Preface One of the primary goals of these books is to bring knowledge and understanding of the world’s religions and belief practices The religions were originally selected by the number of members worldwide Then the next criterion was the most unusual or misunderstood religions or spiritual practices We have to keep in mind that as we read through the various chapters, some of them may seem over the top to us, but to the followers, it is a way of life, and they take it very seriously as we with our faith practice I feel that by understanding their faith, it may give us the ability to search for common ground Another goal is to provide a source to people who might be searching for a spiritual practice that feels right for them When creating these books, every effort was made to be as accurate as possible with both research and documentation I did try to be precise with dates and statistics, and it is important to understand how a faith developed But the faith as it is today is what I was concentrating on It is the core values and beliefs that I am trying to portray There are literally hundreds of sources for research, and choosing among them was challenging But more challenging was getting the important facts in while keeping the size manageable If it appears that there is more detail on one religion versus another, it was purely based on the availability of information from different sources I also had some challenges getting permission to use some of my original research material, so there may be some faith practices that are not as detailed for that reason In some cases, all attempts to obtain permission went unanswered, and in others, there was no contact information on the website or the e-mail address was invalid If any permission was denied, their web address will still be listed for your future research, but their information was removed from the text The comments in parenthesis are generally definitions, clarifications, or sometimes my effort to g et the reader to think about the concept in ~ 17 ~