Copyright Darren Witwer 2001

Once you are familiar with this web site, this is probably the best single page to set your bookmark or favorite.  There are links above to all the essential parts of the World Religions web site.

General Resources

links on this page verified and updated on Jan 23, 2007

	Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance unbiased, reliable examinations of many beliefs.  Highly recommended as a basic resource.
	Virtual Religions Index  (formerly connected to Rutgers University, now an independent web site. Virtual Religions Index--Art & Archeology for Religion resources Virtual Religions Index--Ethics & Religion Resources
	Sacred Texts page--holy books, myths, folklore of nearly every world religion
	Mysticism Resources (formerly at the University of Florida, now independent).  This is an outstanding page of resources on mystic traditions ranging from the most Theistic, to tribal and even agnostic.  Highly recommended.  Part of a larger site created by Gene R. Thursby including a variety of other resources of use to students of World Religions and Psychology.
	Wikipedia free resource--an open source hypertext encyclopedia.  Extremely cool, and full of great basic info to get you started on a wide variety of themes.  Database Resources (pay sites available from campus only, or by means of your student log-in off-campus) Encyclopedia of World Religions (Gale Virtual Reference Library) Ethnic News Watch Congressional Quarterly Researcher Encyclopedia Britanica Electric Library
	The Odyssey at the WorldTrek.org site.  Useful anthropological and geographical information and images, targeted at High School students.  Covers the globe, and has quite a bit of useful info in basic language.  This site is not dedicated to religion, but it is still a useful resource.
	Divining America: information for High School Teachers on the history of religion in America (good resources on Native American religion and the conversion/conquista)
	Adherents.com: Non-affiliated site dedicated to religious demographics of America and the world
	Multicultural Art History imagebase--includes a number of nice photographs of masks and statues from various traditions.
	Paul Halsall's most excellent Internet History Sourcebooks Project
	Elemental Systems of Greeks, Hindus, Buddhists & Chinese--extensive and useful page for understanding this ancient method of categorizing various concepts and substances.

Important Writers on Comparative Religious Studies

	St. Augustine: Highly recommended.  A fabulous web library of St. Augustine in original Latin and English.  Incomparable background in what was happening when the Christianity became a world power.  Confessions (HTML or pdf format)  An autobiographical account of his path to Christianity, by way of extensive detours through nearly all of the great religious/philosophical movements of his time.  (4th Century North African)
	Mircea Eliade: Wikipedia article.  Famous for coining the word "shaman."  His ideas are influenced by phenomenology and existentialism.
	Joseph Campbell  His ideas are influenced most by Jungian psychology.
	James G. Frazer: Turn of the century author on myth and comparative religion.  He was an important influence, but is no longer taken very seriously as a theorist.  Here is an interesting essay by him on Solar worship throughout the world.
	William James: Early psychologist and student of comparative religion.  This web site has vast resources.
	Friedrich Nietzsche German existentialist-agnostic philosopher who was a passionate critic of religion--especially Protestant Christianity.
	Karl Marx: A summary from The Radical Academy
	Epistemology of Religion A philosophical discussion of religion as a source of knowledge.
	Erich Fromm: a nice summary of his ideas.  His essay On Mysticism and Religion and  Can there be Ethics Without Religiousness?  are especially useful

Religious Freedom

	Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance unbiased, reliable examinations of many beliefs.  Highly recommended as a basic resource.
	CESNUR Center for Study of New Religions: "established in 1988 by a group of religious scholars from leading universities in Europe and the Americas. Its managing director, professor Massimo Introvigne, has held teaching positions in the field of sociology and history of religion in a number of Italian universities. He is the author of twenty-three books and the editor of another ten in the field of religious sciences. CESNUR's original aim was to offer a professional association to scholars specialized in religious minorities, new religious movements, contemporary esoteric, spiritual and gnostic schools, and the new religious consciousness in general."  They appear to be committed to fighting against the anti-cult movements within dominant religions, which would make them rather liberal.  I'm not so sure about this, but the web site provides some interesting resources.
	ACLU Defending us from intolerance  ACLU: Religion
	Watchman Expositor Index of Cults and Religions rather biased site with Christian commentaries on various religions.  Less hateful than most such sites, but far from objective.
	Alternative Religions The Mining Co. many links on alternative religion
	The Secular Web
	Intelligent Design: The new Christian movement to undermine evolution education in public education
	Theories of Evolution and Creation: An objective account of the three main theories, provided by the OCRT.
	Religious Liberty Around the World:  Although this is on the About.com Atheism/Agnosticism page, it is specifically dedicated to the topic of religious freedom.  Great historical background for information about the interactions of Christians and Muslims with primal cultures in Africa, America, Asia, etc.

Anti-Cult Movement

	Isaac Bonewits' Cult Danger Evaluation tool:  An interesting, controversial and objective method for evaluating the potential danger of religious cults. Very thought-provoking for discussion since it suggests that most New Age religions are less dangerous than most mainstream religions.  Obviously, this suggests a biased perspective, but I think that the controversy invoked by the document is interesting and useful for discussion.
	AFF CSJ (Cultic Studies Journal)
	Historical Figures in the Christian Counter-Cult Movment
	On the Anti-Masonic Movements of history

Religious Criticism & Intolerance on the Edge of Lunacy

Warning: Many of these web sites contain very controversial information and graphic images.  

	Army of God--(warning: this site contains very graphic language and images) extremely conservative Christian group that promotes violent activities against abortion providers.  Since September 11th, they expressed support for Muslim persecution of homosexuality.  Given that their efforts to terrorize abortion providers have been extremely successful, they have announced that they are going to step up the rhetoric and activity against gays.
	Rev. Fred Phelps quotes on gays at the Matthew Shepard resource web site.  Rev. Fred Phelps' abject, bizarre and offensive "God Hates Fags" web site.
	The Cutting Edge a frightening web site of Fundamentalist paranoia about The New World Order, Harry Potter, Bill Clinton, Weather Control, ...
	David Icke : Another site dedicated to paranoia, but in this case with more emphasis on aliens, Bill Clinton paranoia, Aquarian Conspiracy (fear of the New Age movements), galactic apocalypse.  A favorite of the Art Bell crowd.  Wonderful example of Twenty-first Century neo-Gnosticism.
	Racism, Extreme Rightism and Occultism: An unusual site from the Netherlands criticizing most occult and esoteric movements from a left-liberal, anti-racist perspective.  Typically this kind of anti-occult rhetoric comes from the extreme Right.  While this site is clearly exaggerated and biased, there is some interesting and provocative information on a connection I have observed between Libertarian & Fascist ideology and some occultists.  The people who made this site appear to be unaware that the suggested association is far from universal, and seem to wish to broadly paint all occultists as Nazis.
	Neopagan Criticism of Fundamentalist Christianity interesting application of the Bible against some of the assumptions of Fundamentalism (in other words, the author is a Biblical scholar and a Neopagan who uses the Bible to argue against Fundamentalism).
	Tim Maroney's criticism of the Bible: Another very interesting page that explains why many people have abandoned the Bible in search of new religions.

Unit Two: Tribal, Primal & Shamanistic Religions

See Unit Two Web Resources Page (African, Egyptian, Native American, Tibetan, Voudou, Santería, Hmong, etc.)

Unite Three: East Indian Religions

See Unit Three Web Resources Page (Vedic, Hindu, Jain)

Unit Four: Chinese and Japanese Religions

See the Unit Four Web Resources Page (Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Falun Gong, Shinto, Zen)

Unit Five: Origins of Monotheism and Dualism 

See the Unit Five Web Resources Page (Egypt to Israel and Medieval Europe)  Same web page as Unit Five.  Focus your attention on this early time period, (~1500 BCE to 600 CE)  which is fundamental for understanding all of the Middle Eastern Monotheistic Religions.  Judaism, Gnosticism, Early Christianity.

Unit Five: Development of Monotheistic Cultures 

See the Unit Five Web Resources Page: (Islam, Protestant Reformation and Factional Tendencies in Modern Monotheism) Same web page as the previous.  The focus is on the period 600 CE to the Present.

Unit Six: Esoteric, Neopagan, New Age and other Esoteric & Counter-cultural Religious Movements

See the Unit Six Web Resources Page (Wicca, Magic, Satanism, Hermeticism, Spiritual Rebellion, etc.)