Encyclopedia of love in world religions (original) (raw)

2008, Choice Reviews Online

a t the center of most religious traditions there lies an emphasis on love: divine love, love for one's neighbor, altruistic love, familial love, self love, and even sexual love. love is everywhere a hallmark of our relationship in this world with each other and with the divine. but how love is perceived and valued and the nuances it takes in one religion as opposed to another vary, sometimes widely. While many works in recent decades have focused on specific aspects of love in religion, such as sexuality, no reference work has yet tackled the full spectrum of love's complexities across the world's religions. such a focus is at the heart of the Encyclopedia of Love in World Religions, which seeks to be "the first reference work to offer a comprehensive, multidisciplinary investigation of the subject of love in the classic and contemporary literature of buddhism, christianity, hinduism, islam, Judaism, and in other world religions, cultures, and philosophies" (xxvii).