The No-Nonsense Guide to Religion (No-Nonsense Guides)
Symon Hill
Language: English
Pages: 144
ISBN: 1906523290
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Religion is a term that is often used in the media and public life without any clarification. However, it is a word that encompasses hundreds of different beliefs. It is a loaded word that has a different meaning for every person; religion can be seen as a source of war and peace, love and hate, dialogue and narrow-mindedness.
Symon Hill’s No-Nonsense Guide to Religion tries to explain what religion means, how we relate to it, how it was created, and how it affects us culturally, politically, and spiritually today.
Drawing on a wide range of sources, The No-Nonsense Guide to Religion does not just concentrate on the popular and well-established traditions, which normally over-emphasize powerful figures. The guide also focuses on the diversity within religions as well as the similarities between them.
The globalization of communications has made more people aware of religious conversion, with more people than ever before belonging to a different religious community from their parents. The No-Nonsense Guide to Religion considers how religion has shaped our culture as well as how our culture is shaping religion today.
Symon Hill is a tutor in practical theology, a writer, a trainer, and an activist. He has written comment pieces for newspapers ranging from the Sunday Herald to The Daily Mail and contributes regularly to the Guardian's website, The Friend, and Ekklesia.
prove that good journalism is far too important to be left to (most) journalists.’ Boyd Tonkin, The Independent, London About the author Symon Hill is associate director of Ekklesia, an independent thinktank that examines the role of religion in public life. He contributes regularly to the Guardian, Morning Star, The Friend and Baptist Times and is an associate tutor at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre. He has written and campaigned on issues including religious liberty, the arms trade,
weighed’.5 Even when dealing only in one language, many religious expressions can be so controversial and contested that they assume wildly different meanings according to who is using them. A number of theologians suggest that the word ‘God’ is used in an unduly straightforward way in modern religion. Most monotheistic religions have in the past been keen to emphasize that God’s existence is beyond existence as humans understand it; God does not simply exist in addition to people, animals and
make ‘the same kinds of claims that scientists make, except they’re usually false’.19 Creation stories Christian fundamentalists strongly defend biblical creation narratives as literal accounts, but when interpreted on a deeper and less literal level they have inspired a far more progressive outlook. The 17th century English radical Gerard Winstanley pointed out that neither property nor inequality appeared in God’s original creation: ‘In the beginning of time, the great Creator... made the
values and morality, and sometimes the religious group may encourage or help the development of new relationships’. She emphasizes the need to see conversion in the context of wider 96 personal changes, which ‘continue throughout life’. 2 Conversion, however, is rarely an easy matter. In certain repressive states, converting away from the dominant religion can lead to a denial of human rights or at least a reduction in social status and career prospects. Even in more liberal societies,
punishments with no regard to their original context. Other Muslims have a more sophisticated interpretation of sharia, while a small number reject it as contrary to the Qur’an. Today, most countries with Muslim majorities are ruled by undemocratic regimes, sometimes justifying oppression in the name of Islam. However, they all face criticism from other Muslims for doing so. In many countries, Muslims experience persecution or at least stigma. This situation is exacerbated by the tendency of both