Types of Religion

ANIMISM:

  • The spiritual or supernatural shape the physical world.

  • Animals, plants, mountains etc. contain spirits that positively or negatively affect humans, e.g natural disasters.

  • EXAMPLES:

    • Paganism, which according to the 2011 Census has about 53,000 followers in the UK, believes that the earth is named after a goddess and that there are different spirits associated with different seasons.

    • Animism states Mount Kinabalu was angry at the tourists when there was an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.0 that caused 18 reported fatalities and 137 climbers being stranded.

TOTEMISM:

  • When clans or tribes adopt a totem as their divine protector and provider.

  • May be an animal or plant, which may be believed to contain spirits, souls, demons or magic.

  • The stone or pole symbolises the divine and consequently becomes the centre of worship and veneration.

  • EXAMPLE:

    • Durkheim’s study of Australian Aboriginal Totemism attributes the development of religion to the emotional security attained through communal living.

    • His studies of these societies led to a conclusion that the animal or plant that each clan worshipped as a sacred power was in fact that society itself – therefore the clan are actually worshipping society itself; individuals are reminded that society is more important than the individual.

THEISTIC RELIGIONS:

  • Focus on belief in sacred, higher and controlling power: a god or gods.

  • This power is viewed as the source of moral codes of behaviour and is seen as worthy of great reverence.

  • Monotheistic religions believe in one divine power.

  • Polytheistic religions believe in a plurality of gods.

  • Not all religions are theistic – many make no reference to the supernatural, divine powers or gods.

  • Christianity, Islam, Judaism, some sects of Hinduism, and Sikhism are monotheistic.

  • Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism are polytheistic.

  • Buddhism is non-theistic.

PREVALENCE OF RELIGION IN THE WORLD:

  • Christianity = 33%

  • Islam = 21%

  • Non-religious = 16%

  • Hinduism = 14%

  • Buddhism = 6%

  • Primal Indigenous = 6%

  • Chinese Traditional = 6%

  • Sikhism = 0.36%

  • Judaism = 0.22%

  • Whilst the Enlightenment made way for a more scientific approach, the statistics suggest that there was only a very slight chance that it was the death of religion.