Human Values in a Changing World: A Dialogue on the Social Role of Religion

This is a fascinating and intelligent book that trancends typical notions of how religious philosophers guide and influence. Both Wilson and Ikeda reveal their own true wisdom by commenting about life and death issues in an intelligent, thorough and responsible way. It is a riviting dialogue between two great humanitarians.

Bryan Wilson and Daisaku Ikeda provide an inspiring example of the way people from totally different social, religious and cultural backgrounds can talk constructively in a sustained endeavor to identify and analyze the kind of problems that must be resolved in order to build a more civilized and humane world. Dr. Wilson is a sociologist at Oxford and former president of CISR (International Conference for the Sociology of Religion). Dr. Ikeda is president of Soka Gakkai International, the world's largest Buddhist organization.This series of conversations, recorded and edited topic by topic, takes unusual twists and unexpected turns, exploding the reader's preconceptions about the attitudes of a Japanese Buddhist philosopher, on the one hand, and a British scholar whose career has been devoted to research into religion and its role in contemporary society, on the other. They take up questions of major importance and interest to all thinking people. The six sections are entitled "Homo Religious," "Reason and Responsibility," "The Problems of Organization," "Some Historical Perspectives," "Matters of Mind and Body," and "The Wider Ethical Perspective." They include discussions of the origins of a religious sentiment in people as well as how it takes form in society, and the spiritual, moral, and political impact it has on our personal lives. Their stimulating discourses on medicine and its relation to religion are of great interest in light of the recent discoveries of the close connection between mental and physical health.

The first meeting of Daisaku Ikeda, leader of the world's largest Buddhist organization (Soka Gakkai International), and Brian Wilson of All Souls College (Oxford), Britain's foremost sociologist of religion, led to a conversation that simply could not stop with that one encounter. The result of their ongoing dialogue is "Human Values in a Changing World," one of the best books I've ever read.In a series of conversations in this book, they explore a wide range of issues including sexuality, religion, morality, non-violence, suicide, capital punishment, nationalism and so on. Like all good conversations, the interplay of ideas sometimes takes unusual turns and unexpected leaps, and any preconceptions about the attitudes of, on the one hand, the enthusiastically acclaimed leader of a vigorous mass movement and, on the other, a university teacher will be swiftly exploded.Hard issues are not dodged, nor are unpopulare opinions glossed over. "Human Values in a Changing World" gives an inspiring example of the ways in which people from totally different social, religious and cultural traditions can talk constructively in a sustained endeavor to make sense of problems that must be resolved if their shared hope of a more civilized and humane world is to be brought into being.