Summaries are to be sent via email before the beginning of class and answer the following questions: 1. What are the main arguments (1 or 2) in this reading? 2. What evidence does the author provide to support his or her argument? (5 or 6 bullets) 3. What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of these arguments and supporting evidence compared to other readings this week or this term? (5 or 6 bullets) 4. What questions does this reading raise? (2 or 3) 5. Outline a study where you could follow up with this work or address shortcomings (1 or 2 lines).Friedmann (2005) It's a Flat World, After All. NY Times. 3 April. Main argument · Technological innovations are leveling the world’s economic playing field, whereby initial advantages by industrialized regions are being quickly and easily overcome. Sub-arguments · …globalized supply chain being facilitated by broadband investments, cheaper computers, email software, search engines – compartmentalized production · “…created a platform where intellectual work, intellectual capital, could be delivered from anywhere. It could be disaggregated, delivered, distributed, produced and put back together again” · Globalization 1.0 Large to medium (1492-1800) – globalizing countries for resources and imperial conquest – European drivers · Globalization 2.0 Medium to small (1800-2000) – globalizing companies for markets and labour -- American and European drivers · Globalization 3.0 – Small to tiny (2000-?) – globalizing individuals and small groups collaborating with others – driven by all colours of human rainbow · “When the world is flat, you can innovate without having to emigrate. This is going to get interesting. We are about to see creative destruction on steroids.” · 10 events converging: 1. Berlin wall made us one; 2. Netscape made internet friendly; 3. Y2K (application-to-application); 4. Outsourcing; 5. Offshoring; 6. Open sourcing; 7. Insourcing (UPS logistics); 8. Supply-chaining (Walmart); 9. Informing (Google, unlimited data); 10. Steroids (wireless and VoIP). All 10 converged ca 2000 and allowed real time collaborations without regard to geography, distance or language. · 1990s BRIC opened up economies, adopted new technos without sunken costs · “That is what is going to happen to so many jobs -- they will go to that corner of the world where there is the least resistance and the most opportunity.” Questions · Is Friedman’s flat world populated by uniform nation-states? Are there no (widening) differences within industrialized and industrializing countries? · What is the role of the state? Is the national government to be responsible for “Meeting the challenges of flatism requires as comprehensive, energetic and focused a response as did meeting the challenge of Communism.” ? To whom is the challenge issued? · ''Today, the most profound thing to me is the fact that a 14-year-old in Romania or Bangalore or the Soviet Union or Vietnam has all the information, all the tools, all the sof ...

1. Summaries are to be sent via email before the beginning of class
and answer the following questions:
1. What are the main arguments (1 or 2) in this reading?
2. What evidence does the author provide to support his or her
argument? (5 or 6 bullets)
3. What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of these
arguments and supporting evidence compared to other readings
this week or this term? (5 or 6 bullets)
4. What questions does this reading raise? (2 or 3)
5. Outline a study where you could follow up with this work or
address shortcomings (1 or 2 lines).Friedmann (2005) It's a Flat
World, After All. NY Times. 3 April.
Main argument
· Technological innovations are leveling the world’s economic
playing field, whereby initial advantages by industrialized
regions are being quickly and easily overcome.
Sub-arguments
· …globalized supply chain being facilitated by broadband
investments, cheaper computers, email software, search engines
– compartmentalized production
· “…created a platform where intellectual work, intellectual
capital, could be delivered from anywhere. It could be
disaggregated, delivered, distributed, produced and put back
together again”
· Globalization 1.0 Large to medium (1492-1800) – globalizing
countries for resources and imperial conquest – European
drivers
· Globalization 2.0 Medium to small (1800-2000) – globalizing
companies for markets and labour -- American and European
drivers
· Globalization 3.0 – Small to tiny (2000-?) – globalizing
individuals and small groups collaborating with others – driven
by all colours of human rainbow

2. · “When the world is flat, you can innovate without having to
emigrate. This is going to get interesting. We are about to see
creative destruction on steroids.”
· 10 events converging: 1. Berlin wall made us one; 2. Netscape
made internet friendly; 3. Y2K (application-to-application); 4.
Outsourcing; 5. Offshoring; 6. Open sourcing; 7. Insourcing
(UPS logistics); 8. Supply-chaining (Walmart); 9. Informing
(Google, unlimited data); 10. Steroids (wireless and VoIP). All
10 converged ca 2000 and allowed real time collaborations
without regard to geography, distance or language.
· 1990s BRIC opened up economies, adopted new technos
without sunken costs
· “That is what is going to happen to so many jobs -- they will
go to that corner of the world where there is the least resistance
and the most opportunity.”
Questions
· Is Friedman’s flat world populated by uniform nation-states?
Are there no (widening) differences within industrialized and
industrializing countries?
· What is the role of the state? Is the national government to be
responsible for “Meeting the challenges of flatism requires as
comprehensive, energetic and focused a response as did meeting
the challenge of Communism.” ? To whom is the challenge
issued?
· ''Today, the most profound thing to me is the fact that a 14-
year-old in Romania or Bangalore or the Soviet Union or
Vietnam has all the information, all the tools, all the software
easily available to apply knowledge however they want,'' said
Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of Netscape. Is information the
same as knowledge? (Information can be digitized and
downloaded, but can knowledge acquired via practice and
interaction as well?

3. PHL 2350, Philosophies of World Religions 1
Course Learning Outcomes for Unit VI
Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:
2. Analyze the potential for possible historical causes of
misunderstandings and conflict within and
between the world’s different religious peoples.
2.1 Evaluate the causes for women’s positions in various
religions.
5. Identify differing interpretations of religious tenets within a
religion.
5.1 Analyze the differences between the early and modern
Christian church.
6. Utilize research strategies for creating a coherent argument.
6.1 Create questions concerning the struggles of women in
religions using support research.
Reading Assignment
Chapter 1:
Religious Responses, pp. 26-28
Chapter 9:
Christianity

4. Unit Lesson
Leadership
Like any organization, religions have many different types of
leaders. Some lead quietly by their example, like
Mother Theresa, while others lead through speech intended to
inspire faith, like TV evangelists or travelling
tent preachers. There are also many different levels of leaders
and requirements of those leaders within the
various religions. Some religious leaders are ordained by a
governing body, some are not. Leadership may
involve presiding over worship as well as preaching, pastoral
care (which involves caring for congregation
members as well as community members), administrative duties,
and more. Other forms of leadership can
have an impact beyond congregations, such as writing (e.g.,
Thich Nhat Hanh or C.S. Lewis), or contributing
to interpretations of right practice and belief or even performing
healings or miracles. Some have lead through
protest measures, even self-immolation (such as Thich Quang
Duc who burned himself in protest of the
government’s persecution of Buddhists in South Vietnam). And
of course, the most influential leaders are
those who founded the religions such as Mohammad, Jesus
Christ, and the Buddha.
Within Christianity, you will find varying terms for the main
leader or clergy of a church: pastor, minister,
preacher, priest, or reverend. The different labels for the leader
of the church tells you something about what
that church or denomination believes to be the most important
characteristic of that leader (though not all of
their functions). For example, if a church calls their leader
preacher, it tells you that they believe the main

5. function of that leader is to preach. If they call their leader
pastor, that tells you that the most important
function of that leader is to provide pastoral services to the
members of the congregation, such as visiting
them in the hospital, making visits to the members’ work or
home, or scheduling visits at the church to discuss
the members’ personal and spiritual lives. A priest is a leader
who is required to go through a lengthy
ordination process and earn a Master of Divinity at a seminary
(school for future clergy). A priest’s primary
function is liturgical—performing the rites of ceremony for the
sacraments, especially Eucharist and Baptism.
Ordination is a formal process that occurs in some form or
fashion in most religious traditions. Ordination is a
way to set apart a person as someone with special gifts for
leading and teaching people in the religious
setting. One world religion exception to this process is Islam.
Muslims consider ordination to be a defining
UNIT VI STUDY GUIDE
Leadership and Women
PHL 2350, Philosophies of World Religions 2
UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

6. process of other religions and therefore reject the process.
Muslim leaders, Imams, Caliphs, Sheikhs,
Maulanas, and other titles, are named as leaders because they
lead congregations in prayer, or they have
religious education, or they are a respected elder in the
congregation. They are chosen to lead by either
previous leaders or their community, but there is no formal
ordination process. In the Buddhist tradition, there
are ordination processes for monks and nuns set down in three
sacred texts according the Buddha’s
teachings. In Tibetan Buddhism, the ordinand (person who is
going through the ordination process) must
make 253 vows—that’s a lot of vows! A very interesting aspect
of Buddhist ordinations is that in the Soto Zen
tradition, there is a practice of posthumous ordinations. The
reason for the ordination of the dead is that the
texts only lay out funeral rites for fully ordained monks. So,
they ordain lay people so that they can follow the
funeral procedures laid out in the sacred texts for an ordained
person (Williams, 2005).
Most religions also have unofficial leaders – people who are
sought for their wisdom and knowledge. These
people might be writers, theologians (those who study their
deity), ascetics (someone who chooses to live a
strict life of prayer, fasting, and self-denial), or prophets. These
unofficial leaders can have wide-ranging
influence. So, while everyone in the world with a television has
heard of the Roman Catholic Pope Francis as
the head of the Roman Catholic Church, most people have
probably also heard of Mother Theresa, an
unassuming Roman Catholic nun who served the poor in
Calcutta, India. It was not her job to lead the church
as it is the Pope’s, but her example of service made her a
globally known as an influential leader.

7. Women
As you will read in your textbook, women have often been
relegated to the position of supporting roles in
religion. Most religions follow a patriarchal structure in which
the male leaders act as a type of father figure.
Some religions do not even allow women to fully worship in the
same ways that men do, much less lead
congregations. There are a few notable exceptions to this
traditional male structure. Wicca is a religion with a
god and goddess; the goddess is often thought of as Mother
Earth. Mother Ann Lee was a leader in the
Shaker church. She brought the Shaker church to America from
England and grew the membership into the
thousands. She was said to be the embodiment of Jesus Christ in
the female form by her followers. And of
course, a very notable exception is Mary Baker Eddy, who
founded Christian Science—a church that uses
both the Christian Bible and a book written by Mary Baker
Eddy, Science and Health, as their sacred texts.
There are other exceptions, but for the most part religions have
had patriarchal structures. However, that
does not mean that women have not been integral to the success
of religions. Even while being denied
leadership roles, women have supported, unofficially lead, and
ran the institutions of religions. So why is there
this common thread among religions?
That brings us to a very anthropological understanding of
religions. Religions are created in and amongst the
cultures of the world, and historically men have been in charge
of whatever political or social structures
existed, perhaps because of their physical strength or hunting
skills, but that is another anthropological
conversation. The point is that religions are made up of people

8. who are seeking to understand their universe
in terms they can understand, so their understanding of the
world cannot be devoid of their culture, bringing
us back to a lesson from the first unit—that we look through
lenses created by our own spheres of existence.
Interestingly, if you look at the founders of some religions, you
will see that they did not necessarily treat
women the same as their followers did. For whatever reason,
they were able to look beyond the bounds of
their cultures. For instance, Jesus Christ, the founder of
Christianity, did not treat women like others in his
culture did. There are stories in the Christian sacred texts of
Jesus conversing with women and treating them
with the same respect as men—teaching them his lessons about
God. There are even passages in the
sacred texts that suggest that women travelled with Jesus and
supported Jesus and his disciples financially.
Because of this, women were early leaders in the Christian
churches, but eventually culture took back over
and it has been a long road to women becoming official leaders
again in Christianity—in some denominations.
Also, Muhammed, the founder of Islam, encouraged the equal
treatment of women, and somewhat
interestingly in a conversation about leadership, he encouraged
people to seek the guidance of his wife Aisha
when he was not available (PBS, 2002). Consequently, as some
cultures have changed regarding views
about women, women’s leadership roles have evolved in the
religions effected by those cultures.
You can see these cultures’ changes reflected in many religions.
Women’s ordination has become almost the
norm in several Christian denominations. The Episcopal Church
of the United States elected a woman as
their presiding bishop/primate—The Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts
Schori in 2006. In 2008, Tenzin Palmo was

9. given the title of Jetsunmna, which means Venerable Master,
after years of spiritual practice, teaching, and
PHL 2350, Philosophies of World Religions 3
UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title
finally beginning the building and leading of a nunnery. Dr.
Amina Wadud is a leading voice for the feminist
movement in Islam. The examples go on and on.
Women’s roles in religion is an ongoing issue, especially in
religions where the predominate culture perceives
women’s rights as legally not the same as men’s. However, even
in these cases, there is discussion, protest,
and some change.
References
The Office of his Holiness the Dalai Lama. (2014). Ordination
in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Retrieved from
http://www.dalailama.com/messages/buddhism/ordination-in-
the-tibetan-tradition
Muhammed: Legacy of a prophet. [Video file]. (2002). Public
Broadcasting Service. Retrieved from

10. http://www.pbs.org/muhammad/ma_women.shtml
Williams, D. R. (2005). The other side of Zen: A social history
of Soto Zen: Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Suggested Reading
10 inspiring religious women. (2011, August 15). Retrieved
from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/15/women-religious-
leaders_n_924807.html
50 powerful women religious leaders to celebrate on
International Women’s Day. (2014, March 10). Retrieved
from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/08/women-
religious-leaders_n_4922118.html
Fischer, N. (2010). For full inclusion of women in American
Soto Zen Buddhism and all religions. Retrieved
from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-fischer/for-full-
inclusion-for-wo_b_772357.html
Unit VI Scholarly Activity
Interview Questions
Imagine that you have been granted an interview by a world-

11. renowned, female religious leader. What would you like to
know concerning her beliefs, her struggles, and her successes?
Two of the suggested readings would be excellent sources for
choosing a religious leader for this project. (You will not
actually interview this person, so feel free to choose any well-
known, female religious leader.)
Compile a list of 10 questions that would tell you more about
her religion and why she chose to be a leader in it. Do not ask
any “yes/no” questions. Good interview questions take just as
much critical thinking to develop as answering the questions
does. Your questions should demonstrate that you have some
knowledge of her religious tradition. Your questions should dig
deeper to get to information that cannot be found in the
textbook or on the internet, but use that research to guide “the
digging” in the interview.
Below are some possible topics for exploration in your research
and in forming your questions. You are not limited to these
topics:
Textual interpretations/misunderstandings
Cultural expectations of women
Influence of globalization
Influence of other religions
Religious traditions/practices
Effects on her personal life
Pressures of being a pioneer
Support system
As this interview is for an academic setting, you must use APA
citations and references to support the research you
conducted to create the 10 questions. You do not need a title
page, running head or page numbers for this assignment, but be
sure to put your name in the top left hand corner along with the
date. Your interview title should include the name of the
potential interviewee, and your references should be on a
separate page. Use double spacing and Times New Roman size
12 font.

12. Journalistic Interviewing Techniques
1. Do your research!
2. Find a good subject (person) for the interview (Not everyone
has an interesting story.).
3. Keep an open mind—don’t assume you know exactly where
the interview is going to go or you
will be in danger of drawing conclusions that perhaps the
interviewee is not making.
4. Ask about the interviewee’s actions. How do they reflect her
beliefs?
5. Ask open ended questions.
6. Ask questions that make the interviewee give reason and
meaning for her beliefs.
7. Understand you should ask for different types of information:
facts, opinions, feelings,
interpretations, etc.
8. Be careful to not make judgments with your questions.
9. Avoid asking biased questions.
1. Biased: Don’t you agree that women should be more
prominent in the leadership roles in your faith tradition?
2. Unbiased: Is the prominence of women leaders in your faith
tradition a problem?
10. Avoid asking questions that are unrelated to what you want
to learn.