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List of religions and spiritual traditions

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.
Religious symbols in clock-wise order from top: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Bahá'í Faith, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Slavic neopaganism, Celtic polytheism, Heathenism (Germanic paganism), Semitic neopaganism, Wicca, Kemetism (Egyptian paganism), Hellenism (Greek paganism), Italo-Roman neopaganism.

While religion is hard to define, one standard model of religion, used in religious studies courses, was proposed by Clifford Geertz, who defined it 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."[1]

A critique of Geertz's model by Talal Asad categorized religion as "an anthropological category."[2] Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to explain the origin of life or the universe. They tend to derive morality, ethics, religious laws, or a preferred lifestyle from their ideas about the cosmos and human nature. According to some estimates, there are roughly 4,200 religions in the world.[3]

The word religion is sometimes used interchangeably with "faith" or "belief system", but religion differs from private belief in that it has a public aspect. Most religions have organized behaviours, including clerical hierarchies, a definition of what constitutes adherence or membership, congregations of laity, regular meetings or services for the purposes of veneration of a deity or for prayer, holy places (either natural or architectural) or religious texts. Certain religions also have a sacred language often used in liturgical services. The practice of a religion may also include sermons, commemoration of the activities of a god or gods, sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trance, rituals, rites, ceremonies, worship, initiations, funerals, marriages, meditation, invocation, mediumship, music, art, dance, public service or other aspects of human culture. Religious beliefs have also been used to explain parapsychological phenomena such as out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences and reincarnation, along with many other paranormal and supernatural experiences.[4][5]

Some academics studying the subject have divided religions into three broad categories: world religions, a term which refers to transcultural, international faiths; indigenous religions, which refers to smaller, culture-specific or nation-specific religious groups; and new religious movements, which refers to recently developed faiths.[6] 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,[7] and thus religion, as a concept, has been applied inappropriately to non-Western cultures that are not based upon such systems, or in which these systems are a substantially simpler construct.

Further information: Prehistoric religion and History of religion

Contents

East Asian religionsEdit

Indian religionsEdit

Main article: Indian religions

Religions that originated in the Indian subcontinent; namely Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism, and religions and traditions related to, and descended from them.

Ajivika (Historical)Edit

Main article: Ajivika

Ajñana (Historical)Edit

Main article: Ajñana

BuddhismEdit

Main article: Buddhism
See also: Schools of Buddhism

New Buddhist movementsEdit

Global variants of BuddhismEdit

Charvaka (Historical)Edit

Main article: Charvaka

Din-I Ilahi (Historical)Edit

Main article: Din-i Ilahi

HinduismEdit

Main article: Hinduism
See also: Hindu denominations

Hindu reform movementsEdit

Main article: Hindu reform movements
Major schools and movements of Hindu philosophy
Main article: Hindu philosophy

Bhakti movementEdit

Main article: Bhakti movement

JainismEdit

Main article: Jainism

MeivazhiEdit

Main article: Meivazhi

SikhismEdit

Main article: Sikhism

Middle Eastern religionsEdit

Main articles: Abrahamic religions and Iranian religions

Religions that originated in the Middle East; namely Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and religions and traditions related to, and descended from them.

BábismEdit

Main article: Bábism

Bahá'í FaithEdit

Main article: Bahá'í Faith
See also: Bahá'í divisions

ChristianityEdit

Main article: Christianity
See also: List of Christian denominations

Eastern ChristianityEdit

Main article: Eastern Christianity

Western ChristianityEdit

Main article: Western Christianity

OtherEdit

See also: Gnosticism and Christian mysticism

Certain Christian groups are difficult to classify as "Eastern" or "Western." Many Gnostic groups were closely related to early Christianity, for example, Valentinism. Irenaeus wrote polemics against them from the standpoint of the then-unified Catholic Church.[13]

DruzeEdit

Main article: Druze

IslamEdit

Main article: Islam
See also: Islamic schools and branches, Ilm al-Kalam, Ahl al-Hadith, and Islamism
Khawarij
Main article: Khawarij
Shia Islam
Main article: Shia Islam
Sufism
Main articles: Sufism and Islamic Mysticism
See also: List of Sufi orders
Sunni Islam
Main article: Sunni Islam
Other

JudaismEdit

Main article: Judaism
See also: Jewish religious movements

Beta IsraelEdit

Main article: Beta Israel

Black Hebrew IsraelitesEdit

Main article: Black Hebrew Israelites

Karaite JudaismEdit

Main article: Karaite Judaism

KabbalahEdit

Main articles: Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism

NoahidismEdit

Main article: Noahidism

Rabbinic JudaismEdit

Main article: Rabbinic Judaism

SamaritansEdit

Main article: Samaritans

Second Temple Judaism (Historical)Edit

Main article: Second Temple Judaism

MandaeismEdit

Main article: Mandaeism

ManichaeismEdit

Main article: Manichaeism

RastafariEdit

Main article: Rastafari

ShabakismEdit

Main article: Shabakism

YazdânismEdit

Main article: Yazdânism

ZoroastrianismEdit

Main article: Zoroastrianism

New religious movementsEdit

Main article: New religious movement
See also: List of new religious movements

Religions that cannot be classed as either world religions nor traditional folk religions, and are usually recent in their inception.

Cargo cultsEdit

Main article: Cargo cults

Ethnic religionsEdit

See also: Ethnic religion

BlackEdit

WhiteEdit

Native AmericanEdit

Chicano/LatinoEdit

Modern paganismEdit

Main article: Modern paganism
See also: List of Neopagan movements

Ethnic neopaganismEdit

Syncretic neopaganismEdit

Entheogenic religionsEdit

Main article: Entheogen

New ThoughtEdit

Main article: New Thought

Parody religionsEdit

Main article: Parody religion

Post-theistic and naturalistic religionsEdit

Main articles: Post-theism and Religious naturalism

UFO religionsEdit

Main article: UFO religions

Western esotericismEdit

Main article: Western esotericism
See also: Left-hand path and right-hand path, Occult, and Magick (Thelema)

OtherEdit

Traditional, indigenous, and folk religionsEdit

Main article: Folk religion
See also: Paganism, Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, and Mysticism

Religions that consist of the traditional customs and beliefs of particular ethnic groups, refined and expanded upon for thousands of years, often lacking formal doctrine.

Note: Some adherents do not consider their ways to be "religion," preferring other cultural terms.

AfricanEdit

Main article: African traditional religions

African diasporic religionsEdit

Main article: African diasporic religions
Central African
East African
North African
West African
South African

AmericanEdit

Main article: Native American mythology

MesoamericanEdit

Main article: Mesoamerican religion
North American
South American

EurasianEdit

East AsianEdit

EuropeanEdit

West AsianEdit

Main article: Ancient Near Eastern religions

OceaniaEdit

Other categorisationsEdit

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

  1. ^ (Clifford Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System, 1973)
  2. ^ (Talal Asad, The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category, 1982.)
  3. ^ "World Religions Religion Statistics Geography Church Statistics". Retrieved 5 March 2015.
  4. ^ http://www.parapsych.org/base/about.aspx
  5. ^ "Key Facts about Near-Death Experiences". Retrieved 5 March 2015.
  6. ^ Harvey, Graham (2000). Indigenous Religions: A Companion. (Ed: Graham Harvey). London and New York: Cassell. Page 06.
  7. ^ Vergote, Antoine, Religion, belief and unbelief: a psychological study, Leuven University Press, 1997, p. 89
  8. ^ Melton, J. Gordon (2003). Encyclopedia of American Religions (Seventh edition). Farmington Hills, Michigan: The Gale Group, Inc., p. 1112. ISBN 0-7876-6384-0
  9. ^ Melton, J. Gordon (2003). Encyclopedia of American Religions (Seventh edition). Farmington Hills, Michigan: The Gale Group, Inc., p. 1001. ISBN 0-7876-6384-0
  10. ^ Melton, J. Gordon (2003). Encyclopedia of American Religions (Seventh edition). Farmington Hills, Michigan: The Gale Group, Inc., p. 997. ISBN 0-7876-6384-0
  11. ^ Melton, J. Gordon (2003). Encyclopedia of American Religions (Seventh edition). Farmington Hills, Michigan: The Gale Group, Inc., p. 1004. ISBN 0-7876-6384-0
  12. ^ a b "Welcome to Jainworld – Jain Sects – tirthankaras, jina, sadhus, sadhvis, 24 tirthankaras, digambara sect, svetambar sect, Shraman Dharma, Nirgranth Dharma". Jainworld.com. Retrieved 2012-04-24.
  13. ^ "Irenaeus of Lyons". Retrieved 5 March 2015.
  14. ^ Smith, Christian; Joshua Prokopy (1999). Latin American Religion in Motion. New York: Routledge, pp. 279-280. ISBN 978-0-415-92106-0

External linksEdit

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