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The Western religions are the religions that originated within Western culture, which are thus historically, culturally, and theologically distinct from Eastern, African and Iranian religions. The term Abrahamic religions ( Judaism , Christianity and Islam ) is often used instead of using the East and West terminology, as these originated in ...
A constant theme of debate around Western values has been around their universal applicability or lack thereof; in modern times, as various non-Western nations have risen, they have sought to oppose certain Western values, with even Western countries also backing down to some extent from championing its own values in what some see as a contested transition to a post-Western era of the world.
The term "Western" encompasses the social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, artifacts and technologies primarily rooted in European and Mediterranean histories. A broad concept, "Western culture" does not relate to a region with fixed members or geographical confines.
Western philosophy refers to the philosophical thought, traditions and works of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture , beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics .
Western Christianity is composed of the Latin Church and Western Protestantism, together with their offshoots such as the Old Catholic Church, Independent Catholicism and Restorationism. The large majority of the world's 2.3 billion Christians are Western Christians (about 2 billion: 1.2 billion Latin Catholic and 1.17 billion Protestant).
Western esotericism, also known as Western mystery tradition, [1] is a term scholars use to classify a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society. These ideas and currents are united since they are largely distinct both from orthodox Judeo-Christian religion and Age of Enlightenment rationalism. [2]
While the word religion is difficult to define, one standard model of religion used in religious studies courses defines 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 ...
Western culture – Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, is a term used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific Cultural artifacts and technologies.