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

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Religion_distribution.png

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