Library Catalog
Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

In the company of friends : exploring faith and understanding with Buddhists and Christians / John Ross Carter.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: Albany : State University of New York Press, ©2012.Description: 1 online resource (368 pages)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781438442815
  • 1438442815
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Additional physical formats: Print version:: No titleDDC classification:
  • 261.2/43 23
LOC classification:
  • BR128.B8 C37 2012
Other classification:
  • online - EBSCO
Online resources:
Contents:
The quest for religious understanding with Theravāda, Jōdo Shinshū Buddhists, and Christians -- The dynamics of faith and beyond : personally and in an ever expanding community -- Converging affirmations from different perspectives -- Building from our past into our common future -- The challenge of our future.
Summary: Winner of the 2014 Frederick J. Streng Award presented by the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesIn this work of Buddhist-Christian reflection, John Ross Carter explores two basic aspects of human religiousness: faith and the activity of understanding. Carter's perspective is unique, putting people and their experiences at the center of inquiry into religiousness. His model and method grows out of friendship, challenging the so-called objective approach to the study of religion that privileges patterns, concepts, and abstraction.Carter considers the traditions he knows best, the Protestant Christianity he was born into and the Theravāda and Jōdo Shinshū (Pure Land) traditions of the Sri Lankan and Japanese friends among whom he has lived, studied, and worked. His rich, wide-ranging accounts of religious experience include discussions of transcendence, reason, saṃvega, shinjin, the inconceivable, and whether lives oriented toward faith will survive in a global context with increased pressures for individualism and secularism. Ultimately, Carter proposes that the endeavor of interreligious understanding is itself a religious quest.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

The quest for religious understanding with Theravāda, Jōdo Shinshū Buddhists, and Christians -- The dynamics of faith and beyond : personally and in an ever expanding community -- Converging affirmations from different perspectives -- Building from our past into our common future -- The challenge of our future.

Winner of the 2014 Frederick J. Streng Award presented by the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesIn this work of Buddhist-Christian reflection, John Ross Carter explores two basic aspects of human religiousness: faith and the activity of understanding. Carter's perspective is unique, putting people and their experiences at the center of inquiry into religiousness. His model and method grows out of friendship, challenging the so-called objective approach to the study of religion that privileges patterns, concepts, and abstraction.Carter considers the traditions he knows best, the Protestant Christianity he was born into and the Theravāda and Jōdo Shinshū (Pure Land) traditions of the Sri Lankan and Japanese friends among whom he has lived, studied, and worked. His rich, wide-ranging accounts of religious experience include discussions of transcendence, reason, saṃvega, shinjin, the inconceivable, and whether lives oriented toward faith will survive in a global context with increased pressures for individualism and secularism. Ultimately, Carter proposes that the endeavor of interreligious understanding is itself a religious quest.