Reproduction of the original: Thoughts on Life and Religion by Friedrich Max Müller

The book provides a comprehensive overview of the literature on religion, conflict, and peacebuilding. With a focus on structural and cultural violence, the volume also offers a cutting edge interdisciplinary reframing of the scope of scholarship in the field.

In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel treats the religions of the world under the rubric "the determinate religion." This is a part of his corpus that has traditionally been neglected since scholars have struggled to understand what philosophical work it is supposed to do. In Hegel's Interpretation of the Religions of the World, Jon Stewart argues that Hegel's rich analyses of Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Egyptian and Greek polytheism, and the Roman religion are not simply irrelevant historical material, as is often thought. Instead, they play a central role in Hegel's argument for what he regards as the truth of Christianity. Hegel believes that the different conceptions of the gods in the world religions are reflections of individual peoples at specific periods in history. These conceptions might at first glance appear random and chaotic, but there is, Hegel claims, a discernible logic in them. Simultaneously, a theory of mythology, history, and philosophical anthropology, Hegel's account of the world religions goes far beyond the field of philosophy of religion. The controversial issues surrounding his treatment of the non-European religions are still very much with us today and make his account of religion an issue of continued topicality in the academic landscape of the twenty-first century.

A rich and profound contribution to the debate on the position of modern Christianity opened up Kraemer's The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World. In Religion and the Christian Faith he deals with many of the criticisms of his position, and offers an apologia, at once luminous and massive, of the Christian religion as the revelation of God to Man and the faith for all mankind. There is a decisive Christian finality about Kraemer's writing, and his book is a significant contribution to the sharp discipline of faith and action under which the universal Christian community lives. All the way through his formidably marshalled arguments run the undertones of Christian involvement in a real, world ' a world which, by his astonishing grasp of philosophy, Biblical theology and the claims of religion and religions, the Author brings alive to the reader. The reading of this formative book, with its strenuous demands on the reader's intelligence and Christian understanding, is a rewarding experience. Its significance for the Christian Church throughout the world is obvious, but it is also a monumental witness to the Christian religion for all those who ask not only for a faith 'once delivered' but a faith to believe in their own day and generation.

There is an increasing recognition today that young people need to have knowledge about religions and world views in order to live and work in diverse societies. What kind of 'maps' are they provided with through religious, values and ethics education? Does education address the challenging existential questions that children and adolescents ask about life and the world? This volume addresses different aspects of how existential questions have been dealt with in educational research. It especially draws attention to the Swedish research tradition of focusing on life questions and the interpretation of life in education, but with contemporary international research added. It also addresses issues of ethics education and discusses possible options for the future of existential questions as a resource for education.