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Jesuit Universities Honor Orbis Author
 October 1,1999 - Alpha Sigma Nu, the Honor Society of Jesuit colleges and universities, announced today that Vernon Ruland, S.J., has won the Society's award for the best of sixty books in the disciplines of philosophy and theology for his "Imagining the Sacred: Soundings in World Religions."Father Ruland's book was written when he began to realize that the students who were taking his world religions courses were themselves the embodiment of the contemporary form of these religions. These young Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Christians, and Buddhists, he came to realize, were following their traditions as living, changing ways of life. In many ways, they incarnated their heritage's in ways quite different from the way classic texts or the authorities of their traditions would explain them. The challenge he faced in "Imagining the Sacred," says Ruland, : "was to show how the living traditions represented in my book, use scores of images from art, literature, history, and experience to imagine how they relate to God, the Sacred, or the Holy." The judges of the Alpha Sigma Nu contest said: "Using the imagination as his unifying theme, Ruland does a wonderful job of bringing a wide variety of religious traditions to life. He is able to blend scholarship, religious life, and real world experiences into an engaging mix for the reader. This volume makes an excellent text for a world religions course, and is written to engage an interested lay person. The range of research is impressive. Ruland also shows implicitly and explicitly that none of the religious traditions he covers are static or with fixed boundaries. His engaging stories clearly demonstrate the importance of understanding religious traditions in our multicultural world." "'Imagining the Sacred' is a fascinating book which has much to offer the scholar, the graduate or undergraduate student, and the general reader. . . Ruland does a brilliant job of working from his own experience of the Sacred, the experiences of students he has taught from several faiths, and the documented accounts of primal societies and the great world religions, especially as they are expressed in art, ritual, literature and poetry." For information on Alpha Sigma Nu, the national Jesuit Honor Society and the twenty-eight colleges and universities that comprise the Association of Jesuit Collages and Universities, call 202-862-9893.
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Vernon Ruland has won the Alpha Sigma Nu Society's award for the best of sixty books in the disciplines of philosophy and theology for his "Imagining the Sacred: Soundings in World Religions."