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Medieval world religions. World religions of the present day established themselves throughout Eurasia during the Middle Ages by: Christianization of the Western world; Buddhist missions to East Asia; the decline of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent; the spread of Islam throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa and parts of ...
The bulk of the human religious experience pre-dates written history, which is roughly 7,000 years old. [1] A lack of written records results in most of the knowledge of pre-historic religion being derived from archaeological records and other indirect sources, and from suppositions. Much pre-historic religion is subject to continued debate.
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. [5]
Many world religions are also organized religions, most definitively including the Abrahamic religions Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, while others are arguably less so, in particular folk religions, indigenous religions, and some Eastern religions. A portion of the world's population are members of new religious movements. [13]
Restrictions on religion across the world increased between mid-2009 and mid-2010, according to a 2012 study by the Pew Research Center. Restrictions in each of the five major regions of the world increased – including in the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa, the two regions where overall restrictions previously had been declining.
The list of religious populations article provides a comprehensive overview of the distribution and size of religious groups around the world. This article aims to present statistical information on the number of adherents to various religions, including major faiths such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and others, as well as smaller religious communities.
A "world religion" is a tradition that has achieved sufficient power and numbers to enter our history to form it, interact with it, or thwart it. We recognise both the unity within and the diversity among the world religions because they correspond to important geopolitical entities with which we must deal.
By some scholars, the Zoroastrians ("Parsis" or "Zartoshtis") are sometimes credited with being some of the first monotheists and having had influence on other world religions. [178] [179] Zoroastrianism combines cosmogonic dualism and eschatological monotheism which makes it unique among the religions of the world. There are two issues that ...