18 Major World Religions — Study Starters

by TBS Staff

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Religion is a vast subject area. Really, that'southward an understatement. Religion touches on everything about the world around united states, from the explanations nosotros seek for the creation of the universe and our purpose within to the higher power backside these things to the mode we behave, treat one another, and interact with gild to the values, laws, and beliefs that govern us. Whether yous are a person of faith, a skeptic, or something in between, the concepts of spirituality, organized organized religion, and morality issue us all. They produce cultural constructs, power dynamics, and historical narratives. They tin also produce philosophical innovation, ethical reform, and the advancement of social justice.

In other words, religion is and so diverse and nuanced a subject that it'southward virtually incommunicable to encapsulate all of the globe's major religions in simply a few words. But we're going to endeavour anyway.

This is a study starter, an entry indicate for understanding the basics of the world's major religions. We'll give you the quick low down on the belief systems, theologies, scriptures, and histories of the world'south major religions. Taken together, these brief and sometimes overlapping histories offer a window into human history itself.

Each of these entries is a surface-level look at the religion in question. (Endeavour capturing everything about Buddhism in simply 250 words!) Nosotros also scratch the surface when it comes to the number of bodily religions and denominations, both current and ancient. At that place's a lot out there. This is but an introduction.

Apply information technology to go started on your religious studies essay, to castor up before an exam on religion and world history, or just to larn more well-nigh the world around you. Below are some of the leading spiritual and religious traditions in the world, both past and present:

Globe Religions

1. Atheism/Faithlessness

Atheism refers to either the absence of a belief in the beingness of deities or to an active belief that deities do not exist. This conventionalities system rejects theology likewise every bit the constructs of organized religion. Employ of the term originated in the ancient globe and was meant to dethrone those who rejected commonly accepted religious precepts. Information technology was first self-applied during the Historic period of Enlightenment in 18th century France. The French Revolution was driven by the prioritization of human reason over the abstract authority of religion. This prompted a menstruum of skeptical inquiry, i in which atheism became an important cultural, philosophical, and political entity.

Many who characterize themselves as atheists fence that a lack of proof or scientific process prevents the conventionalities in a deity. Some who refer to themselves as secular humanists have developed a code of ideals that exists split up from the worship of a deity. Determining the bodily number of "practicing" atheists is quite difficult, given the absence of a unifying religious organization. Polling effectually the world has produced an extremely wide variance, with the largest rates of atheism by and large seen in Europe and Eastward Asia.

Closely related is the thought of agnosticism, which doesn't profess to know whether there is or isn't a deity. Instead, agnosticism argues that the limits of human reasoning and agreement brand the being of god(due south), the origins of the universe, and the possibility of an afterlife all unknowable. Like disbelief, the term emerged around the fifth century BCE and was contemplated with particular interest in Indian cultures. It gained more than popular modern visibility when coined by English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, who in 1869 recognized that incapacity of humans to truly answer questions regarding the divine. To Huxley, and the agnostic and athiest thinkers who followed, theistic or gnostic religions lack scientific basis, and therefore, should be rejected.

2. Bahá'í

The Bahá'í faith is essentially a spiritual ideology that teaches the value of all religions, espousing the importance of universal equality and unity. Bahá'u'lláh, the founding figure in the Bahá'í faith, officially established his ideology in 1863 in Persia (or modernistic-solar day Iran). As something of a hybrid of other faiths, Bahá'í grew out of the tradition of Babism, which itself emerged from an Islamic denomination called Shaykhism. (Today, Babism exists with a few thousand adherents, concentrated largely in Islamic republic of iran, and standing separately from the Islamic ideologies that surround information technology.) Like Babism, Bahá'í incorporates some of the teachings of Islam but merges them with some Christian principles. The primal governing body of the Bahá'í faith, a nine-member council chosen the Universal Firm of Justice, operates from Haifa, Israel. Today, the Bahá'í faith has somewhere between five and vii million adherents around the world.

3. Buddhism

Buddhism is both a religion and philosophy. The traditions and beliefs surrounding Buddhism can be traced to the original teachings of Gautama Buddha, a sagely thinker who is believed to take lived between the quaternary and 6th centuries BCE. The Buddha lived and taught in the eastern part of ancient India, providing the template for a faith based on the ideas of moral rectitude, freedom from cloth zipper or desire, the achievement of peace and illumination through meditation, and a life dedicated to wisdom, kindness, and compassion. The Buddha's teachings proliferated widely through much of Asia in the centuries that followed.

Though its scriptures and traditions inform endless subsequent sects and ideologies, Buddhism is largely divided into ii branches: Theravada — the goal of which is to achieve liberty from ignorance, fabric attachment, and acrimony past practicing the Noble Eightfold Path, all in pursuit of a sublime state called Nirvana; and Mahayana — the goal of which is aspire to Buddhahood past practicing the Zen principles of cocky-control, meditation, and expression of the insight of Buddha in your daily life, specially for the benefit of others, all to the end of achieving bodhisattva, or an ongoing cycle of rebirth by which you can continue to enlighten others.

Today, roughly seven% of the globe practices some class of Buddhism, making it the 4th largest of the world's religions, with an estimated 500 million adherents across both the Eastern and Western World.

4. Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and pedagogy of Jesus of Nazareth. Christianity teaches that Jesus is the Son of God and the Messiah (the savior of humanity foretold in the Torah, the master scriptural doctrine of the Jewish faith). Christian scripture incorporates both the Torah (referred to by Christians equally the Erstwhile Testament) with the story of Jesus, his teachings, and those of his contemporaneous disciples (the New Attestation). These form the Bible, the central text of the Christian faith. Christianity began in Jerusalem as an outgrowth of Judaism that considered Jesus the Christ (pregnant "all-powerful 1"). This idea and its adherents spread rapidly through ancient Judea around the first century CE, then throughout the ancient world.

Christians believe Jesus successfully met and completed all the requirements of the Old Testament laws, took upon himself the sins of the world during his crucifixion, died, and rose to life once more and then that those who place their faith in him are forgiven their sins, reconciled to God, and granted grace for daily living. Christians maintain that heaven with God awaits them after bodily death, whereas eternal separation from God in hell awaits those who neither received forgiveness for their sins nor acknowledged Jesus as Lord.

Christianity has seen countless reformation movements, which spawned innumerable sects and offshoot denominations. Far also many forms of practice exist to be named in i place, but the faith's three largest branches are Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. Combined, Christianity is the largest organized religion in the globe, with roughly ii.4 billion adherents, or 33% of the total population. Its touch on the shape of world history and on present-twenty-four hours world culture is incalculable.

5. Confucianism

Confucianism was a dominant class of philosophy and religious orientation in ancient China, 1 that emerged from the teachings of Chinese philosopher Confucius, who lived 551–479 BCE. Confucius viewed himself as a channel for the theological ideas emerging from the majestic dynasties that came before him. With an emphasis on family and social harmony, Confucianism was a distinctly humanist and even secularist religious credo. Confucianism had a profound bear on on the development of Eastern legal community and the emergence of a scholar class (and with it, a meritocratic way of governing).

Confucianism would engage in a historic push and pull with the philosophies of Buddhism and Taoism, experiencing ebbs and flows in influence, with high points during the Han (206 BCE to 220 CE), Tang (618–907 CE) and Song (960–1296 CE) Dynasties. As Buddhism became the dominant spiritual force in China, Confucianism declined in practise. And with the emergence of communism and Maoism in the 20th century, the mainstream practice of Confucianism was largely at an finish.

However, it remains a foundational ideology and force underlying Asian and Chinese attitudes toward scholarly, legal, and professional pursuits. Indeed, the strong piece of work ethic advocated by Confucianism is seen as a major catalyst for the late 20th century ascension of the Asian economies. Today, at that place are various independent Confucian congregations, but information technology was only in 2015 that congregation leaders in China gathered together to class the Holy Confucian Church.

6. Druze

Druze refers to an Arabic ethnoreligious grouping that originated in and yet largely inhabits the Mount of Druze region in southern Syria. Despite a small-scale population of adherents, the Druze notwithstanding play an important part in the development of their region (known in historical shorthand as the Levant). The Druze view themselves as the direct descendants of Jethro of Midian, distinguished in Jewish scripture as the father-in-law of Moses. The Druze consider Jethro a "subconscious" prophet, one through whom God spoke to "revealed prophet" Moses.

As such, the Druze are considered related to Judaism by marriage. Like their in-laws, the Druze are monotheistic, professing faith in simply one God. Druze ideologies are something of a hybrid though, drawing from the cultural teachings of Islam, but also incorporating the wisdom of Greek philosophers, such every bit Plato, and concepts of reincarnation similar to those in Hindu catechism.

Jethro'southward status as a hidden prophet is an important conceptual dimension of the Druze civilization. Indeed, its present-day scriptures and community remain somewhat insular. The shut-knit communities rooted in present day Syria, Lebanese republic, and State of israel have long been discipline to persecution, particularly at the easily of Islamic theocracies. This may be ane reason that the Druze, while participating actively in the politics and affairs of their domicile nations, shield their customs and practices from the eyes of outsiders. Today, in that location are between 800,000 and ane meg Druze adherents, nearly all of them concentrated in the Centre East.

7. Gnosticism

Gnosticism probable refers not to a single religious orientation simply to an "interreligious phenomenon" in which various groups across an array of regions evolved to a similar gear up of behavior and ideas. A term adapted in modern historical soapbox, gnosticism concerns the multifariousness of religious systems and beliefs in the ancient earth that emerged from the Judeo-Christian tradition. These belief systems held that emanations from a single God were responsible for the creation of the material world and that, as such, all humans carried the divine spark of God. Gnosticism is dualistic and draws sharp divides between the superior spiritual globe and the inferior material world, with the gaining or receiving of special, hidden noesis ("gnosis") allowing transcendence from one realm to some other. Emerging in the first century CE — in close concert with the emergence of Christianity — gnosticism is perhaps best understand as the intermediary set of ideas shared by portions of the world every bit Christianity gradually eclipsed Judaism in size and scope.

eight. Hinduism

Hinduism is regarded past some as the world's oldest religion, likely dating dorsum to what is known on the Indian subcontinent equally the Vedic age. During this menstruum, 1500–600 BCE, civilization transitioned from tribal and pastoral living into settled and agricultural living. From this emerged social classes, land-entities, and monarchies. The primary texts retelling this flow of history are called the Vedas and would significantly inform the so-called Hindu Synthesis.

The Hindu Synthesis was a period of time, roughly 500 BCE to 300 CE, in which the precepts of Hinduism solidified from multiple intertwining strands of Indian spiritual and cultural tradition, emerging from a broad range of philosophies to share a unifying set of concepts. Critical among these concepts is the theme of the 4 Purusarthas, or goals, of homo life: Dharma (ideals and duties), Artha (prosperity and work), Kama (desires and passions), and Moksha (liberation and salvation). Other of import concepts include karma, which asserts a universal relationship between activity, intent, and consequences; samsara, the Hindu concept of rebirth; and a wide range of Yogic practices merging the body, mind, and elements.

Though no one figure or group is credited with its founding, Hinduism is the tertiary largest religion in the globe today. Its more than one billion adherents comprise more than 15% of the globe'south population.

9. Islam

Islam is a monotheistic religion that — like Christianity and Judaism — traces its roots to the Garden of Eden, Adam, and the prophet Abraham. Islam teaches that Allah is the only God and that Muhammed is his messenger. Islam holds that God spoke to Muhammed through the archangel Gabriel some time around 600 CE, delivering the revelations that would form the Quran. This master text of the Islamic faith is believed by adherents to contain the exact words of God and therefore provides a full and nonnegotiable blueprint for how to live.

The Quran and the Islamic legal code known as Sharia inform every aspect of life, from ethics and worship to family matters and business dealings. Islam holds that skilful behavior and adherence volition lead to an afterlife in paradise, whereas disregard for Muhammed'south teachings will lead to damnation.

The Islamic faith proliferated rapidly through the Middle East, particularly around the three holiest sites of the faith: Mecca, where an awakened Muhammed made his get-go pilgrimage; Medina, the center of early on Islamic faith under Muhammed's leadership; and Jerusalem, the spiritual capital of the ancient world. In the centuries to follow, Islam would simultaneously produce countless wars of succession and a growing sense of spiritual unity inside the Arab Globe. This dichotomy between internal disharmonize and cultural unity remains a presence in the Islamic organized religion today. This dichotomy would besides requite manner to a division between the two ascendant sects of Islam, Sunni and Shia. Today, Islam is the ascendant faith for large swaths of geography, particularly in the Center E, Southeast Asia, and Due north Africa. With more than 1.6 billion adherents, Islam is the second largest religion in the world and the chief spiritual identity for more than 24% of the globe'due south population.

10. Jainism

Jainism is an ancient Indian religion that — according to its adherents — can exist traced through a succession of 24 sagely teachers. The first of these teachers is thought to have been Rishabhanatha, who lived millions of years ago. Jainism'due south main tenets are ahiṃsā (nonviolence), anekāntavāda (many-sidedness), aparigraha (nonattachment) and asceticism (abstinence from pleasure). These and other concepts are outlined in the Acaranga Sutra, the oldest of the Jainist scriptures.

Equally i of the earliest extant religious traditions to sally from the spiritually fertile Indian subcontinent, Jainism both shares with and diverges from features of the Hindu and Buddhist traditions that also emerged there. Like Hindu and Buddhism, Jainism teaches the doctrines of karma, rebirth, and monastic (as opposed to theistic) spiritual practices.

Jainists believe the soul is an ever-irresolute affair, spring to the body only for a lifetime, which differs from Hindu or Buddhist ideas about the soul every bit part of an infinite and constant universe. This focus on the corporeal too extends to the Jainist caste system, which, not different Hinduism, requires adherents eschew social liberation in favor of spiritual liberation. Today, most of the world's four to five million Jains reside in Bharat.

xi. Judaism

Judaism is 1 of the oldest monotheistic world religions, amongst the first ethnoreligious groups to move away from idolatry or paganism and toward the recognition of a single deity. Judaism is said to accept begun with the figure of Abraham, a man living in the Land of Canaan — a geographical surface area probable encompassing portions of Phoenicia, Philistia, and Israel. In the Tanakh — the body of Jewish scripture which includes a foundational text called The Torah, and later supplemental texts call the Midrash and the Talmud — it is said that God spoke to Abraham and allowable him to recognize the singularity and omnipotence of God. Abraham accustomed, becoming the male parent not only of Judaism simply of the diverse monotheistic (or Abrahamic) religions that followed.

Thus, Abraham is seen not only as the get-go prophet of Judaism, but also of the Christian and Islamic faiths that sprung from the Judaic tradition. The Jewish faith is based upon a covenant between Abraham and God in which the former renounced idolatry and accepted the latter as the only divine authorisation. In commutation, God promised to make Abraham's offspring a "Called People." This Chosen People would become the Children of Israel, and somewhen, the Jewish faith. To seal the covenant, Abraham became the beginning recipient of the ritualistic circumcision. This circumcision is still performed today on every newborn Jewish male as a symbol of that covenant.

Historians discover that while Abraham about certainly lived more than three,000 years ago, literary liberties taken with the scriptures make information technology incommunicable to ascertain exactly when he lived. But his influence would loom large in the aboriginal world, with the rabbinic moral codes of Judaism and its model of ethical monotheism both significantly informing the formulation of police force and religion in western civilisation. With roughly 14.3 million adherents, practitioners of Judaism incorporate about 0.2% of the world's population.

12. Rastafarianism

Rastafarianism is a newer religious move that follows in the Abrahamic tradition of monotheism, referring to the singular deity as Jah. Rastafari hold the Christian Bible equally their primary scripture only offer an interpretation highly connected to their own political and geographical realities. Centered around early 20th century Jamaica, Rastafarianism emerged as a ethnocultural reaction to British occupation and oppression. This oppression would play a major function in the Afrocentric interpretation of the Bible favored past Rastafari.

In the early 1930s, a motility of Rastafarians espoused that the faithful were living in an African diaspora, scattered from their homelands by colonization and slavery. To exist freed from oppression in Western society (or Babylon), many Rastafari believe information technology necessary to resettle adherents in the African homelands. A figure of cardinal importance in the Rastafarian faith, Haile Selassie rose to the rank of Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930. This was considered the germinal moment in the emergence of the modernistic religious tradition. Selassie was viewed by Rastafari equally the Second Coming, a direct descendant of Christ, and the Messiah foretold in the Book of Revelation.

Selassie was seen as the homo who would lead the people of Africa, and those living in the diaspora, to freedom and liberation. His 1966 visit to Jamaica would become the pivotal moment in the spread of Rastafari ideas and the resultant political motion for liberation within Jamaica. This visit led to the eventual conversion of Rastafari's most famous adherent, vocalist Bob Marley. Marley would help to spread the popular visibility of the faith, as well as its practices of communal gathering, musical expression, preservation of the natural world, and the use of cannabis as a spiritual sacrament. Today, between 700,000 and one meg adherents do Rastafarianism, the majority of them full-bodied in Jamaica.

13. Shinto

Shinto is religious tradition native to Japan. Initially an informal collection of beliefs and mythologies, Shinto was less a faith than a distinctly Japanese course of cultural observance. The commencement recorded utilise of the term Shinto tin be traced to the 6th century CE and is essentially the connective tissue between ancient Japanese customs and modern Japanese life. The primary focus of Shinto is the native conventionalities in kami (spirits) and interaction with them through public shrines.

These shrines are an essential artifact of — and channel for — Shinto observation. More 80,000 Shinto shrines dot Japan. Traditional Japanese styles of dress, dance, and ritual are also rooted in Shinto community.

Shinto is unique among religions. As a reflection of Japanese identity, Shinto observance is not necessarily limited to those who view themselves as religious adherents. Roughly 3–iv% of the Japanese population identifies as being part of a Shinto sect or congregation. By contrast, in a 2008 survey, roughly 26% of Japanese citizens reported visiting Shinto shrines.

xiv. Sikhism

Sikhism is a monotheistic faith emerging from and remaining concentrated in the Punjabi region that traverses Northern India and Eastern Pakistan. The Sikh religion came into focus during the tardily 15th century and draws its tenets of organized religion, meditation, social justice, and man equality from a scripture called the Guru Granth Sahib.

The kickoff spiritual leader of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, lived from 1469 to 1539 and taught that a adept, spiritual life must be intertwined with a secular life well-lived. He called for activity, inventiveness, allegiance, cocky-control, and purity. More of import than the metaphysical, Guru Nanak argued, is a life in which one enacts the will of God. Guru Nanak was succeeded past a subsequent line of nine gurus, who served as spiritual leaders. The tenth in this line of successors, Guru Gobind Singh, named the scriptures as his successor. This was the stop of human potency in the Sikh faith and the emergence of the scriptures every bit a singular spiritual guide.

Today, the more than 28 meg estimated adherents of Sikhism are largely concentrated in India, making it the 7th largest religion in the world.

15. Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism is considered i of the globe's oldest religions, and some of its earliest ideas — messianism, posthumous judgment, and the duality of heaven and hell — are believed to have informed the evolution of Judaism, every bit well as Gnosticism, Christianity, and Islam. Its founding figure, Zoroaster, was an innovative religious thinker and teacher who is believed to have lived between 700 BCE and 500 BCE in Persia (modern-day Iran). Its chief text, the Avesta, combines the Gathas (Zoroaster'south writings) with the Yasna (the scriptural footing of Zoroastrianism). Zoroaster's influence loomed large in his time and place. In fact, Zoroastrianism was soon adopted as the official land religion of the Persian Empire and remained so for virtually a thousand years.

Zoroaster's ideas finally fell out of authority afterwards the Muslim conquest of Persia in the seventh century CE. What followed was centuries of persecution and suppression by Muslim conquerors, to the point of almost entirely snuffing out Zoroastrian teachings and practices in the Arabic-speaking world. These practices take seen a small resurgence in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with some Iranians and Iraqi Kurdish populations adopting Zoroastrianism as a mode of resistance to theocratic governance.

Today, at that place are roughly 190,000 Zoroastrians, mostly concentrated in Iran, Iraq, and India.

16. Traditional African Religions

Endless religious traditions inform the inhabitants of the African continent, each with its own distinct practices and beliefs based on region and ethnicity. Because Africa contains diverse people groups, and their religions remain deeply tied to geography and tribal lands, the continent's history is a tapestry of distinct spiritual traditions. Many share mutual threads, including the conventionalities in spirits, respect for the dead, and the importance of the intersection between humanity and nature. Also common: many of these religions rely on oral history and tradition, rather than scriptures. Though Christianity and Islam are today the dominant religious traditions in Africa, informal estimates place the number of adherents to Traditional African Religions at 100 one thousand thousand. The post-obit list — borrowed from Wikipedia — identifies some of the best known or most prominent of these religions:

  • Bushongo mythology (Congo)
  • Lugbara mythology (Congo)
  • Baluba mythology (Congo)
  • Mbuti mythology (Congo)
  • Akamba mythology (Kenya)
  • Lozi mythology (Zambia)
  • Tumbuka mythology (Malawi)
  • Zulu mythology (South Africa)
  • Dinka religion (South Sudan)
  • Hausa animism (Chad, Gabon)
  • Lotuko mythology (Southward Sudan)
  • Maasai mythology (Kenya, Tanzania, Ouebian)
  • Kalenjin faith(Kenya, Republic of uganda, Tanzania)
  • Dini Ya Msambwa (Bungoma, Trans Nzoia, Kenya)
  • San organized religion (South Africa)
  • Traditional healers of Southward Africa
  • Manjonjo Healers of Chitungwiza of Zimbabwe
  • Akan religion (Republic of ghana, Ivory Coast)
  • Dahomean organized religion (Benin, Togo)
  • Efik mythology (Nigeria, Cameroon)
  • Edo faith (Benin kingdom, Nigeria)
  • Hausa animism (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, Togo)
  • Odinani (Igbo people, Nigeria)
  • Serer religion (Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania)
  • Yoruba organized religion (Nigeria, Benin, Togo)
  • W African Vodun (Ghana, Benin, Togo, Nigeria)
  • Dogon religion (Mali)
  • Vodun (Republic of benin)

17. African Diaspora Religions

The European slave trade and the practices of colonization created what is known as the African diaspora. Here, individuals, families, and whole groups were displaced from the communities or tribes they chosen home on the African continent. The result was the proliferation of innumerable religious groups around the Caribbean area, Latin America and the southern Usa during the 16th through 18th centuries. Each had its ain linguistic, spiritual, and ritualistic customs, generally rooted in their respective histories and their new geographic surroundings. Often, like the traditional African religions they emerged from, these groups shared common threads regarding reverence for the spirits, veneration of the dead, and similar cosmos mythologies. Though too extensive to proper name, the following listing — borrowed from Wikipedia — identifies the nearly notable African diaspora religions:

  • Batuque
  • Candomblé
  • Dahomey mythology
  • Haitian mythology
  • Kumina
  • Macumba
  • Mami Wata
  • Obeah
  • Oyotunji
  • Palo
  • Ifa
  • Lucumi
  • Hudu
  • Quimbanda
  • Santería (Lukumi)
  • Umbanda
  • Vodou

18. Ethnic American Religions

Native American religions encompass the wide and diverse set of community, beliefs, and practices observed by the ethnic populations that thrived in the Americas before the inflow of European colonists. The diversity of customs and beliefs represented here is every bit diverse every bit the major population centers, tribes, and small nomadic bands that inhabited the Americas for millennia.

Theologies vary widely, representing a range of monotheistic, polytheistic, and animistic beliefs. Also highly variant are the oral histories, principles, and internal hierarchical structures of these unlike indigenous groups. Some religions emerged around established kingdoms and settlements — specially in the monarchical societies of pre-Latin America — whereas others emerged around tribes that moved within and between regions. Some mutual threads include the belief in spirits and a sense of connectivity with nature.

Though many individuals and families descended from these tribes do practice some of the customs of their ancestors, indigenous religious customs have befallen the same broader fate as the Native American peoples. The inflow of Europeans signaled the beginning of a cultural, spiritual, and actual genocide, one that wiped out tribes wholesale through violence, disease, and religious conversion. Some religions would disappear entirely. Other religions are still skilful past dwindling populations, many living on reservations.

Wikipedia identifies a few major native American religions:

  • Globe Lodge religion
  • Indian Shaker religon
  • Longhouse organized religion
  • Mexicayoti
  • Peyote religion
  • Waashat religion

This is by no means a complete listing. It is, by its intent, a concise look at major world religions. Truthfully, this subject defies brevity. Each faith or tradition represented hither, and the countless not represented here, offering worlds unto themselves, replete with scriptures, histories, leaders, events, codes of ethics, richly fatigued mythologies, and unwavering adherents. You lot could spend a lifetime studying each of these traditions. Of course, many people do!

But we hope this is a helpful place to start. And if we missed anything, permit us know. Hey, even if you've invented your ain religion, tell united states nigh it in the comments department. Lord knows, somebody had to come upward with the thought for each of these religions in the first place.

Of course, whatsoever you believe or don't, nosotros wish you good luck on your exams. We've got faith in yous!

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