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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 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.
World religions is a category used in the study of religion to demarcate at least five—and in some cases more—religions that are deemed to have been especially large, internationally widespread, or influential in the development of Western society.
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 Major Religions: An Introduction with Texts is a textbook on religions and religious texts by Thomas Patrick Burke, first published in 1996 by Blackwell, with a second edition published in 2004. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] The book has received reviews from journals including Pacifica and Religious Studies Review , along with being cited in its field and ...
The success of the series led to the development of a book titled The Religions of Man (later re-titled The World's Religions), written by religious studies scholar Huston Smith. The book was first published in 1958 and has since been translated into twelve languages. It became "one of the most widely used college textbooks on comparative ...
It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasising systematic, historically-based, and cross-cultural perspectives. While theology attempts to understand the intentions of a supernatural force (such as deities), religious studies tries to study human religious behavior and belief from outside any particular religious viewpoint.
Also created for the 1993 parliament was a book, A Sourcebook for the Community of Religions, by the late Joel Beversluis, which has become a standard textbook in religion classes. Unlike most textbooks of religion, each entry was written by members of the religion in question. [citation needed]