Norton’s New Anthology of World Religion

If you think the Common Core is controversial, then Norton’s new anthology of World Religion is likely to be cause for war. According to the New York Times, it has 4200 pages of text and spans 3500 years.

The two-volume set, weighing in at over eight pounds and boxed in a slipcase decorated with a suggestively numinous but culturally nonspecific swirl of colors, seems intended to become the go-to holiday gift book for the ecumenically minded.

Like any anthology, the problem is not just what it leaves out but what it contains.  For example, Wendy Doniger,  a  professor at the University of Chicago, wrote the section on Hinduism, before her book on Hinduism was challenged by Hindu nationalists. And the editor of the section on Islam, Jane Dammen McAuliffe, a former president of Bryn Mawr College, said she expected debate over her inclusion of bin Laden’s declaration of jihad. The New York Time’s story includes a slideshow of six color images from the anthology including tiles from a mosque in Istanbul, the Meenakshi temple in India, Botticelli’s Madonna of the Book, and a Taoist ritual.