Wojciech Maria Zalewski's Books

The Crucible of Religion

Culture, Civilization, and Affirmation of Life

By: Wojciech Maria Zalewski

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The Crucible of Religion

Culture, Civilization, and Affirmation of Life

By: Wojciech Maria Zalewski

Religion is commonly viewed through the lens of the world's religious traditions, stressing the differences, and often the conflicts, among them. The author of this book instead presents religion as a common and universal human phenomenon, based deeply in a human nature shared by all. In this view, the underlining and unifying principle of religion is a particular affirmative attitude toward life, which he presents as the Ultimate Value, and as such the key cultural constituent and defining factor of all religion. This Ultimate Value finds its expressions in various civilizations, and results in a variety of forms; these are what we know as the world's religious traditions. By analyzing the roles of both culture and civilization in their attitudes toward life, the author places religion beyond religious traditions, and shows how the latter, regardless of whether they are theistic or atheistic, draw their principles from the former, mainly by promoting the Golden Rule in its applications.

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Page Count

314

Publisher

Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1630875325

ISBN 13

9781630875329

Awe as the Foundation of Religion

Reflections on the Universe and Life

By: Wojciech Maria Zalewski

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Awe as the Foundation of Religion

Reflections on the Universe and Life

By: Wojciech Maria Zalewski

In this book, the author searches for the essence of religion. Despite its existence from the beginning of humanity and being a universal phenomenon, religion is not defined uniformly. Humanity has always searched for a theory of everything, on one hand, through humanistic means, one of them being religion, on the other hand, through scientific explorations. In both realms, awe is the force that prompts these investigations. The author proposes the understanding of religion as based on two premises. First, awe is a natural, positive, permanent, intimate, life-supporting emotion founded in the human experience of the unity of the universe and life, whether realized or not. Second, religion is an expression of that unity through awe. Once it is conceptualized, it metastasizes through culture and civilizations into a variety of religious traditions, all with a common denominator: awe. Through experiencing awe, everyone is a religious person unified with the mysterious unity of the universe.

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