Abstract
Introduction to Religious Studies offers undergraduates an extensive survey of: the major methodologies needed for the contextualization and critical examination of religions, the differing structures of belief systems from small-scale traditions to the large World Religions, the varying religious descriptions of what people revere as the Holy, and the oral and written traditions that express and preserve spiritual worldviews. This survey does not heavily focus on Western traditions, but instead provides undergraduates with a sampling from the diverse, religious societies of the world. At the core of this eBook is the notion that all religious and spiritual systems are a type of human language, one that attempts to communicate with and explain to others the world/Cosmos in natural and supernatural terms. Within this socio-historical examination, students are presented with the idea that religious worldviews employ an entire vocabulary comprised of words, songs, symbols, art, sensations, and rituals for humans who seek to understand, in a spiritual sense, their surroundings, themselves, each other, their Holy, and their sense of “destiny” or the purpose/mystery of life.