Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
World religions. Symbols commonly associated with six of the religions labelled "world religions": clockwise from the top, these represent Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Christianity. 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 ...
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.
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. [12]
It is the world's fourth-largest religion, [8] [9] with over 520 million followers, known as Buddhists, who comprise seven percent of the global population. [ 10 ] [ 11 ] Buddhism originated in the eastern Gangetic plain as a śramaṇa –movement in the 5th century BCE, and gradually spread throughout much of Asia.
Christianity is the predominant religion in Europe, the Americas, Oceania, and Sub-Saharan Africa. [1] There are also large Christian communities in other parts of the world, such as Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. [1]
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 levels of civility in different societies, [2] but this practice has since fallen into disrepute in many contemporary cultures.
According to the Census and Statistics Department, the population is 7 million. Information Services Department data note that approximately 43 percent of the population practice some form of religion. The two most prevalent religions are Buddhism and Taoism, often observed in the same temple.