SYNOPSIS ORIENTATIONS TO RELIGIONS
Religion Introduction
By Dr. Francis A. Martin
Why is The BMS project offering information about religion? This is an important and reasonable question. The answer could be a very short one. It is that we want to be useful and helpful.
We begin with the reason for having The BMS Project. This is our purpose:
The BMS Project is dedicated to assisting sports advocates to create safe, positive competitive experiences; as well as to promote mental health awareness and contributing to suicide prevention for athletes and their families by providing information, suggested resources and educational guidance.
Also, the name, The BMS Project, is another way of saying what its mission is. B-M-S stands for Body-Mind-Spirit. “Spirit” does not necessarily point to all of the religions that we present here. And, we have no interest in imposing religion on anyone.
More basically, our view of including religion comes from the idea that everyone needs positive meaning in life, including a personal sense of well-being. Everyone needs to know that life makes sense and that basic values, such as honesty and loyalty, can be put to work in ways that honor and support life. So, the mission of The BMS Project is not one of endorsing or supporting a particular religion, but one of providing useful resources for those who need us.
Among the many different kinds of resources that The BMS Project provides, it includes profiles of approaches to religion that may give you something useful. We remain open to providing additional resources and welcome any suggestions that help us to respond to the needs of those we seek to serve. Instead of advocating for any specific religious point of view, we hope to provide resources that may be helpful for you.
Finally, another important point here is that we aspire to be fair to all religious approaches. So, instead of showing favor for one approach over another, we arranged the profiles of religious approaches in alphabetical order. If you wish to have no religious orientation or affiliation, we endorse this and support many different ways of being religious or not.
Important note: The BMS Project wishes to acknowledge that Dr. Shon Hopkin, Assistant Professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University, and graduate students under his direction, including Chris Jackson, Veronica Merritt, Logan Jones, and Aaron Richards, prepared the profiles of the religious groups presented here. All of us who are associated with The BMS Project hold immense gratitude for Dr. Hopkin’s generosity of time and effort, thoughtfulness, leadership, and readiness to share his considerable talent with others.
This page includes resources from Buddhism, and Hinduism.