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What can I do to compare and contrast the theological foundations and spiritual practices of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?
You have to do research which involves a lot of reading, gathering of information, evaluation of data, and the separation of the evaluated data into the two categories you just mentioned--comparison and contrast. Buy a pack of index cards and separate the facts you discover into these two categories. Then place your relevant info under each pack. Under the comparison place all the similarities among those three religions. Under the contrast pack place all the contrast or difference among these three religions. A good place to start your research on the Internet is at Wikipedia. It provides a very thorough description of each religion and offers links to other sites that will be helpful in your research.
BTW
Some people don't consider the Trinitarian or Unitarian Christian views as being monotheistic. The Trinitarians because of seeming to worship three gods and the Unitarians because of seeming to worship two.
What can I do to compare and contrast the theological foundations and spiritual practices of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?
That is a vast undertaking. How many words does your essay require?
To compare, you have to set each faith side by side, strand by strand, and precept by precept, looking for, and noting, points of similarity and points od difference. Then you must hold them up in your essay so that the similarities and differences are plainly evident to your reader or tutor, ands see whether you can see any interdependance between discrete ideas. Depending on the level of essay required (grade school, high school, university, etc), you will have to choose your language and explore themes to a greater or lesser extent, taking care not to be led astray by superficialities or by seeming connections where no connections exist.
Contrast means to point out the differences that mark each faith aside from its companions, and show where meeting of ideas, concepts, and purposes, etc, have nothing in common no matter how your regard them.
To do this successfully, it is necessary to make a serious study of each faith, and speak to several informed members of faith, preferably clergy or scholars, so that you receive a view of each of these faiths from the inside perspective rather than collecting false impressions from polemic writings generated by those hostile to them. For example, it is foolish to believe anything a, say, Southern Baptist has to say about Islam because of extreme prejudice that sees Islam and Muslims only as satanically inspired enemies.
Make sure that you do not step outside the limits imposed by the rubric, and keep strictly to 'spiritual foundations,' and 'spiritual practices.' The experts you interview in each faith will be pleased to point you towards the most important of each of these in their particular faith.
For an overarching view of these (and others, that you will ignore) you can do little better than read "The Religious Experience of Mankind," by my late friend Professor Ninian Smart. The book is still available through Amazon,com, etc.
If you have time, I suggest that you interview more than one professor of each faith, and do not be afraid to ask them how their interpretation of a tenet disagrees or agrees with the same one, or similar, in the other faiths. Take along a tape recorder, plenty of batteries, and sufficient tapes to record the whole of your questions and answers. After reading Smart's book, make a lit of questions that you will ask of each religion. Ask the same question of each group so that you will be comparing like with like. If you end up with too much information, then you will have to select those that your respondents feel are the most vital expressions of their faith.
You might consider reading some of the work by Karen Armstrong who has been studying and comparing these three faiths herself for quite some time. Her body of work is extensive and her latest book, the Spiral Staircase, I found to be a fascinating story of one ex-nun's very intimate account of how the decline Gparrack mentioned happens on an individual basis.
The bottom line was that the spiritual arrogance sometimes displayed in the practice of these faiths makes a lot of people question their appropriateness.
You might consider reading some of the work by Karen Armstrong who has been studying and comparing these three faiths herself for quite some time. Her body of work is extensive and her latest book, the Spiral Staircase, I found to be a fascinating story of one ex-nun's very intimate account of how the decline you see happens on an individual basis.
The bottom line was that the spritual arrogance sometimes displayed in the practice of these faiths makes a lot of people question their appropriateness.
Armstrong's work is not suitable for the purposes of this essay, because she (Armstrong) does not contrast and compare. Hers is a personal view of religion after her failure to find God. Her books do not provide the foundation and practices of J,C, and I that he/she is required to write about, however interesting or appealing they may be on other grounds.
Dave: You write in The Spiral Staircase about achieving ecstatic moments through study, which you recognize as part of Jewish tradition. How do readers relate to that idea?
Armstrong:Not many people spend their life studying religion, let's be frank. No, this is just for me. I'm not putting my life forward as some kind of blueprint for other people; this is just a memoir. But Jewish people recognize it. As I've written, in the Leo Baeck College where I teach, as soon as I shared the idea for the first time, Lionel Bloom, my boss, said, "This is very, very Jewish."
A more helpful book by Armstrong could be A History of God. However, it is qui9te scho9larly ion its language, and has a relatively narrow subject focus that does not deal with the needs of the questioner's essay, so it is probably too narrow to serve, and unless it addresses the matters contained in the essay's rubric will be of limited benefit. It is always better [and more honest] to do the research personally, and then forge one's way through evidence on all sides and reach one's own conclusions.
Comment on Armstrong's A History of God:
From Powells.com:
In 1965, at the tender age of seventeen, Karen Armstrong took vows of poverty and chastity and entered a Catholic convent. However, she soon realized she was not suited to monastic life and left. Her 1981 memoir of her years as a novice became a bestseller and transformed Armstrong overnight into a spokesperson for religious issues. In 1984, Armstrong made her first of many trips to the Middle East, birthplace to the world's three great monotheisms: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. What she found there startled her. More often than not, the people she met, whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, were mired in prejudice, deeply ignorant of religions other than their own. As curious as she was disturbed by this state of affairs, Armstrong set out to get to the bottom of things. She began serious scholarly research into the religious history of the Middle East, exploring the idea of God as it has evolved through these three religions over the past 5,000 years. This work has resulted in more than a dozen celebrated books, but greatest of these by far is A History of God (1993), in which she surveys the entire range and depth of her subject. Combining rigorous scholarship, genuine ecumenicalism, and an engaging prose style, A History of God has helped millions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims see through their differences and reach a deeper understanding of their respective faiths. Not bad for a failed nun. Farley, Powells.com
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