Jeffery Long's New Book Calls Hinduism a Universal Religion

Jeffery Long, an Elizabethtown College religion professor, has written a book that presents Hinduism as the "universal" religion, capable of providing a model for global inter-religious cooperation and world peace. The book is titled "A Vision for Hinduism: Beyond Hindu Nationalism."

In his book, he argues for a traditional pluralistic understanding of Hinduism - as articulated by such figures as Sri Ramakrishna and Mahatma Gandhi - in opposition to the narrow identification of Hinduism with Indian nationality and ethnicity that characterizes contemporary Hindu nationalist movements.

Long asserts that Hindu nationalism is not only destructive of communal relations, but that it also prevents Hinduism from emerging as a world religion in the true sense of the term. He presents a vision of Hinduism as a tradition capable of pointing the way toward a future in which all the world's religions manifest complementary visions of a larger reality - and in which they all, in various ways, participate.