Religion and the Western Mind: Drummond Lectures Delivered at the University of Stirling, Scotland, March 1985, and Other Essays

Ninian Smart originally offered up this book in 1987, but it grows more and more timely as the years go by. Especially in these days of upheaval over the issue of religious issues in education, Smart's treatment of the scholarly approach to religious studies needs to be read by everyone. He examines the implications of pluralism in education, politics, and personal reflection, coming down in the end on the side of a scholarly pluralism toward these issues, emphasizing the empathy which this approach allows. "The crosscultural students of religious and other worldviews is still immeasurably better off in regard to understanding than is the monocultural navel-watcher" (21), he claims, but the more interesting question which can be begged from this statement turns out to be: is pluralism itself a worldview, subject to the same criticism as the religious and nationalistic worldviews Smart presents? Smart addresses this issue, but I think the answer to that is ultimately up to us. Though Smart is a British writer, he points out issues at which we as Americans need to take a long, hard look.