List of religions and spiritual traditions

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Religion is a collection of cultural systems, beliefs, and world views that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes to moral values. While religion is hard to define, one standard model of religion, used in religious studies courses, was proposed by Clifford Geertz, who simply called it a "cultural system."[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 behaviors, 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), and/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, initiations, funerals, marriages, meditation, 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 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.

Contents

Abrahamic religions

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A group of monotheistic traditions sometimes grouped with one another for comparative purposes, because all refer to a patriarch named Abraham.

Bábism

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Bahá'í Faith

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Christianity

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Western Christianity

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Eastern Christianity

Other Christian

Certain Christian groups are difficult to classify as "Eastern" or "Western."

No-longer-extant Christian groups

Latter-Day Saints movement (Mormonism)

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Gnosticism

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.[8]

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The Yazidis are a syncretic Kurdish religion with a Gnostic influence:

Persian Gnosticism
Syrian-Egyptic Gnosticism

None of these religions are still extant.

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Neo-Gnostic Groups

Islam

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Kalam Schools

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Kharijite

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Shia Islam

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Sufism

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Sunni Islam

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Restorationism
Quranism

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Black Muslims

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Ahmadiyya

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Other Islamic groups

Sufi and Shia Sects

Druze

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Judaism and related religions

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Rabbinic Judaism

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Karaite Judaism

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Samaritanism

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Samaritans use a slightly different version of the Pentateuch as their Torah, worshiping at Mount Gerizim instead of Jerusalem, and are possibly the descendants of the lost Northern Kingdom. They are definitely of ancient Israelite origin, but their status as Jews is disputed.[9]

Falasha or Beta Israel
Modern Non-Rabbinic Judaism
Historical groups

Second Temple Judaism

Black Hebrew Israelites

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Rastafari movement

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Mandaeans and Sabians

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Shabakism

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Indian religions

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

Ayyavazhi

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Bhakti movement

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Buddhism

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Din-e Ilahi

Hinduism

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Major schools and movements of Hindu philosophy

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Jainism

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Meivazhi

Sikhism

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Iranian religions

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Zoroastrianism

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Gnostic religions

Bábí movement

Yazdânism

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  • Alevi (this is contested; most Alevi consider themselves to be Shia or Sufi Muslims, but a minority adhere to the Yazdani interpretation)
  • Yarsani
  • Yazidi

East Asian religions

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Confucianism

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Shinto

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Shinto-inspired religions

Taoism

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Contemporary Taoism-inspired religions

Other

Chinese

Korean

Vietnamese

African diasporic religions

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African diasporic religions are a number of related religions that developed in the Americas among African slaves and their descendants in various countries of the Caribbean Islands and Latin America, as well as parts of the southern United States. They derive from African traditional religions, especially of West and Central Africa, showing similarities to the Yoruba religion in particular.

Mesoamerican religions

Indigenous traditional religions

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Traditionally, these faiths have all been classified "Pagan", but scholars prefer the terms "indigenous/primal/folk/ethnic religions".

African

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Northern Africa
West Africa
Central Africa
East Africa
Southern Africa

North American

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Eurasian

Asian
European

Oceania/Pacific

Cargo cults

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Historical polytheism

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Ancient Near Eastern

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Indo-European

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Hellenistic

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Uralic

Mysticism and occult

Esotericism and mysticism

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Western mystery tradition

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Occult and magic

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Modern Paganism

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Syncretic

Ethnic

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New religious movements

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Race-based

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Black

White

New Thought

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Shinshukyo

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Left-hand path religions

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Post-theistic and naturalistic religions

Fictional religions

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Parody or mock religions

Others

Other categorisations

By demographics

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By area

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See also

References

  1. (Clifford Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System, 1973)
  2. (Talal Asad, The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category, 1982.)
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  4. http://www.parapsych.org/base/about.aspx
  5. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  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
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  9. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. Melton, J. Gordon (2003). Encyclopedia of American Religions (Seventh edition). Farmington Hills, Michigan: The Gale Group, Inc., p. 1112. ISBN 0-7876-6384-0
  11. Melton, J. Gordon (2003). Encyclopedia of American Religions (Seventh edition). Farmington Hills, Michigan: The Gale Group, Inc., p. 1001. ISBN 0-7876-6384-0
  12. Melton, J. Gordon (2003). Encyclopedia of American Religions (Seventh edition). Farmington Hills, Michigan: The Gale Group, Inc., p. 997. ISBN 0-7876-6384-0
  13. Melton, J. Gordon (2003). Encyclopedia of American Religions (Seventh edition). Farmington Hills, Michigan: The Gale Group, Inc., p. 1004. ISBN 0-7876-6384-0
  14. 14.0 14.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. Smith, Christian; Joshua Prokopy (1999). Latin American Religion in Motion. New York: Routledge, pp. 279-280. ISBN 978-0-415-92106-0
  16. Melton, J. Gordon (2003). Encyclopedia of American Religions (Seventh edition). Farmington Hills, Michigan: The Gale Group, Inc., p. 841. ISBN 0-7876-6384-0

External links