This slim, 155 page, volume is a skeleton of a much larger volume by the same title. Here we have an opening essay by Professor Juergensmeyer. The others, each written by a different scholar included six essays on how specific religions are global (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and African Religions) closing with three essays on “Religion in a Global Age.” The basic theory in the book is that Global religion means three things:
1. Diasporas, people move, spread of peoples, cultures around the world.
2. Global spread of ideas, globalization of Buddhism
3. Religion of globalization itself. Expression of globalized culture.
The first set of essays showed clearly how the first two applies to the specific religions. The very last article in the book, by Ninian Smart, a former UCSB professor, after taking into account the positive and negative effects of globalization of religion suggests a new attitude as solution for religious problems: “The idea of a global higher order has the advantage of not imposing a single ethic or ethos on the rest of the world, except for higher-order pattern of civility. It may be the coming global civilization.”