REL102 - Great Religions of the World: Home

This program surveys America’s increasingly pluralistic spiritual landscape via The Pluralism Project at Harvard University; the Interfaith Center at the Presidio; Inter-Faith Ministries, in Wichita; and the United Religions Initiative, in San Francisco.

If religion is viewed as “a finger pointing at the moon,” then preoccupation with that finger—rites, rituals, rules—can actually be an obstacle to spiritual experience. This program considers the idea that religion is a means to sanctity, not an end in itself; the importance, in a time of rising global threat levels, of dissolving strictly sectarian conceptions of God; the profound unanimity of the religious quest; approaches to connecting with one’s own inherent divinity; and the influence of personal and cultural mythology, as defined by Joseph Campbell.

Throughout history, human beings have dreamed of heaven, built their lives around it, and even killed for their particular religion’s version of the hereafter. This program explores the concept of heaven according to some inspiring followers of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism.