Writing about Atheism got me to thinking about other major belief systems and that I know many people can get easily lost trying to navigate the divisions and nuances of the world’s religions, not to mention their core sets of beliefs. I’ve had many conversations with people over the years who seek a better understanding and so I thought I might take a stab at summarizing some basics. For some of you, this may be old hat. For others it may answer some questions or solve some riddles that might have been floating around somewhere.

I expect this will take several parts and, even then, I’ll only be able to scratch the surface.

In our American culture, Christianity has largely dominated the scene for the past 400 years, although unlike many other cultures, we are quite pluralistic and have always been home to those practicing other faiths. This is not the case in many places. With the world getting smaller so to speak, and as our ability to be connected increases, our contact with the many belief systems out there similarly increases.

For starters, let’s get the simple data out of the way so we get some perspective. For this, I turn back to my trusted source, the Pew Research Center and their review of 2,500 of the most recent different censuses. They include accurate data covering almost 7 billion people in over 230 countries and territories. Here’s what it shows.

Christians   31.5%

Muslims   23.2%

Unaffiliated   16.3%

Hindus   15.0%

Buddhists   7.1%

Folk Religions   5.9% (African traditional, Chinese folk, Native American and Aboriginal religions)

Other Religions   .8% (Baha’i, Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Wicca, Zoroastrianism, etc)

Jews   .2%

Obviously, just under 78% of the world’s population is affiliated with the big four faith systems, leaving just over 20% as either unaffiliated or practicing a religion with relatively few adherents. Of that latter category, the Jews are the largest portion.

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Now, let’s include some terms that may be quite familiar but will help us organize how we can interpret these different sets of beliefs.

Theism

This is the general belief in a God or multiple gods. This is to be contrasted with Atheism, that denies such existence, something we looked at previously. Theism comes from the Greek, “theos,” meaning god.

Monotheism

When we add “mono” to theism, we of course get the belief that there is just one God. This is the belief by traditional Christians, Muslims and Jews that there is one transcendent, all powerful, creative God. Granted, Christians get in a little hot water over this because they see their monotheistic God as Trinitarian, meaning God is actually three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We’ll get to that later. The three great monotheistic religions share many common characteristics, although they have some glaring differences as most of us know and we’ll briefly cover.

Polytheism

Poly means many and this is the belief that there are multiple deities and even hierarchies of deities. Polytheism was the general practice of most cultures up through the Iron and Bronze ages and was the system by which the Greeks and Romans of Classical Antiquity practiced. It continued through the Dark Ages as the system of choice by Germanic and Slavic peoples and is currently most widely practiced by most Hindus, some traditional Chinese religions, and Shinto in Japan. There is some correspondence with Animistic beliefs, largely practiced by what can be called folk religions and with beliefs such as Wicca.

Pantheism

This one gets really complicated but some awareness of its meaning will be helpful to understand contemporary thinking. Pan comes from the Greek and means “all.” In a broad sense, pantheism is the belief that all reality is divine. There is no division. Pantheists do not believe in a distinct god or gods. While some versions of pantheism go back thousands of years, there have been some much more modern and western interpretations. Hinduism can also be seen somewhat as pantheistic, while also seen as both polytheistic and monotheistic by some of their believers. Hinduism is complex! Some variations of pantheism can also be seen in the Gnostics (the author Dan Brown is a big fan of Gnosticism). I came across two 18^th century definitions of pantheism by famous European philosophers and adherents. One is “All things in the world are one and one is in all things.” A second says pantheists believe “there is no other being but the whole universe.” In other words everything is divine. Trees, rocks, plants, air, us, you name it. It grew in influence in the west through the 19^th century and is reflected in the thinking of such notable people as Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. More recently the astronomer Carl Sagan has been regarded as a pantheist. And some will call nature worshippers pantheists although there are some differences. Finally, pantheism is also a pretty safe way of characterizing Taoism, Sikhism, Confucianism and some of Hinduism, as well as the traditional religions of Native Americans and Africans and what some will call New Age religions and spiritualism. How does all of that sound?

Deism

This set of beliefs was born during the Age of Enlightenment (c. 1685-1815) and became the belief of many prominent European and American thinkers, including some we would call our Founding Fathers. Deism is closely linked with rationalism and scientific reasoning. Its adherents believed in a creative god; however that being does not actually interfere with this world. In the classic description, he or it is the watchmaker who designs the watch, gets it going and then stands back and does not interfere with its workings. Deists do not believe in either revelation or miracles. They believe that reason gives us all we need. It’s probable that such notable early Americans as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and Thomas Paine were all deists. To those who regularly argue that this country was founded by Christians, I respectfully disagree. It’s quite a stretch to say that Deists were Christians. Of course, there were many prominent Christians around the time of our nation’s founding, but the early framers of such documents as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were heavily influenced by Deism.

Other

While there are other categories, when we look at the religious belief systems around the world today, we’ll be able to place most of them in one or more of those just described.

With one major exception. And that is Buddhism. Buddhism is non-theistic. There are no gods associated with it and it doe not fall into any of the above categories. We’ll see why when we get there.

Stay tuned.