Concepts of Beliefs in 3 Faith Communities

The purpose of this paper is to compare the conceptual dimensions of beliefs about life after death among three faith communities: Christians, Hindus, and the Sioux Nation. To some extent such a comparison must deal also with beliefs about the nature of good and evil, since these affect the ways in which life after death may be understood to be reward or punishment for conduct in this life.

Attempting to deal with all Christians as a single faith community is at the least difficult and in some ways not possible: after almost two millennia of social evolution, the beliefs and practices of the various Christian denominations have become quite diverse. However, if one limits discourse to conservative Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox communities, and "High Church" Protestants, one finds that these "catholic" Christians are in substantial agreement over most of the traditional doctrines about death, sin, judgment, and Heaven and Hell.

Much the same is true for Hinduism, which has evolved much longer than Christianity, has become much more diversified, and has never had a central authority that attempted to outlaw any sort of beliefs or practices as being "heretical." Nevertheless, there appears to be a central philosophy about the concepts of karma and reincarnation that dates back to the earliest Hindu sacred scriptures, and which serves as a common ground among many of the most important Hindu sects (Fisher, 1994, pp. 69-70).

The situation is much more ambiguous for Na

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Category: Philosophy - C