Common Era Best New Writings on Religion Edited by Steven Scholl Common Era brings together some of the most creative minds of our time: Bill Moyers, Allen Ginsberg, Vaclav Havel, Theodore Roszak, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Matthew Fox, Mitchell Kapor, among others reflect on interfaith dialogue, sexuality and sprituality, ecology and the soul, post-modernism and politics, women's spirituality and mysticism. Common Era is also working for the common good. Each year royalties from Common Era will be donated to an organization or group working for a better world. Royalties from this book will be sent to the Community of Bosnia Foundation, an organization valiantly struggling to preserve the magnificent cultural legacy of the multireligious community of Bosnia through publication projects and scholarships for refugees. This work is crucial to the morale of the one million Bosnians in exile and to the memory of a multireligious Bosnia, a memory the "ethnic cleaners" want to efface. See Also: Common Era II Killing Memory: Bosnia's Cultural Heritage and Its Destruction -- VHS Video The Community of Bosnia Foundation e-mail address ([email protected])

Religion Original paperback, 216 pages List Price: $14.95 ISBN 1-883991-12-9

Review from Publishers' Weekly:

HAPPILY, THIS ANNUAL anthology is fascinating not just for the quality and depth of its pieces but also for its variety. The pieces include Allen Ginsberg's autobiographical essay on Buddhism; Bill Moyers' exploration of the importance of religion and values in public life; and an interview with Miranda Shaw on the role of women in the Tantric Buddhist practices of Tibet and Nepal. Among writers represented are Vaclav Havel, Matthew Fox, and Theodore Roszak. Scholl . . . has . . . taken on a remarkable task and done it well, the result being a volume of excellent reading for anyone interested in taking the pulse of modern religious thoughts and movements.

FYI: Royalties from Common Era anthologies are donated annually to organizations working toward peace, social justice and interfaith understanding and cooperation. Funds from this volume will go to the Community of Bosnia Foundation.

From Rapport:

AN ANNUAL COLLECTION of "the best new writings on religion," Common Era addresses a crucial need that is generally neglected in mainstream media. As Bill Moyers points out in his excellent piece, "Let There Be Light," American popular culture provides virtually saturation exposure to almost every other aspect of life, while a kind of religious illiteracy flourishes.

Editor Scholl, a contributor to The Encyclopedia of Religion, has chosen 19 previously published articles from 1994 that reflect on spiritual/religious dimensions of this epoch from an ecumenical and multicultural standpoint. While some are deeply personal explorations--Allen Ginsberg's fascinating and light-hearted chronicle of his passage from psychedelics to Tibetan Buddhism--most of the essays are concerned with the socio-political or economic/ecological impact of religious factors on our overall quality of life. The standouts among these include an analysis of the psychology of religion (of the apocalyptic sort) as related to the Waco debacle, and a lucid clarification of the religious (and not ethnic) roots of the Bosnian atrocities.

Common Era's writers range from a feminist Mormon struggling with her faith; Vaclav Havel (President of the Czech Republic) and his views on the spiritual aspects of human rights and democracy; Mitchell Kapor, creator of the computer program "Lotus 1-2-3" and exponent of the information highway as a vehicle for enhancing spiritual growth. . . . This compendium provides a stimulating, wide-ranging sample of the dynamic unities and divergences that are shaping religious world views today.

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