Topic: Religion

Religion is a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs,

worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to
supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements; however, there is no scholarly consensus
over what precisely constitutes a religion.Different religions may or may not contain various
elements ranging from the divine, sacred things, faith, a supernatural being or supernatural
beings or "some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the
rest of life". Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of
deities and/or saints), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services,
matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of
human culture. Religions have sacred histories and narratives, which may be preserved in sacred
scriptures, and symbols and holy places, that aim mostly to give a meaning to life. Religions may
contain symbolic stories, which are sometimes said by followers to be true, that may also attempt
to explain the origin of life, the universe, and other phenomena. Traditionally, faith, in addition
to reason, has been considered a source of religious beliefs.There are an estimated 10,000
distinct religions worldwide. About 84% of the world's population is affiliated with Christianity,
Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or some form of folk religion. The religiously unaffiliated
demographic includes those who do not identify with any particular religion, atheists, and
agnostics. While the religiously unaffiliated have grown globally, many of the religiously
unaffiliated still have various religious beliefs.The study of religion comprises a wide variety of
academic disciplines, including theology, comparative religion and social scientific studies.
Theories of religion offer various explanations for the origins and workings of religion, including
the ontological foundations of religious being and belief.

Concept and etymology

Religion comes from Old French and Anglo Norman (1200s AD) and means respect for sense of
right, moral obligation, sanctity, what is sacred, reverence for the gods. It is ultimately derived
from the Latin word religiō. According to Cicero, religio comes from relegere: re (again) + lego
(read) where lego is in the sense of "go over", "choose", or "consider carefully". However, some
modern scholars such as Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell have argued that religio is derived
from religare: re (again) + ligare (bind or connect), which was made prominent by St. Augustine,
following the interpretation given by Lactantius in Divinae institutiones, IV, 28. The medieval
usage alternates with order in designating bonded communities like those of monastic orders:
"we hear of the 'religion' of the Golden Fleece, of a knight 'of the religion of Avys'".

"Religio"

In classic antiquity, 'religio' broadly meant conscientiousness, sense of right, moral obligation, or
duty to anything. In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin root religio was
understood as an individual virtue of worship in mundane contexts; never as doctrine, practice,
or actual source of knowledge. In general, religio referred to broad social obligations towards
anything including family, neighbors, rulers, and even towards God. Religio was most often used
by the ancient Romans not in the context of a relation towards gods, but as a range of general
emotions such as hesitation, caution, anxiety, fear; feelings of being bound, restricted, inhibited;
which arose from heightened attention in any mundane context. The term was also closely
related to other terms like scrupulus which meant "very precisely" and some Roman authors
related the term superstitio, which meant too much fear or anxiety or shame, to religio at times.
When religio came into English around the 1200s as religion, it took the meaning of "life bound
by monastic vows" or monastic orders. The compartmentalized concept of religion, where
religious things were separated from worldly things, was not used before the 1500s. The concept
of religion was first used in the 1500s to distinguish the domain of the church and the domain of
civil authorities.Julius Caesar used religio to mean "obligation of an oath" when discussing
captured soldiers making an oath to their captors. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder used the
term religio on elephants in that they venerate the sun and the moon. Cicero used religio as being
related to cultum deorum (worship of the gods).

"Threskeia"

In the ancient Greece, the Greek term threskeia (θρησκεία) was loosely translated into Latin as
religio in late antiquity. Threskeia was sparsely used in classical Greece but became more
frequently used in the writings of Josephus in the first century CE. It was used in mundane
contexts and could mean multiple things from respectful fear to excessive or harmfully
distracting practices of others; to cultic practices. It was often contrasted with the Greek word
deisidaimonia which meant too much fear.

Religion and religions

The modern concept of religion, as an abstraction that entails distinct sets of beliefs or doctrines,
is a recent invention in the English language. Such usage began with texts from the 17th century
due to events such as the splitting of Christendom during the Protestant Reformation and
globalization in the age of exploration, which involved contact with numerous foreign cultures
with non-European languages.

Some argue that regardless of its definition, it is not appropriate to apply the term religion to
non-Western cultures. Others argue that using religion on non-Western cultures distorts what
people do and believe.The concept of religion was formed in the 16th and 17th centuries, despite
the fact that ancient sacred texts like the Bible, the Quran, and others did not have a word or even
a concept of religion in the original languages and neither did the people or the cultures in which
these sacred texts were written. For example, there is no precise equivalent of religion in
Hebrew, and Judaism does not distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial, or ethnic
identities. One of its central concepts is halakha, meaning the walk or path sometimes translated
as law, which guides religious practice and belief and many aspects of daily life. Even though the
beliefs and traditions of Judaism are found in the ancient world, ancient Jews saw Jewish identity
as being about an ethnic or national identity and did not entail a compulsory belief system or
regulated rituals. In the 1st century CE Josephus had used the Greek term ioudaismos (Judaism)
as an ethnic term and was not linked to modern abstract concepts of religion or a set of beliefs.
The very concept of "Judaism" was invented by the Christian Church. and it was in the 19th
century that Jews began to see their ancestral culture as a religion analogous to Christianity. The
Greek word threskeia, which was used by Greek writers such as Herodotus and Josephus, is
found in the New Testament. Threskeia is sometimes translated as "religion" in today's
translations, however, the term was understood as generic "worship" well into the medieval
period. In the Quran, the Arabic word din is often translated as religion in modern translations,
but up to the mid-1600s translators expressed din as "law".The Sanskrit word dharma, sometimes
translated as religion, also means law. Throughout classical South Asia, the study of law
consisted of concepts such as penance through piety and ceremonial as well as practical
traditions. Medieval Japan at first had a similar union between imperial law and universal or
Buddha law, but these later became independent sources of power.Though traditions, sacred
texts, and practices have existed throughout time, most cultures did not align with Western
conceptions of religion since they did not separate everyday life from the sacred. In the 18th and
19th centuries, the terms Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, and world religions first
entered the English language. Native Americans were also thought of as not having religions and
also had no word for religion in their languages either. No one self-identified as a Hindu or
Buddhist or other similar terms before the 1800s. "Hindu" has historically been used as a
geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people indigenous to the Indian
subcontinent. Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of religion since there was no
corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning, but when American warships
appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties
demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this
idea.According to the philologist Max Müller in the 19th century, the root of the English word
religion, the Latin religio, was originally used to mean only reverence for God or the gods,
careful pondering of divine things, piety (which Cicero further derived to mean diligence). Max
Müller characterized many other cultures around the world, including Egypt, Persia, and India,
as having a similar power structure at this point in history. What is called ancient religion today,
they would have only called law.

Definition
Scholars have failed to agree on a definition of religion. There are, however, two general
definition systems: the sociological/functional and the phenomenological/philosophical.

Modern Western

The concept of religion originated in the modern era in the West. Parallel concepts are not found
in many current and past cultures; there is no equivalent term for religion in many languages.
Scholars have found it difficult to develop a consistent definition, with some giving up on the
possibility of a definition. Others argue that regardless of its definition, it is not appropriate to
apply it to non-Western cultures.An increasing number of scholars have expressed reservations
about ever defining the essence of religion. They observe that the way the concept today is used
is a particularly modern construct that would not have been understood through much of history
and in many cultures outside the West (or even in the West until after the Peace of Westphalia).
The MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religions states:

The very attempt to define religion, to find some distinctive or possibly unique essence or set of
qualities that distinguish the religious from the remainder of human life, is primarily a Western
concern. The attempt is a natural consequence of the Western speculative, intellectualistic, and
scientific disposition. It is also the product of the dominant Western religious mode, what is
called the Judeo-Christian climate or, more accurately, the theistic inheritance from Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. The theistic form of belief in this tradition, even when downgraded
culturally, is formative of the dichotomous Western view of religion. That is, the basic structure
of theism is essentially a distinction between a transcendent deity and all else, between the
creator and his creation, between God and man.

The anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined religion as a

[…] system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and
motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these
conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely
realistic."

Alluding perhaps to Tylor's "deeper motive", Geertz remarked that

[…] we have very little idea of how, in empirical terms, this particular miracle is accomplished.
We just know that it is done, annually, weekly, daily, for some people almost hourly; and we
have an enormous ethnographic literature to demonstrate it.

The theologian Antoine Vergote took the term supernatural simply to mean whatever transcends
the powers of nature or human agency. He also emphasized the cultural reality of religion, which
he defined as

[…] the entirety of the linguistic expressions, emotions and, actions and signs that refer to a
supernatural being or supernatural beings.

Peter Mandaville and Paul James intended to get away from the modernist dualisms or
dichotomous understandings of immanence/transcendence, spirituality/materialism, and
sacredness/secularity. They define religion as

[…] a relatively-bounded system of beliefs, symbols and practices that addresses the nature of
existence, and in which communion with others and Otherness is lived as if it both takes in and
spiritually transcends socially-grounded ontologies of time, space, embodiment and knowing.

According to the MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religions, there is an experiential aspect to religion

which can be found in almost every culture:

[…] almost every known culture [has] a depth dimension in cultural experiences […] toward
some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life.
When more or less distinct patterns of behavior are built around this depth dimension in a
culture, this structure constitutes religion in its historically recognizable form. Religion is the
organization of life around the depth dimensions of experience—varied in form, completeness,
and clarity in accordance with the environing culture.

Classical
Friedrich Schleiermacher in the late 18th century defined religion as das schlechthinnige
Abhängigkeitsgefühl, commonly translated as "the feeling of absolute dependence".His
contemporary Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel disagreed thoroughly, defining religion as "the
Divine Spirit becoming conscious of Himself through the finite spirit."Edward Burnett Tylor
defined religion in 1871 as "the belief in spiritual beings". He argued that narrowing the
definition to mean the belief in a supreme deity or judgment after death or idolatry and so on,
would exclude many peoples from the category of religious, and thus "has the fault of identifying
religion rather with particular developments than with the deeper motive which underlies them".
He also argued that the belief in spiritual beings exists in all known societies.

In his book The Varieties of Religious Experience, the psychologist William James defined
religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they
apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine". By the term
divine James meant "any object that is godlike, whether it be a concrete deity or not" to which
the individual feels impelled to respond with solemnity and gravity.The sociologist Émile
Durkheim, in his seminal book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, defined religion as
a "unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things". By sacred things he meant
things "set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral
community called a Church, all those who adhere to them". Sacred things are not, however,
limited to gods or spirits. On the contrary, a sacred thing can be "a rock, a tree, a spring, a
pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred". Religious beliefs, myths,
dogmas and legends are the representations that express the nature of these sacred things, and the
virtues and powers which are attributed to them.Echoes of James' and Durkheim's definitions are
to be found in the writings of, for example, Frederick Ferré who defined religion as "one's way of
valuing most comprehensively and intensively". Similarly, for the theologian Paul Tillich, faith
is "the state of being ultimately concerned", which "is itself religion. Religion is the substance,
the ground, and the depth of man's spiritual life."When religion is seen in terms of sacred, divine,
intensive valuing, or ultimate concern, then it is possible to understand why scientific findings
and philosophical criticisms (e.g., those made by Richard Dawkins) do not necessarily disturb its
adherents.

Aspects
Beliefs

Traditionally, faith, in addition to reason, has been considered a source of religious beliefs. The
interplay between faith and reason, and their use as perceived support for religious beliefs, have
been a subject of interest to philosophers and theologians. The origin of religious belief as such
is an open question, with possible explanations including awareness of individual death, a sense
of community, and dreams.

Mythology

The word myth has several meanings.

A traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a
people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon;

A person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence; or

A metaphor for the spiritual potentiality in the human being.Ancient polytheistic religions, such
as those of Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia, are usually categorized under the heading of
mythology. Religions of pre-industrial peoples, or cultures in development, are similarly called
myths in the anthropology of religion. The term myth can be used pejoratively by both religious
and non-religious people. By defining another person's religious stories and beliefs as
mythology, one implies that they are less real or true than one's own religious stories and beliefs.
Joseph Campbell remarked, "Mythology is often thought of as other people's religions, and
religion can be defined as mis-interpreted mythology."In sociology, however, the term myth has
a non-pejorative meaning. There, myth is defined as a story that is important for the group
whether or not it is objectively or provably true. Examples include the resurrection of their real-
life founder Jesus, which, to Christians, explains the means by which they are freed from sin, is
symbolic of the power of life over death, and is also said to be a historical event. But from a
mythological outlook, whether or not the event actually occurred is unimportant. Instead, the
symbolism of the death of an old life and the start of a new life is what is most significant.
Religious believers may or may not accept such symbolic interpretations.

Practices

The practices of a religion may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration of a deity
(god or goddess), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial
services, meditation, prayer, religious music, religious art, sacred dance, public service, or other
aspects of human culture.

Social organisation

Religions have a societal basis, either as a living tradition which is carried by lay participants, or
with an organized clergy, and a definition of what constitutes adherence or membership.

Academic study
A number of disciplines study the phenomenon of religion: theology, comparative religion,
history of religion, evolutionary origin of religions, anthropology of religion, psychology of
religion (including neuroscience of religion and evolutionary psychology of religion), law and
religion, and sociology of religion.

Daniel L. Pals mentions eight classical theories of religion, focusing on various aspects of
religion: animism and magic, by E.B. Tylor and J.G. Frazer; the psycho-analytic approach of
Sigmund Freud; and further Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Mircea Eliade, E.E.
Evans-Pritchard, and Clifford Geertz.Michael Stausberg gives an overview of contemporary
theories of religion, including cognitive and biological approaches.
Theories

Sociological and anthropological theories of religion generally attempt to explain the origin and
function of religion. These theories define what they present as universal characteristics of
religious belief and practice.

Origins and development

The origin of religion is uncertain. There are a number of theories regarding the subsequent
origins of religious practices.

According to anthropologists John Monaghan and Peter Just, "Many of the great world religions
appear to have begun as revitalization movements of some sort, as the vision of a charismatic
prophet fires the imaginations of people seeking a more comprehensive answer to their problems
than they feel is provided by everyday beliefs. Charismatic individuals have emerged at many
times and places in the world. It seems that the key to long-term success—and many movements
come and go with little long-term effect—has relatively little to do with the prophets, who appear
with surprising regularity, but more to do with the development of a group of supporters who are
able to institutionalize the movement."The development of religion has taken different forms in
different cultures. Some religions place an emphasis on belief, while others emphasize practice.
Some religions focus on the subjective experience of the religious individual, while others
consider the activities of the religious community to be most important. Some religions claim to
be universal, believing their laws and cosmology to be binding for everyone, while others are
intended to be practiced only by a closely defined or localized group. In many places, religion
has been associated with public institutions such as education, hospitals, the family, government,
and political hierarchies.Anthropologists John Monoghan and Peter Just state that, "it seems
apparent that one thing religion or belief helps us do is deal with problems of human life that are
significant, persistent, and intolerable. One important way in which religious beliefs accomplish
this is by providing a set of ideas about how and why the world is put together that allows people
to accommodate anxieties and deal with misfortune."

Cultural system

While religion is difficult to define, one standard model of religion, used in religious studies
courses, was proposed by Clifford Geertz, who simply called it a "cultural system". A critique of
Geertz's model by Talal Asad categorized religion as "an anthropological category". Richard
Niebuhr's (1894–1962) five-fold classification of the relationship between Christ and culture,
however, indicates that religion and culture can be seen as two separate systems, though not
without some interplay.

Social constructionism

One modern academic theory of religion, social constructionism, says that religion is a modern
concept that suggests all spiritual practice and worship follows a model similar to the Abrahamic
religions as an orientation system that helps to interpret reality and define human beings. Among
the main proponents of this theory of religion are Daniel Dubuisson, Timothy Fitzgerald, Talal
Asad, and Jason Ānanda Josephson. The social constructionists argue that religion is a modern
concept that developed from Christianity and was then applied inappropriately to non-Western
cultures.

Cognitive science

Cognitive science of religion is the study of religious thought and behavior from the perspective
of the cognitive and evolutionary sciences. The field employs methods and theories from a very
broad range of disciplines, including: cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive
anthropology, artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience, neurobiology, zoology, and
ethology. Scholars in this field seek to explain how human minds acquire, generate, and transmit
religious thoughts, practices, and schemas by means of ordinary cognitive capacities.

Hallucinations and delusions related to religious content occurs in about 60% of people with
schizophrenia. While this number varies across cultures, this had led to theories about a number
of influential religious phenomenon and possible relation to psychotic disorders. A number of
prophetic experiences are consistent with psychotic symptoms, although retrospective diagnoses
are practically impossible. Schizophrenic episodes are also experienced by people who do not
have belief in gods.Religious content is also common in temporal lobe epilepsy, and obsessive-
compulsive disorder. Atheistic content is also found to be common with temporal lobe epilepsy.

Comparativism

Comparative religion is the branch of the study of religions concerned with the systematic
comparison of the doctrines and practices of the world's religions. In general, the comparative
study of religion yields a deeper understanding of the fundamental philosophical concerns of
religion such as ethics, metaphysics, and the nature and form of salvation. Studying such
material is meant to give one a richer and more sophisticated understanding of human beliefs and
practices regarding the sacred, numinous, spiritual and divine.In the field of comparative
religion, a common geographical classification of the main world religions includes Middle
Eastern religions (including Zoroastrianism and Iranian religions), Indian religions, East Asian
religions, African religions, American religions, Oceanic religions, and classical Hellenistic
religions.

Classification
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the academic practice of comparative religion divided religious
belief into philosophically defined categories called world religions. Some academics studying
the subject have divided religions into three broad categories:

world religions, a term which refers to transcultural, international religions;

indigenous religions, which refers to smaller, culture-specific or nation-specific religious groups;

and
new religious movements, which refers to recently developed religions.Some recent scholarship
has argued that not all types of religion are necessarily separated by mutually exclusive
philosophies, and furthermore that the utility of ascribing a practice to a certain philosophy, or
even calling a given practice religious, rather than cultural, political, or social in nature, is
limited. The current state of psychological study about the nature of religiousness suggests that it
is better to refer to religion as a largely invariant phenomenon that should be distinguished from
cultural norms (i.e. religions).

Morphological classification

Some scholars classify religions as either universal religions that seek worldwide acceptance and
actively look for new converts, such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Jainism, while ethnic
religions are identified with a particular ethnic group and do not seek converts. Others reject the
distinction, pointing out that all religious practices, whatever their philosophical origin, are
ethnic because they come from a particular culture.

Demographical classification

The five largest religious groups by world population, estimated to account for 5.8 billion people
and 84% of the population, are Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism (with the relative
numbers for Buddhism and Hinduism dependent on the extent of syncretism) and traditional folk
religion.

A global poll in 2012 surveyed 57 countries and reported that 59% of the world's population
identified as religious, 23% as not religious, 13% as convinced atheists, and also a 9% decrease
in identification as religious when compared to the 2005 average from 39 countries. A follow-up
poll in 2015 found that 63% of the globe identified as religious, 22% as not religious, and 11% as
convinced atheists. On average, women are more religious than men. Some people follow
multiple religions or multiple religious principles at the same time, regardless of whether or not
the religious principles they follow traditionally allow for syncretism. A 2017 Pew projection
suggests that Islam will overtake Christianity as the plurality religion by 2075. Unaffiliated
populations are projected to drop, even when taking disaffiliation rates into account, due to
differences in birth rates.

Specific religions
Abrahamic

Abrahamic religions are monotheistic religions which believe they descend from Abraham.

Judaism

Judaism is the oldest Abrahamic religion, originating in the people of ancient Israel and Judea.
The Torah is its foundational text, and is part of the larger text known as the Tanakh or Hebrew
Bible. It is supplemented by oral tradition, set down in written form in later texts such as the
Midrash and the Talmud. Judaism includes a wide corpus of texts, practices, theological
positions, and forms of organization. Within Judaism there are a variety of movements, most of
which emerged from Rabbinic Judaism, which holds that God revealed his laws and
commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of both the Written and Oral Torah;
historically, this assertion was challenged by various groups. The Jewish people were scattered
after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. Today there are about 13 million
Jews, about 40 per cent living in Israel and 40 per cent in the United States. The largest Jewish
religious movements are Orthodox Judaism (Haredi Judaism and Modern Orthodox Judaism),
Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism.

Christianity

Christianity is based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth (1st century) as presented in
the New Testament. The Christian faith is essentially faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God,
and as Savior and Lord. Almost all Christians believe in the Trinity, which teaches the unity of
Father, Son (Jesus Christ), and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead. Most Christians can
describe their faith with the Nicene Creed. As the religion of Byzantine Empire in the first
millennium and of Western Europe during the time of colonization, Christianity has been
propagated throughout the world via missionary work. It is the world's largest religion, with
about 2.3 billion followers as of 2015. The main divisions of Christianity are, according to the
number of adherents:

The Catholic Church, led by the Bishop of Rome and the bishops worldwide in communion with
him, is a communion of 24 Churches sui iuris, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern
Catholic churches, such as the Maronite Catholic Church.

Eastern Christianity, which include Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Church of
the East.

Protestantism, separated from the Catholic Church in the 16th-century Protestant Reformation
and is split into thousands of denominations. Major branches of Protestantism include
Anglicanism, Baptists, Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Methodism, though each of these contain
many different denominations or groups.There are also smaller groups, including:

Restorationism, the belief that Christianity should be restored (as opposed to reformed) along the
lines of what is known about the apostolic early church.

Latter-day Saint movement, founded by Joseph Smith in the late 1820s.

Jehovah's Witnesses, founded in the late 1870s by Charles Taze Russell.

Islam

Islam is a monotheistic religion based on the Quran, one of the holy books considered by
Muslims to be revealed by God, and on the teachings (hadith) of the Islamic prophet
Muhammad, a major political and religious figure of the 7th century CE. Islam is based on the
unity of all religious philosophies and accepts all of the Abrahamic prophets of Judaism,
Christianity and other Abrahamic religions before Muhammad. It is the most widely practiced
religion of Southeast Asia, North Africa, Western Asia, and Central Asia, while Muslim-majority
countries also exist in parts of South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Europe. There are
also several Islamic republics, including Iran, Pakistan, Mauritania, and Afghanistan.

Sunni Islam is the largest denomination within Islam and follows the Qur'an, the ahadith (ar:
plural of Hadith) which record the sunnah, whilst placing emphasis on the sahabah.

Shia Islam is the second largest denomination of Islam and its adherents believe that Ali
succeeded Muhammad and further places emphasis on Muhammad's family.

There are also Muslim revivalist movements such as Muwahhidism and Salafism.Other
denominations of Islam include Nation of Islam, Ibadi, Sufism, Quranism, Mahdavia, and non-
denominational Muslims. Wahhabism is the dominant Muslim schools of thought in the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Other

Whilst Judaism, Christianity and Islam are commonly seen as the only three Abrahamic faiths,
there are smaller and newer traditions which lay claim to the designation as well.

For example, the Baháʼí Faith is a new religious movement that has links to the major
Abrahamic religions as well as other religions (e.g. of Eastern philosophy). Founded in 19th-
century Iran, it teaches the unity of all religious philosophies and accepts all of the prophets of
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as additional prophets (Buddha, Mahavira), including its
founder Bahá'u'lláh. It is an offshoot of Bábism. One of its divisions is the Orthodox Baháʼí
Faith.: 48–49 Even smaller regional Abrahamic groups also exist, including Samaritanism
(primarily in Israel and the West Bank), the Rastafari movement (primarily in Jamaica), and
Druze (primarily in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel). The Druze faith originally developed out of
Isma'ilism, and it has sometimes been considered an Islamic school by some Islamic authorities,
but Druze themselves do not identify as Muslims.

East Asian

East Asian religions (also known as Far Eastern religions or Taoic religions) consist of several
religions of East Asia which make use of the concept of Tao (in Chinese) or Dō (in Japanese or
Korean). They include:

Taoism and Confucianism

Taoism and Confucianism, as well as Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese religion influenced by
Chinese thought.

Folk religions
Chinese folk religion: the indigenous religions of the Han Chinese, or, by metonymy, of all the
populations of the Chinese cultural sphere. It includes the syncretism of Confucianism, Taoism
and Buddhism, Wuism, as well as many new religious movements such as Chen Tao, Falun
Gong and Yiguandao.

Other folk and new religions of East Asia and Southeast Asia such as Korean shamanism,
Chondogyo, and Jeung San Do in Korea; indigenous Philippine folk religions in the Philippines;
Shinto, Shugendo, Ryukyuan religion, and Japanese new religions in Japan; Satsana Phi in Laos;
Cao Đài, Hòa Hảo, and Vietnamese folk religion in Vietnam.

Indian religions

Indian religions are practiced or were founded in the Indian subcontinent. They are sometimes
classified as the dharmic religions, as they all feature dharma, the specific law of reality and
duties expected according to the religion.

Hinduism

Hinduism is also called Vaidika Dharma, the dharma of the Vedas. It is a synecdoche describing
the similar philosophies of Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and related groups practiced or founded in
the Indian subcontinent. Concepts most of them share in common include karma, caste,
reincarnation, mantras, yantras, and darśana. Hinduism is one of the most ancient of still-active
religions, with origins perhaps as far back as prehistoric times. Hinduism is not a monolithic
religion but a religious category containing dozens of separate philosophies amalgamated as
Sanātana Dharma, which is the name by which Hinduism has been known throughout history by
its followers.

Jainism

Jainism, taught primarily by Rishabhanatha (the founder of ahimsa) is an ancient Indian religion
that prescribes a path of non-violence, truth and anekantavada for all forms of living beings in
this universe; which helps them to eliminate all the Karmas, and hence to attain freedom from
the cycle of birth and death (saṃsāra), that is, achieving nirvana. Jains are found mostly in India.
According to Dundas, outside of the Jain tradition, historians date the Mahavira as about
contemporaneous with the Buddha in the 5th-century BCE, and accordingly the historical
Parshvanatha, based on the c. 250-year gap, is placed in 8th or 7th century BCE.Digambara
Jainism (or sky-clad) is mainly practiced in South India. Their holy books are Pravachanasara
and Samayasara written by their Prophets Kundakunda and Amritchandra as their original canon
is lost.

Shwetambara Jainism (or white-clad) is mainly practiced in Western India. Their holy books are
Jain Agamas, written by their Prophet Sthulibhadra.

Buddhism
Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama in the 5th century BCE. Buddhists generally
agree that Gotama aimed to help sentient beings end their suffering (dukkha) by understanding
the true nature of phenomena, thereby escaping the cycle of suffering and rebirth (saṃsāra), that
is, achieving nirvana.

Theravada Buddhism, which is practiced mainly in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia alongside folk
religion, shares some characteristics of Indian religions. It is based in a large collection of texts
called the Pali Canon.

Mahayana Buddhism (or the Great Vehicle) under which are a multitude of doctrines that
became prominent in China and are still relevant in Vietnam, Korea, Japan and to a lesser extent
in Europe and the United States. Mahayana Buddhism includes such disparate teachings as Zen,
Pure Land, and Soka Gakkai.

Vajrayana Buddhism first appeared in India in the 3rd century CE. It is currently most prominent
in the Himalaya regions and extends across all of Asia (cf. Mikkyō).

Two notable new Buddhist sects are Hòa Hảo and the Navayana (Dalit Buddhist movement),
which were developed separately in the 20th century.

Sikhism

Sikhism is a panentheistic religion founded on the teachings of Guru Nanak and ten successive
Sikh gurus in 15th-century Punjab. It is the fifth-largest organized religion in the world, with
approximately 30 million Sikhs. Sikhs are expected to embody the qualities of a Sant-Sipāhī—a
saint-soldier, have control over one's internal vices and be able to be constantly immersed in
virtues clarified in the Guru Granth Sahib. The principal beliefs of Sikhi are faith in Waheguru—
represented by the phrase ik ōaṅkār, meaning one God, who prevails in everything, along with a
praxis in which the Sikh is enjoined to engage in social reform through the pursuit of justice for
all human beings.

Indigenous and folk

Indigenous religions or folk religions refers to a broad category of traditional religions that can
be characterised by shamanism, animism and ancestor worship, where traditional means
"indigenous, that which is aboriginal or foundational, handed down from generation to
generation…". These are religions that are closely associated with a particular group of people,
ethnicity or tribe; they often have no formal creeds or sacred texts. Some faiths are syncretic,
fusing diverse religious beliefs and practices.

Australian Aboriginal religions.

Folk religions of the Americas: Native American religionsFolk religions are often omitted as a
category in surveys even in countries where they are widely practiced, e.g. in China.

Traditional African
African traditional religion encompasses the traditional religious beliefs of people in Africa. In
West Africa, these religions include the Akan religion, Dahomey (Fon) mythology, Efik
mythology, Odinani, Serer religion (A ƭat Roog), and Yoruba religion, while Bushongo
mythology, Mbuti (Pygmy) mythology, Lugbara mythology, Dinka religion, and Lotuko
mythology come from central Africa. Southern African traditions include Akamba mythology,
Masai mythology, Malagasy mythology, San religion, Lozi mythology, Tumbuka mythology,
and Zulu mythology. Bantu mythology is found throughout central, southeast, and southern
Africa. In north Africa, these traditions include Berber and ancient Egyptian.

There are also notable African diasporic religions practiced in the Americas, such as Santeria,
Candomble, Vodun, Lucumi, Umbanda, and Macumba.

Iranian

Iranian religions are ancient religions whose roots predate the Islamization of Greater Iran.
Nowadays these religions are practiced only by minorities.

Zoroastrianism is based on the teachings of prophet Zoroaster in the 6th century BCE.
Zoroastrians worship the creator Ahura Mazda. In Zoroastrianism, good and evil have distinct
sources, with evil trying to destroy the creation of Mazda, and good trying to sustain it.

Mandaeism is a monotheistic religion with a strongly dualistic worldview. Mandaeans are

sometime labeled as the Last Gnostics.: 4 Kurdish religions include the traditional beliefs of the
Yazidi, Alevi, and Ahl-e Haqq. Sometimes these are labeled Yazdânism.

New religious movements

The Baháʼí Faith teaches the unity of all religious philosophies.

Cao Đài is a syncretistic, monotheistic religion, established in Vietnam in 1926.

Eckankar is a pantheistic religion with the purpose of making God an everyday reality in one's
life.

Epicureanism is a Hellenistic philosophy that is considered by many of its practitioners as a type

of (sometimes non-theistic) religious identity. It has its own scriptures, a monthly "feast of
reason" on the Twentieth, and considers friendship to be holy.

Hindu reform movements, such as Ayyavazhi, Swaminarayan Faith and Ananda Marga, are
examples of new religious movements within Indian religions.

Japanese new religions (shinshukyo) is a general category for a wide variety of religious
movements founded in Japan since the 19th century. These movements share almost nothing in
common except the place of their founding. The largest religious movements centered in Japan
include Soka Gakkai, Tenrikyo, and Seicho-No-Ie among hundreds of smaller groups.
Jehovah's Witnesses, a non-trinitarian Christian Reformist movement sometimes described as
millenarian.

Neo-Druidism is a religion promoting harmony with nature, and drawing on the practices of the
druids.

There are various Neopagan movements that attempt to reconstruct or revive ancient pagan
practices. These include Heathenry, Hellenism, and Kemeticism.

Noahidism is a monotheistic ideology based on the Seven Laws of Noah, and on their traditional
interpretations within Rabbinic Judaism.

Some forms of parody religion or fiction-based religion like Jediism, Pastafarianism, Dudeism,
"Tolkien religion", and others often develop their own writings, traditions, and cultural
expressions, and end up behaving like traditional religions.

Satanism is a broad category of religions that, for example, worship Satan as a deity (Theistic
Satanism) or use Satan as a symbol of carnality and earthly values (LaVeyan Satanism and The
Satanic Temple).

Scientology teaches that people are immortal beings who have forgotten their true nature. Its
method of spiritual rehabilitation is a type of counseling known as auditing, in which
practitioners aim to consciously re-experience and understand painful or traumatic events and
decisions in their past in order to free themselves of their limiting effects.

UFO Religions in which extraterrestrial entities are an element of belief, such as Raëlism,
Aetherius Society, and Marshall Vian Summers's New Message from God

Unitarian Universalism is a religion characterized by support for a free and responsible search
for truth and meaning, and has no accepted creed or theology.

Wicca is a neo-pagan religion first popularised in 1954 by British civil servant Gerald Gardner,
involving the worship of a God and Goddess.

Related aspects
Law

The study of law and religion is a relatively new field, with several thousand scholars involved in
law schools, and academic departments including political science, religion, and history since
1980. Scholars in the field are not only focused on strictly legal issues about religious freedom or
non-establishment, but also study religions as they are qualified through judicial discourses or
legal understanding of religious phenomena. Exponents look at canon law, natural law, and state
law, often in a comparative perspective. Specialists have explored themes in Western history
regarding Christianity and justice and mercy, rule and equity, and discipline and love. Common
topics of interest include marriage and the family and human rights. Outside of Christianity,
scholars have looked at law and religion links in the Muslim Middle East and pagan
Rome.Studies have focused on secularization. In particular, the issue of wearing religious
symbols in public, such as headscarves that are banned in French schools, have received
scholarly attention in the context of human rights and feminism.

Science

Science acknowledges reason, empiricism, and evidence; and religions include revelation, faith
and sacredness whilst also acknowledging philosophical and metaphysical explanations with
regard to the study of the universe. Both science and religion are not monolithic, timeless, or
static because both are complex social and cultural endeavors that have changed through time
across languages and cultures.The concepts of science and religion are a recent invention: the
term religion emerged in the 17th century in the midst of colonization and globalization and the
Protestant Reformation. The term science emerged in the 19th century out of natural philosophy
in the midst of attempts to narrowly define those who studied nature (natural science), and the
phrase religion and science emerged in the 19th century due to the reification of both concepts. It
was in the 19th century that the terms Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Confucianism first
emerged. In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin roots of both science
(scientia) and religion (religio) were understood as inner qualities of the individual or virtues,
never as doctrines, practices, or actual sources of knowledge.In general the scientific method
gains knowledge by testing hypotheses to develop theories through elucidation of facts or
evaluation by experiments and thus only answers cosmological questions about the universe that
can be observed and measured. It develops theories of the world which best fit physically
observed evidence. All scientific knowledge is subject to later refinement, or even rejection, in
the face of additional evidence. Scientific theories that have an overwhelming preponderance of
favorable evidence are often treated as de facto verities in general parlance, such as the theories
of general relativity and natural selection to explain respectively the mechanisms of gravity and
evolution.

Religion does not have a method per se partly because religions emerge through time from
diverse cultures and it is an attempt to find meaning in the world, and to explain humanity's place
in it and relationship to it and to any posited entities. In terms of Christian theology and ultimate
truths, people rely on reason, experience, scripture, and tradition to test and gauge what they
experience and what they should believe. Furthermore, religious models, understanding, and
metaphors are also revisable, as are scientific models.Regarding religion and science, Albert
Einstein states (1940): "For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and
outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand,
deals only with evaluations of human thought and action; it cannot justifiably speak of facts and
relationships between facts…Now, even though the realms of religion and science in themselves
are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong
reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determine the
goals, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will
contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up."

Morality
Many religions have value frameworks regarding personal behavior meant to guide adherents in
determining between right and wrong. These include the Triple Jems of Jainism, Judaism's
Halacha, Islam's Sharia, Catholicism's Canon Law, Buddhism's Eightfold Path, and
Zoroastrianism's good thoughts, good words, and good deeds concept, among others.Religion
and morality are not synonymous. While it is "an almost automatic assumption." in Christianity,
morality can have a secular basis.

The study of religion and morality can be contentious due to ethnocentric views on morality,
failure to distinguish between in group and out group altruism, and inconsistent definitions of
religiosity.

Politics

Impact

Religion has had a significant impact on the political system in many countries. Notably, most
Muslim-majority countries adopt various aspects of sharia, the Islamic law. Some countries even
define themselves in religious terms, such as The Islamic Republic of Iran. The sharia thus
affects up to 23% of the global population, or 1.57 billion people who are Muslims. However,
religion also affects political decisions in many western countries. For instance, in the United
States, 51% of voters would be less likely to vote for a presidential candidate who did not believe
in God, and only 6% more likely. Christians make up 92% of members of the US Congress,
compared with 71% of the general public (as of 2014). At the same time, while 23% of U.S.
adults are religiously unaffiliated, only one member of Congress (Kyrsten Sinema, D-Arizona),
or 0.2% of that body, claims no religious affiliation. In most European countries, however,
religion has a much smaller influence on politics although it used to be much more important.
For instance, same-sex marriage and abortion were illegal in many European countries until
recently, following Christian (usually Catholic) doctrine. Several European leaders are atheists
(e.g. France's former president Francois Hollande or Greece's prime minister Alexis Tsipras). In
Asia, the role of religion differs widely between countries. For instance, India is still one of the
most religious countries and religion still has a strong impact on politics, given that Hindu
nationalists have been targeting minorities like the Muslims and the Christians, who historically
belonged to the lower castes. By contrast, countries such as China or Japan are largely secular
and thus religion has a much smaller impact on politics.

Secularism

Secularization is the transformation of the politics of a society from close identification with a
particular religion's values and institutions toward nonreligious values and secular institutions.
The purpose of this is frequently modernization or protection of the populations religious
diversity.

Economics

One study has found there is a negative correlation between self-defined religiosity and the
wealth of nations. In other words, the richer a nation is, the less likely its inhabitants to call
themselves religious, whatever this word means to them (Many people identify themselves as
part of a religion (not irreligion) but do not self-identify as religious).Sociologist and political
economist Max Weber has argued that Protestant Christian countries are wealthier because of
their Protestant work ethic. According to a study from 2015, Christians hold the largest amount
of wealth (55% of the total world wealth), followed by Muslims (5.8%), Hindus (3.3%) and Jews
(1.1%). According to the same study it was found that adherents under the classification
Irreligion or other religions hold about 34.8% of the total global wealth (while making up only
about 20% of the world population, see section on classification).

Health

Mayo Clinic researchers examined the association between religious involvement and
spirituality, and physical health, mental health, health-related quality of life, and other health
outcomes. The authors reported that: "Most studies have shown that religious involvement and
spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills,
and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and
suicide."The authors of a subsequent study concluded that the influence of religion on health is
largely beneficial, based on a review of related literature. According to academic James W.
Jones, several studies have discovered "positive correlations between religious belief and
practice and mental and physical health and longevity."An analysis of data from the 1998 US
General Social Survey, whilst broadly confirming that religious activity was associated with
better health and well-being, also suggested that the role of different dimensions of
spirituality/religiosity in health is rather more complicated. The results suggested "that it may not
be appropriate to generalize findings about the relationship between spirituality/religiosity and
health from one form of spirituality/religiosity to another, across denominations, or to assume
effects are uniform for men and women.

Violence

Critics like Hector Avalos Regina Schwartz, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have
argued that religions are inherently violent and harmful to society by using violence to promote
their goals, in ways that are endorsed and exploited by their leaders.Anthropologist Jack David
Eller asserts that religion is not inherently violent, arguing "religion and violence are clearly
compatible, but they are not identical." He asserts that "violence is neither essential to nor
exclusive to religion" and that "virtually every form of religious violence has its nonreligious
corollary."

Animal sacrifice

Done by some (but not all) religions, animal sacrifice is the ritual killing and offering of an
animal to appease or maintain favour with a deity. It has been banned in India.

Superstition

Greek and Roman pagans, who saw their relations with the gods in political and social terms,
scorned the man who constantly trembled with fear at the thought of the gods (deisidaimonia), as
a slave might fear a cruel and capricious master. The Romans called such fear of the gods
superstitio. Ancient Greek historian Polybius described superstition in ancient Rome as an
instrumentum regni, an instrument of maintaining the cohesion of the Empire.Superstition has
been described as the non-rational establishment of cause and effect. Religion is more complex
and is often composed of social institutions and has a moral aspect. Some religions may include
superstitions or make use of magical thinking. Adherents of one religion sometimes think of
other religions as superstition. Some atheists, deists, and skeptics regard religious belief as
superstition.

The Roman Catholic Church considers superstition to be sinful in the sense that it denotes a lack
of trust in the divine providence of God and, as such, is a violation of the first of the Ten
Commandments. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that superstition "in some sense
represents a perverse excess of religion" (para. #2110). "Superstition," it says, "is a deviation of
religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer
the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices
otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their
mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand is to fall into
superstition. Cf. Matthew 23:16–22" (para. #2111)

Agnosticism and atheism

The terms atheist (lack of belief in any gods) and agnostic (belief in the unknowability of the
existence of gods), though specifically contrary to theistic (e.g. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim)
religious teachings, do not by definition mean the opposite of religious. There are religions
(including Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism), in fact, that classify some of their followers as
agnostic, atheistic, or nontheistic. The true opposite of religious is the word irreligious. Irreligion
describes an absence of any religion; antireligion describes an active opposition or aversion
toward religions in general.

Interfaith cooperation

Because religion continues to be recognized in Western thought as a universal impulse, many

religious practitioners have aimed to band together in interfaith dialogue, cooperation, and
religious peacebuilding. The first major dialogue was the Parliament of the World's Religions at
the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, which affirmed universal values and recognition of the diversity
of practices among different cultures. The 20th century has been especially fruitful in use of
interfaith dialogue as a means of solving ethnic, political, or even religious conflict, with
Christian–Jewish reconciliation representing a complete reverse in the attitudes of many
Christian communities towards Jews.Recent interfaith initiatives include A Common Word,
launched in 2007 and focused on bringing Muslim and Christian leaders together, the "C1 World
Dialogue", the Common Ground initiative between Islam and Buddhism, and a United Nations
sponsored "World Interfaith Harmony Week".

Culture
Culture and religion have usually been seen as closely related. Paul Tillich looked at religion as
the soul of culture and culture as the form or framework of religion. In his own words:

Religion as ultimate concern is the meaning-giving substance of culture, and culture is the
totality of forms in which the basic concern of religion expresses itself. In abbreviation: religion
is the substance of culture, culture is the form of religion. Such a consideration definitely
prevents the establishment of a dualism of religion and culture. Every religious act, not only in
organized religion, but also in the most intimate movement of the soul, is culturally formed.

Ernst Troeltsch, similarly, looked at culture as the soil of religion and thought that, therefore,
transplanting a religion from its original culture to a foreign culture would actually kill it in the
same manner that transplanting a plant from its natural soil to an alien soil would kill it.
However, there have been many attempts in the modern pluralistic situation to distinguish culture
from religion. Domenic Marbaniang has argued that elements grounded on beliefs of a
metaphysical nature (religious) are distinct from elements grounded on nature and the natural
(cultural). For instance, language (with its grammar) is a cultural element while sacralization of
language in which a particular religious scripture is written is more often a religious practice.
The same applies to music and the arts.

Criticism
Criticism of religion is criticism of the ideas, the truth, or the practice of religion, including its
political and social implications.

See also
Notes
References
Sources
Palmer, Spencer J., et al. Religions of the World: a Latter-day Saint [Mormon] View. 2nd
general ed., tev. and enl. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 1997. xv, 294 p., ill. ISBN 0-
8425-2350-2

Pals, Daniel L. (2006), Eight Theories of Religion, Oxford University Press

Ramsay, Michael, Abp. Beyond Religion? Cincinnati, Ohio: Forward Movement Publications,
(cop. 1964).

Saler, Benson; "Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives,

and Unbounded Categories" (1990), ISBN 1-57181-219-9
Schuon, Frithjof. The Transcendent Unity of Religions, in series, Quest Books. 2nd Quest ... rev.
ed. Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993, cop. 1984. xxxiv, 173 p. ISBN 0-8356-
0587-6

Segal, Robert A (2005). "Theories of Religion". In Hinnells, John R. (ed.). The Routledge
Companion to the Study of Religion. London; New York: Routledge. pp. 49–60.

Smith, Wilfred Cantwell (1962), The Meaning and End of Religion

Stausberg, Michael (2009), Contemporary Theories of religion, Routledge

Wallace, Anthony F.C. 1966. Religion: An Anthropological View. New York: Random House.
(pp. 62–66)

The World Almanac (annual), World Almanac Books, ISBN 0-88687-964-7.

The World Almanac (for numbers of adherents of various religions), 2005

Further reading
James, Paul & Mandaville, Peter (2010). Globalization and Culture, Vol. 2: Globalizing
Religions. London: Sage Publications.

Noss, John B.; Man's Religions, 6th ed.; Macmillan Publishing Co. (1980). N.B.: The first ed.
appeared in 1949, ISBN 0-02-388430-4.

Inglehart, Ronald F., "Giving Up on God: The Global Decline of Religion", Foreign Affairs, vol.
99, no. 5 (September / October 2020), pp. 110–118.

Lang, Andrew; The Making of Religion, (1898)

External links
Religion Statistics from UCB Libraries GovPubs

Religion at Curlie

Major Religions of the World Ranked by Number of Adherents by Adherents.com August 2005

IACSR – International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion

Studying Religion – Introduction to the methods and scholars of the academic study of religion

A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right – Marx's original reference to

religion as the opium of the people.
The Complexity of Religion and the Definition of "Religion" in International Law Harvard
Human Rights Journal article from the President and Fellows of Harvard College (2003)

Sociology of Religion Resources

Video: 5 Religions spreading across the world