The Nature of Religion

1
The Nature of Religion

• by Alan F. Segal and Willard G. Oxtoby

2
The Nature of the Divine

• Monotheism and Polytheism
• Dualism
• Zoroastrianism
• Gnosticism
• Manichaeism

3
Missionary Religions

• Missionary Religions
• Missionary Expansion
• Pluralism
• Responding to Difference
• Defining Religion
• Religion in the West
• The Roster of Religions
• Defining by Exclusion
• A Provisional Definition

4

• Some Twentieth-Century Analyses
• The Role of the Participant
• The Perspective of the Observer
• Religious Theories of Religion
• Similarities and Differences