Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
[7] [8] [9] In 2024, the World Christian Database reported 1.278 billion Catholics. [1] That figure does not include independent denominations that self-identify as Catholic, numbering some 18 million adherents subscribing to Old Catholicism and other forms of Independent Catholicism.
The world's principal religions and spiritual traditions may be classified into a small number of major groups, though this is not a uniform practice. This theory began in the 18th century with the goal of recognizing the relative degrees of civility in different societies, [2] but this concept of a ranking order has since fallen into disrepute in many contemporary cultures.
A religious denomination is a subgroup within a religion that operates under a common name and tradition, among other activities. The term refers to the various Christian denominations (for example, Eastern Orthodox , Catholic , and the many varieties of Protestantism ).
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 ...
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.
The largest denomination is the Catholic Church with more than 1.3 billion members. [24] The smallest of these groups may have only a few dozen adherents or an unspecified number of participants in independent churches as described below. As such, specific numbers and a certain size may not define a group as a denomination.
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.
This is a list of religious organizations by faith. As it can be a matter of rebuttal as to whether an organization is in fact religious, organizations only appear on this list where the organization itself claims or has claimed to be a religious organization.