Spirituality for Our Global Community: Beyond Traditional Religion to a World at Peace

Daniel A. Helminiak

doi:10.5771/9781461643487

Summary

In this groundbreaking book, Daniel Helminiak provides a crucial spiritual option D a middle path between modern society's secular materialism and traditional religion's other-worldly focus and institutional dogmatism. The functional atheism of our contemporary consumer and scientific society (as championed by current best selling authors Sam Harris' The End of Faith, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, and Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great) doesn't satisfy our desire for lasting meaning and value. But the parochial, inflexible character of traditional religious beliefs increasingly result in personal, local, and global conflicts in our current world of pluralism, globalization, respect for science and progress. Helminiak gives us a compelling vision of a global spirituality that downplays beliefs and emphasizes the essential spiritual dynamics of the common human quest for wholeness, goodness, freedom and community. Spirituality for a Global Community builds on the spiritual facet of our common humanity, stressing wholesome living on planet Earth, and opening onto the range of religions and belief in God.