The Comparative Study of Religions

xlviii, 231 pp. Edited with an introduction by Joseph M. Kitagawa. In this book, the outstanding religious historian Joachim Wach offers a profound investigation into the nature of religious experience. The result of a lifetime of scholarship and reflection, the book represents Professor Wach's efforts to develop and articulate a general framework in which scholars of different disciplines interested in religions, as well as adherents of diverse religious faiths, could understand each other. To construct this framework, he analyzes religious expression in thought (myth, doctrine, and dogma), practice (devotion and service), and fellowship (the religious community).