Religious Studies News

The Asia-Pacific region exemplifies the diversity and complexity of a global, intercultural, and transnational religious marketplace. Buddhism is an example of a transnational and intercultural religion that has moved beyond its early Indian roots to embrace the diversity and pluralism of its adherents across the globe, from Tibet to Myanmar, and from China and Japan to the Americas. One convenient forum where instructors and students can access this rich diversity of transcultural and transnational Buddhism is the very comprehensive bilingual full-text and reference resources available at the National Taiwan University’s Digital Library and Museum of Buddhist Studies. The resources, which are available in Chinese and English, encompass sutra texts and commentaries, as well as reflections and analyses by noted Buddhist theologians, ethicists, and scholars that deal with all aspects of Buddhism in its various traditions, time periods, and socioreligious contexts. Students who are interested in contemporary news reports and discussions of Buddhism can turn to the New York Times’s topics section on “Buddhism”. For those who want to do research on Zen Buddhism, the website Zensite has a good range of resources on Zen Buddhism.

Moving on to Hinduism, the PBS documentary The Story of India is a good starting point for students interested in Indian culture and religion. (While the website itself has useful supplementary resources, the actual video is not available for online streaming, unlike other PBS videos; e.g., From Jesus to Christ and God in America.) Full-text editions of past and present issues of the Hinduism Today magazine are now available online. I often recommend Hinduism Today to students as an example of contemporary Hinduism’s borrowing ideas, methods, and evangelizing strategies from American Evangelicalism (think Christianity Today) to make Hinduism relevant and accessible to a transnational audience in North America. The New York Times’s topic section on “Hinduism” has a comprehensive collection of news articles about Hinduism in the United States.

Students looking for resources in global and transnational Judaism would find the New York Times’s topics section on “Jews and Judaism” a very useful starting point for research because it collects news articles and analysis not merely on American Judaism, but also articles on Israel and Judaism in the Middle East, Europe, and elsewhere. Another useful list that I often send students to consult is Katja Vehlow’s Lists of Judaism/Jewish Studies Links. Students looking for more basic introductory information can visit the Jewish Virtual Library or the Judaism 101 website. The Holocaust is another area where students can explore the global intercultural and transnational dimensions of Judaism’s interactions with politics, bigotry, persecution, and reconciliation. On this topic, both teachers and students can find excellent resources at the University of South Florida’s Florida Center for Instructional Technology’s award-winning site, A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust. I also encourage students to visit the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for their range of online historical and contemporary resources.

Islam is yet another religion that has crossed cultural and transnational boundaries. To challenge students to move beyond the Islamophobia that affects many right-wing websites, I recommend students start with the New York Times’s topics page on “Islam”, as well as the Pew Forum’s project The Future of the Global Muslim Population. I often recommend the award-winning independent Muslim American magazine Illume, which conveniently reproduces many of their excellent articles and critical analyses on the daily life experiences of Asian-American Muslims on their online site. To further illustrate the complexity of American Muslims and the deep roots they have in the United States, notwithstanding their transnational faith and communal ties, I recommend the fascinating site 30 Mosques, 30 States, which documents the experiences and discoveries that two young Muslim American adults, Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq, made when they embarked on a Ramadan road trip across the United States, encountering vastly different Muslim communities in different cities and regions. I often encourage students who are interested in contemporary social ethics to include Islam in their research projects. For example, students who are interested in environmental and ecological issues would be interested to know that there is an emergent Eco-Muslim and Green Muslim movement in North America and Europe. Students looking for information and resources could consult sites such as The Eco Muslim, A World of Green Muslims, and the resource page on Green Islam. Finally, to counteract the misperception that Muslims are uninterested in interreligious dialogue, I recommend the official website A Common Word Between Us and You, as well as its American Christian response, “Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to a ‘Common Word Between Us and You’”, which is put together by Yale University’s Center for Faith and Culture.