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Comparative Religion
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The main obstacle that prevents the formation of Comparative Religion as a science is the difference between one religious structure and another. For example, one can never really compare Christianity adequately with Hinduism or Buddhism. For one thing, the Hindu scriptures do assimilate, in an integral entity, both aspects of a speculative tradition, known in the terminology of the Western intellectual traditions as theology and philosophy. With very few exceptions -- for example, Malebranche -- the West does not evince a sustained, integrated thought or speculative enterprise that unifies philosophy and theology. Philosophy has developed out of principles sought out and established by Reason, while the concerns of Theology drew their sustenance and their meaning from the need to reconcile History with the demands of Faith in revealed Truth. Consequently, while Theology has had a spectacular career and has, for nearly a thousand years, affected the course and form of the history of the West, especially during the Middle Ages under the aegis of the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire and later in Protestant theology following the Lutheran schism, it cannot be denied that Philosophy, too, has had a decisive, often divergent, impact on the destiny of the Western Man.
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Comparative Religion is a Humanities department of the College of Arts and Science at Miami University. The Department consists of nine full-time faculty and approximately fifty students majoring or minoring in the program. Beyond those, more than 700 students enroll in classes offered by the department each semester.
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This programme provides an opportunity to study both Comparative Religion and Social Anthropology - to discover areas where the two disciplines fruitfully come together and where their interaction is less direct. Although these disciplines differ from one another in a variety of ways, the existence of an interface between the two is commonly recognised. Increasingly, scholars of religion use anthropological concepts and tools to formulate questions pertaining to religious phenomena, while religious ritual and magico-religious practice have long been standard topics in the research of anthropologists. The study of ethnographic film and video is made possible with access to the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology and units offered by the subject area of Art History and Visual Culture.
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Comparative Religion examines the spiritual quest of humankind, especially as it has manifested itself in the world’s living religions. These include Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and other less familiar traditions. No other academic field looks at the origins, sacred writings, rituals, beliefs and world views of the various religions for their own sake rather than as an aspect of another field of study.
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The comparative analysis presented here is focused on Christianity and the major Eastern religions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism, because they play a major role in defining today's world spirituality. This is an obvious phenomenon on the Internet too, where a lot of spiritual movements indebted to classic Eastern doctrines and practices can be found. Some may believe that a comparative analysis of the major world religions like this may fuel religious hatred and intolerance, but this is wrong. Religious tolerance and freedom cannot be built on ignorance but rather on the understanding of commonalities and differences. Jesus Christ is the perfect example of teaching love for one's neighbor despite religious differences (see The Parable of the Good Samaritan). Unfortunately, some of His followers have done the opposite.
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Comparative Religion