Religion , as one of the primal features of human culture , is every bit as varied as humanity itself . While the smattering of major public religions are familiar to most people , it ’s fascinating to count how many religions there are in entire , both now and in the past times .
If you ’re asking , " How many organized religion are there ? " then you should know there is n’t a simple solvent . Some sourcesestimate that there are roughly 4,000 religions . Like so many tricky questions , attempting to do it can lead you to some very interesting place .
5 Major World Religions
When it comes to religion , there are five that worldwide bear out from the rest in terms of popularity and cultural influence . These wide recognized Earth organized religion play the bulk of religious people in the world .
1. Christianity (31%)
With approximately 31 pct of the humans ’s universe profess belief in Christianity , it ’s easily the creation ’s largest religious belief , with around 2.3 billion adherents .
Just one deterrent example of Christianity ’s enormous influence can be check the dates : Our current calendar system start with the class in which Jesus Christ , the central incarnated digit in the organized religion , is believed to have been born .
2. Islam (24%)
Islam , the disciple of which are promise Muslims , is the secondly - most democratic religion in the world , with around 1.8 billion followers ( approximately 24 per centum of the global population ) .
Because of high birth rates in the land where Islam is wide practiced , it ’s set to overtake Christianity and become the most democratic religion in the world within the next several decades .
3. Hinduism (15%)
Hindus symbolize about 15 percent of the domain ’s population , close to 1.1 billion people . Mostly concentrated in the Indian subcontinent , theHindu faithis exceptionally varied in full term of belief and ritual .
India is also believed to be the dwelling of the oldest spiritual beliefs in the world , with practices that may be onetime than recorded history .
4. Buddhism (6.9%)
There are about a one-half billion Buddhists in the world , which amounts to 6.9 % of the globe ’s population . Buddhismcomes from the precept of Siddhartha Gautama , who live in the 5th 100 B.C.E.
While it is most democratic in East Asia , it has spread to westerly countries in the last century or so , realize popularity among spiritually leaning people who were disillusion with Christianity .
5. Judaism (0.2%)
Judaism is much smaller than the other religions on this list , with around 13 million adherent , or about 0.2 percent of the planetary population .
Still , its influence is significant , due to the prominence of Jewish culture in Western Europe and the United States , as well as Israel , which is where around 40 pct of the world ’s Jewish population lives .
It also has deep connector to Christianity and other Abrahamic faith , which is a source of both affinity and tension .
3 Major Types of Religious Groups
Another good way to make sense of human beings religions is to assort them into group , since even the major religions have things in usual — such as their sacred text , certain spiritual tradition , holy sites and rituals . This also allows us to get a sense of how each spiritual group has evolved over the years .
1. Abrahamic Religions
This grouping of religions is name for the patriarch Abraham , a flesh believed to have establish a covenant with God . Christianity , Islam and Judaism all share in this prophetic custom , despite various divergence that have emerge in the century since .
All of these religions develop in the Middle East , which means that they partake lots of holy sites as well , which has regrettably led to farsighted chronicle of religious fierceness . There are also various branch of these faith , such as the Mormon , Baha’i , Druze and Rastafarian faiths .
2. Indian Religions
This class refers to religions that are use on , and can exact their origin on , the Native American subcontinent . Hinduism is the heavy , but Buddhism can also be categorized as an Native American religious belief , turn over that Siddhartha Gautama was an Indian prince .
These are sometimes referred to as the " Dharmic religions , " as they share in the idea ofdharma , a set of duties and metaphysical principles . More ecological niche religions in this group are Jainism and Sikhism .
3. East Asian Religions
Confucianism , Taoism , Shinto and various folk religion can be group together as East Asian religion . They halt in common the idea of the Tao ( pronounced " dao " ) , which stand for the " way " or the " route . "
Various aspect of this religious and philosophic opinion system of rules have merged with endemic faiths in differentEast Asian cultures , producing a wide variety of ideas and practices .
Other Types of Religions
There are still a spate of religious people in the world who do n’t stick by to any of the antecedently list category . These are more difficult to name , since there are so many of them , and while they might share some similar characteristic , they also deviate greatly between regions and culture .
1. Folk Religions
unremarkably , these are commingle together as one of the major spiritual chemical group , even though there is a gross ton of mixture between these traditional religions . unremarkably , these folk faith involve ancient practices that are bound to a very specific civilization , although they share certain characteristics , such as root worship and animism .
There are several spiritual grouping that can fall down under the aim of folks organized religion ; take together , they stand for aboriginal American religions , African traditional religion , Australian Aboriginal religions and Taiwanese folk religions .
Given the sheer diverseness of unlike Indigenous masses around the mankind , we ’re talk about 1000 of unlike organized religion . Altogether this make up around 5.7 percent of the existence population , or over 450 million the great unwashed .
2. Unaffiliated
This is another class that contains masses , especially when it ’s ranked alongside the major faith listed above . It exists to draw people who profess spiritual beliefs , but for one reason or another do n’t have follow any picky religion .
These folks , who miss a spiritual affiliation , make up 16 percent of the universe , or 1.3 billion people .
Studying the World’s Religions
Despite the rise of scientific materialism , there ’s small grounds that religion is going anywhere ; today , the vast majority of people still moderate some form of spiritual opinion . This is one ground why spiritual freedom is such a wide recognized aspiration of modern societies .
There ’s a circle to memorize from mass ’s impression — today and yesterday — and the study of religions and religious beliefs continues to be a major internet site of research .
Thedatafor this clause fall from thePew Research Center , which bear a series of surveys ( the most late was in 2015 ) that break down the types of organized religion and spiritual groups . This make us a solid overview , but there ’s plenty more to be learn , peculiarly about the details of folk religion and major religion alike .
There ’s also the fact thatreligions are initiate upall the fourth dimension ; plenty do n’t make it very far , but every now and then , a comparatively recent organized religion — such as the Latter Day Saints motion , of which the Mormons are part — becomes pop and prominent .
