List of religions and spiritual traditions


While the word religion is difficult to define and understand, one standard model of religion that is used in religious studies courses defines it as
Many religions have their own narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to explain the origin of life or the universe. They tend to derive morality, ethics, religious laws, or a preferred lifestyle from their ideas about the cosmos and human nature. According to some estimates, there are roughly 4,200 religions, churches, denominations, religious bodies, faith groups, tribes, cultures, movements, or ultimate concerns.
The word religion is sometimes used interchangeably with the words "faith" or "belief system", but religion differs from private belief in that it has a public aspect. Most religions have organized behaviours, including clerical hierarchies, a definition of what constitutes adherence or membership, congregations of laity, regular meetings or services for the purposes of veneration of a deity or for prayer, holy places or religious texts. Certain religions also have a sacred language often used in liturgical services. The practice of a religion may also include sermons, commemoration of the activities of a God or gods, sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trance, rituals, liturgies, ceremonies, worship, initiations, funerals, marriages, meditation, invocation, mediumship, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture. Religious beliefs have also been used to explain parapsychological phenomena such as out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, and reincarnation, along with many other paranormal and supernatural experiences.
Some academics studying the subject have divided religions into three broad categories: world religions, a term which refers to transcultural, international faiths; Indigenous religions, which refers to smaller, culture-specific or nation-specific religious groups; and new religious movements, which refers to recently developed faiths. One modern academic theory of religion, social constructionism, says that religion is a modern concept that suggests all spiritual practice and worship follows a model similar to the Abrahamic religions as an orientation system that helps to interpret reality and define human beings, and thus believes that religion, as a concept, has been applied inappropriately to non-Western cultures that are not based upon such systems, or in which these systems are a substantially simpler construct.

Eastern religions

Eastern religions are the religions which originated in East, South and Southeast Asia encompassing a diverse range of eastern and spiritual traditions.

East Asian religions

World religions that originated in East Asia, also known as Taoic religions; namely Taoism and Confucianism and religions and traditions descended from them.

Chinese philosophy schools

Syncretic Taoism
The four world religions that originated in the Indian subcontinent, also known as Dharmic religions; namely Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism and religions and traditions descended from them.

Buddhism

Syncretic Hinduism
Sects such as the Nirankari, Ramraiya and Namdhari are not accepted within the Sikh Rehat Maryada as they believe in a current human guru.

Christianity

Early Christianity
Eastern Christianity
Western Christianity
Syncretic
Other
Khawarij
Shia Islam
Sufism
Sunni Islam
Syncretic
Other
Historical Judaism
Kabbalah
Non-Rabbinic Judaism
Rabbinic Judaism

Manichaeism

Religions that consist of the traditional customs and beliefs of particular ethnic groups, refined and expanded upon for thousands of years, and often lacking formal doctrine. Some adherents do not consider their ways "religion", preferring other cultural terms. Many indigenous religions incorporate forms of animism, totemism, and shamanism alongside nature, ancestor, and animal worship.

African

Traditional African

Religions that cannot be classed as either world religions or traditional folk religions, and are usually recent in their inception. Non-cargo cults are generally excluded from this list, see list of cults for groups considered cults.

Cargo cults

Ethnic neopaganism

Goddess religions

Black

Black Hebrew Israelites
Rastafari

Abrahamic-derived

Prehistoric religion

By demographics