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ON COMMON GROUND Guide for Teachers and Students
more about? Do you have friends or relatives who are part of a religious tradition other than your own? Guided by these questions, choose a religious tradition that you would like to know more about as a place to begin looking at America's Many Religions.
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What are the central teachings, practices, or values in this tradition? Use the Bookmark to identify one or two screens that you believe are important. Study the experience of people in your tradition, using the Experience menu where it appears. Select two or three screens you would like to share with the people in your group or class. Look at the issues that concern people in your tradition today, using the Issues menu where it appears. Is there one that seems especially important to you? Find some of the places of worship of this tradition in the Landscape section, and note one or two that you find particularly interesting. If your tradition is listed in the Directory, find out whether it has many places of worship in the United States In the Profiles section, meet some of the people who are adherents of this tradition, and note one or two people you would like to introduce to the group.
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Remember to use the Connections menu to make links within the tradition. Use the Bookmark to keep track of the pages to which you would like to refer later, and save your Bookmark list to use when preparing for your presentation to the others in your class or group.
Prepare a written or oral report highlighting the CD-ROM screens you found most interesting, and discuss what you found out, aiming your remarks at people who may know very little about this religious tradition.
For class or group discussion, delegate the responsibility for presenting each tradition to members of the group. This, of course, will take several sessions.
3. Exploring a Theme
Use the Comparative Thematic Index to investigate a theme across several traditions. Scroll down the list of topics in the left column of the Index. Are you interested in Altars? Chanting and Recitation? Ethics and Morality? Holidays, Holy Days, and Festivals? Icons, Images, and Symbols? Music? New Year Observances? Places of Worship and Contemplation? Prayer? Scripture and Sacred Texts? Women's Leadership and Roles? Click on a topic that interests you to find the materials in the CD-ROM that relate to it.
In what ways are the materials you find in the Index comparable? • What new words and religious categories have you learned in this exploration? What
is puja? What is Vu-lan? What is a masjid? • What differences and similarities have you noticed most while examining themes
across traditions? Take notes on your comparative thematic work, and share your discoveries and reflections with a small group of four or six participants.
