Accordingly, there is understandably a renewed interest in fostering religiously tolerant environments in which individuals with differing religious perspectives can practice their faiths unencumbered.
Nicholas D. Kristof (column, Aug. 15) correctly identifies the schism between modern intellectual and religious perspectives.
Capital Punishment: The Death Penalty (//www.web.canlink.com.orct/execute.htm) provides information from different religious perspectives.
But we should not make law out of stricture, nor should we establish policy based on religious perspectives alone.
He argues that Catholicism after the Council of Trent perpetuated a medieval "pluralism of religious perspectives," but does not exemplify this challenging thesis.
Nick McKemey, the Church of England's head of school improvement, said: "Young people are clamouring for a deeper understanding of religious perspectives on issues of the day and how moral and ethical questions are considered by the major faiths.
"It's easy to get pigeonholed, to have readers expect conservative religious perspectives and predictable outcomes," said Ms. Stokes, the novelist, whose previous nine books were sold through the CBA market.
Discussions in this setting can be provocative and free-ranging, embracing key ethical issues such as the use of controversial weapons, the nature of just wars and the exploration of different cultural and religious perspectives.
The column's treatment of traditional religious perspectives and developments was welcomed by many readers who evidently felt that, in the fever of the culture wars and political polemics, those traditions were being given short shrift.
These new religious perspectives promoted asceticism, the abandonment of ritual, domestic and social action, and the attainment of spiritual illumination in an attempt to win, through one's own efforts, freedom from repeated rebirth (samsara).
BHA chief executive Andrew Copson added that "in a large number of schools, pupils will have access to a number of religious perspectives on life's bigger questions, but not to what most non-religious people believe and how they find happiness and satisfaction in their daily lives".
