Are religious values universal? After studying and teaching religious studies for nearly thirty years it is hard not to recognise that there are indeed a plethora of local, indigenous, and revivalist religious traditions, both within larger religions and independent of them. There are many Judaisms, Islams, Christianities, Buddhisms, Hinduisms and Daoisms. My researches have led me to the conclusion that the differences between religious traditions are real and not easily reduced to any single pattern or model. But there are, of course, many overlapping elements, conceptual, theological and most evidently historical. I am anxious about any list of universal values divorced from (he context of their interpretation and application in living religious communities. Our values are those we live rather than those we merely aspire to without direct and immediate impact on our daily lives. Any list of values will exclude and stigmatise those that fail to fully accord with it. These failures wi.....

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