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Universalizing Religions
• attempt to appeal to people
throughout the world
• individual historical founder
• message diffused widely
• followers widely distributed (exception Buddhism)
• holidays based on events in founder’s life
Biggest examples Christianity, Islam,
and Buddhism (Buddhism not diffused widely)
Ethnic Religions:
· meaning to people in a particular place
· highly concentrated in place of origin
· followers highly clustered (seldom diffuses)
· holidays based on local climate and
agricultural calendar
· do not convert people
· unknown origin
Since 1492, religions have become dramatically dislocated from their sites of origin through conversion and emigration.
Why is Judaism considered an Ethnic Religion?
• Major holidays are based on events in the
agricultural calendar of the religion’s
homeland in present-day Israel
• 2 holiest days Rosh Hashanah and Yom
Kippur come in the autumn (hope for
crops being planted)
• Passover (date it begins every year)
derived from farmers making an offering
(barley) of the first fruits to God in the
spring
• Judaism uses a lunar calendar (29 days a
month) which gets out of step with agriculture
season so the Jewish calendar solves this by
adding an extra month seven out of every 19
yrs.
Judaism is an exception to ethnic religions in that more
Jews practice Judaism outside its place of origin and
Judaism is widely distributed.
Animism and folk
religions
Animism: certain
inanimate objects
possess spirits and
souls (ethnic)
These spirits live in
rocks and rivers,
mountain peaks,
heavenly bodies,
forests and swamps.
• Sub-Saharan African is the greatest surviving stronghold of animism both in terms of numbers of adherents and in percentage of total population.
• (esp. Mozambique and Madagascar)
Christmas around the world?
Animism and Death
Most animistic belief systems hold that the spirit survives physical death.
1. The spirit is believed to pass to an easier world of abundant game or ever-ripe crops,
2. while in other systems, the spirit remains on earth as a ghost.
• From the belief in the survival of the dead arose the practice of offering food, lighting fires, etc., at the grave, at first, maybe, as an act of friendship or of ancestor worship. The simple offering of food or shedding of blood at the grave develops into an elaborate system of sacrifice.
• But all is not finished with the passage of the soul to the land of the dead. The soul may return to avenge its death by helping to discover the murderer, or to wreak vengeance for itself. There is a widespread belief that those who die a violent death become malignant spirits and endanger the lives of those who come near the haunted spot.
• In Malay folklore, the woman who dies in childbirth becomes a pontianak, a vampire-like spirit who threatens the life of human beings.
• People resort to magical or religious means of repelling spiritual dangers from such malignant spirits.
• It is not surprising to find that many peoples respect and even worship animals often regarding them as relatives. It is clear that widespread respect was paid to animals as the abode of dead ancestors.
Shintoism is the Japanese animistic religion..
• Shinto is a religion in where actions and ritual, rather than
words, are of the utmost importance. Shinto is characterized
by the worship of nature, ancestors, polytheism, and
animism, with a strong focus on ritual purity, involving
honoring and celebrating the existence of Kami.
• Kami are defined in English as "spirit", "essence" or
"deities", that are associated with many understood formats;
in some cases being human like, some animistic, others
associated with more abstract "natural" forces in the world
(mountains, rivers, lightning, wind, waves, trees, rocks). It
may be best thought of as "sacred" elements and energies.
Kami and people are not separate, they exist within the
same world and share its interrelated complexity.
Chinese folk religion
comprises the religion
practiced in much of
China for thousands of
years, which included
ancestor worship and
drew heavily upon
concepts and beings
within Chinese
mythology. It is
estimated that there are
at least 394 million
adherents to Chinese
folk religion worldwide.
• Chinese folk religion retains
traces of some of its
ancestral belief systems,
which include the veneration
of (and communication
with) the sun, moon, earth,
the heaven, and various
stars, as well as
communication with
animals.
Chinese Beliefs: Buddhism,
Confucianism (ethnic), and
Daoism (ethnic), have fused
together
Religion in China has been characterized by
pluralism since the beginning of Chinese
history. Temples of many different religions
dot China's landscape
Hinduism is largest ethnic religion:
80% of the Indians or 900 million
people • Polytheistic
• Worship in Hinduism is most likely to take
place at home
Vishnu the preserver Brahma- the creator
Shiva
the destroyer Hindu Trinity
Some of the gods are androgynous and many
have incarnations (walk on earth for a time
period)
Hindus Believe:
• Reincarnation
after death you
are reborn as
another person
or organism
Bad luck is
from past
lives
Be nice for
good karma
• Karma -cause and effect
The things people do in this life
affects their next life
• Moksha: the ending of the suffering and
cycles of reincarnation
• Cows have good karma
• The Himalayas are the sacred snow-clad mountains,
on the summit of which are the heavens.
• The Ganges is the Holy River
Many of the sites that are sacred for
India's Hindus are located near rivers
Hindus visit sacred pilgrimage sites for a variety of reasons, including to seek a cure for sickness, wash away sins, or fulfill a promise to a deity.
Ghats: steps that lead down to the holy Ganges
to facilitate ritual bathing
Varanasi is one of the holiest places in Hinduism
Until only recently many Hindus considered it a
calamity to leave India and live with foreigners
A Hindu is born
into a caste
(Class),
determined by a
person’s job and
remains in it for
life
Outsiders:
• Untouchables are
below the caste
system and do the
jobs that no one else
will:
clean the streets,
toilets, or handle dead
animals or people
• Foreigners
Segregation by ancestry and occupation: Hindus
only marry & eat with people who belong to their
caste.
Buddhism
• a universalizing religion
• largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama,
commonly known as the Buddha.
• proper personal conduct and meditation are essential to
overcome desire, eliminate life's suffering, and escape to a
state of peace called Nirvana
• Not monotheistic
(does not worship more
than one god TQ)
Two major branches
of Buddhism are
recognized:
• Mahayanist
emphasize
Buddha’s
compassion TQ
• Mahayana is found
throughout East
Asia. TH= Thailand
M=Mainland China
• Theravadist emphasize Buddha’s wisdom
• Theravada has a widespread following in Sri
Lanka and Southeast Asia
While Buddhism remains concentrated within Asia, both branches are
now found throughout the world. Various sources put the number of
Buddhists in the world at between 230 million and 500 million
There are eight
holy sites
associated with
important
events in
Buddha’s life in
Northern India
and Nepal
Very few Buddhist in India today and it is not
globally distributed
Sikhism: A
universalizing
religion that
arose from an
attempt to unify
Hinduism and
Islam
Devout Sikhs have five symbols of their faith.
They are known as the five K’s
• Kesh (uncut hair) symbolizing obedience to God's will, (men wear turbans)
• Kangha (wooden comb) symbolizing cleanliness,
• Kachh (shorts, worn under other clothes) symbolizing goodness,
• Kara (steel bracelet, worn on the right wrist) symbolizing eternity
• Kirpan (sword) symbolizing strength.
• Some Sikhs want
self determination
in the Punjab
Amritsar, Punjab is their holiest city TQ