Comparing Religions: Possibilities and Perils?

Thomas Athanasius Idinopulos Ph.D. University of Chicago, 1965, is currently working as Professor of Comparative Religion at Miami University, Oxford, OH. His most recent books include Weathered by Miracles : a History of Palestine from Bonaparte and Muhammad Ali to Ben-Gurion and the Mufti (Chicago: (Ivan R. Dee, 1998 ), Jerusalem: A History of the Holiest City as Seen Through the Struggles of Jews, Christians, and Muslims (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1994). Brian C. Wilson, Ph.D. (1996) in Religious Studies from UC Santa Barbara, is Professor and Chair of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University. His most recent book is Religion as Human Capacity (Brill, 2004), co-edited with Timothy Light. He is currently working on a project focusing on the proper role and structure of a religious studies curriculum within a program of liberal education. Ph.D. University of Chicago, 1999 James Constantine Hanges is Associate Professor of Comparative Religion at Miami University, Oxford, OH. His publications include Christ, the Image of the Church: The Construction of a New Cosmology and the Rise of Christianity (Aurora, CO: The Davies Group Publishers, 2006). He is currently working on the manuscript, The Creation of Paul's Damascus Road Christophany, a comparative, historical-critical, and sociological examination of Paul's Damascus road encounter with the risen Christ in the Acts of the Apostles as a literary creation based on the epiphanies distinctive of the common form of Greek cult foundation-legends.