Revealing Western Religions

Revealing^® Western Religions includes five modules that cover the religions most often taught in introductory western religion courses—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—along with modules on the academic study of religion and religious pluralism in the 21st century. The modules can be studied in whatever order the instructor prefers.

The text is designed to convey the maximum amount of information in the most user-friendly manner and to reinforce learning with interactive exercises. Revealing Western Religions is vastly more experiential than other introductory world religions textbooks. Evocative images of the religions presented appear at the rate of one for roughly every seventy words of text, a ratio that print textbooks cannot begin to match. Selected audio clips allow students to experience the sounds of the religions they are studying, for example, the Muslim call to prayer and evangelical Christian glossolalia. Links to scriptures of the world’s religions lessen the need for adjunct texts such as anthologies of primary readings.

About the Author: Cynthia Eller, Ph.D.

Cynthia Eller has taught religious studies at Claremont Graduate University, Pitzer College, Claremont McKenna College, Montclair State University, Yale Divinity School, and Princeton University. She has written numerous books in the fields of women and religion, ethics, and women’s studies, including Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995) and The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won’t Give Women a Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000).

Like all religious studies faculty, Dr. Eller hopes to draw her students into an appreciation of the elements of a wide swath of religions and instill a desire in her students to explore religion and its study further through upper-division classes. In Revealing World Religions and Revealing Religion, she has developed digital texts that convey basic concepts and subject matter, illustrate lived religion in a compelling way, and reinforce learning in ways unavailable with a printed text. These courseware titles are a new kind of textbook for a new generation of learners.