Dr. Lourens Minnema teaches World Religions - History and Politics at AUC. He has been teaching Religious Studies and Comparative Religion at the VU University (Amsterdam) since 1995. He studied Religious Studies and Comparative Religion at Kampen Theological University (NL), Birmingham Selly Oak Colleges (UK), University of Göttingen (D), Chantilly Jesuit Cultural Centre (F), and Kyoto University (JAP). His PhD in Comparative Study of Religions (1990) was a cross-cultural comparison between the Zen Buddhist world view of Keiji Nishitani and the Roman Catholic world view of Karl Rahner. He recently finished a book manuscript entitled Tragic Views of the Human Condition: Cross-cultural Comparisons between Western Views of Man and Human Nature in Greek and Shakespearean Tragedy and Hindu Views of Man and Human Nature in the Mahabharata Epic and Bhagavadgita.