the first followers of the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad attempted to resolve challenges through institutional structures, as often borrowed or adapted as created anew.

Your course concludes with a consideration of the ways people in different religions understand their particular experiences and traditions in the context of religious diversity. You see several examples of the positive and inclusive approaches that are now part of the 21st century landscape.