Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras - Softcover

Eck, Diana L.

3.91

254 ratings by Goodreads

9780807073032: Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807073032 ISBN 13: 9780807073032

Publisher: Beacon Pr, 1994

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Winner of the 1995 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion

Diana L. Eck, professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard University, eloquently reveals how her study of Asian religions has widened her own Christian faith, and shows why dialogue between people of all religions is crucial in today's interdependent world.

"With this account of her life journey, Eck will be incorporated in the list of twentieth-century interpreters who have facilitated the conversations of men and women dedicated to the interior life."
-Booklist

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Diana L. Eck is a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard University.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Cut-and-dried comparisons of the world's great religions. Despite her misleading title, Eck (Comparative Religion/Harvard; Banaras, 1982) gives an account that's far more academic than personal. As a student of religion at Smith in the mid-60's, Eck jumped on the bandwagon and headed East--in every possible sense. Eventually she found herself in Banaras, one of the great shrines of India, where she spent several years studying the sacred texts and rituals of Hinduism. There, Eck suffered the usual confusions that beset Western Christians upon their first exposure to a coherent polytheistic culture, and--in an attempt to displace the ``true/false'' dichotomy that had been erected in her mind as much by Christian claims of universality as by Western ideas of rationalism--she seized upon the ecumenical movement then underway: ``The ecumenical movement became a new Pentecostal movement, gathering from a hundred countries, speaking dozens of languages, and miraculously experiencing the uniting energy of the Holy Spirit.'' Here, in that spirit of ecumenism, Eck gives us a little bit of everything--Hindu, Muslim, Christian, etc.--and tells us not so much what each religion is as what it resembles. But this approach can succeed only if guided by an originality and prescience that can highlight the unexpected patterns of familiar subjects--and, in this respect, Eck falls flat. No creed is examined in any depth; no belief is taken at face value; and every contradiction (between and within each religion) is explained away. There are some interesting historical asides, particularly in regard to the formation of the World Council of Churches, but these get swallowed up in platitudes. Intellectual meandering that eventually falls off the map. Eck, in the best ecumenical style, tries to reconcile contradictory beliefs by reducing them to their lowest common denominator- -seemingly without realizing that this robs them of imaginative force. -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.