World religions

World religions is a category used in the study of religion to demarcate at least five—and in some cases more—religions that are deemed to have been especially large, internationally widespread, or influential in the development of Western society. Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism are always included in the list. These are often juxtaposed against other categories, such as folk religions, Indigenous religions, and new religious movements (NRMs), which are also used by scholars in this field of research.

History of concept

• Cornelis Tiele proposed that religions develop in phases, from being nature religions, to becoming mythological religions, then doctrinal religions, and ultimately as world or universal religions. The last stage, qualitatively different in kind, aspiring to be accepted by all men, and based upon abstract principles and maxims. In these categories, Tiele in 1877 placed Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam as universal religions.

• By 'world religions,' we understand the five religions or religiously determined-systems of life-regulation which have known how to gather multitudes of confessors around them. The term is used here in a completely value-neutral sense. The Confucian, Hinduist, Buddhist, Christian, and Islamist religious ethics all belong to the category of world religion.
  • The Social Psychology of the World Religions by Max Weber, 1915

• Of Weber’s five “world religions,” four — Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Confucianism — are associated with major civilizations. The fifth, Buddhism, is not. Why is this the case? ... Overall, however, the virtual extinction of Buddhism in India and its adaptation and incorporation into existing cultures in China and Japan mean that Buddhism, although a major religion, has not been the basis of a major civilization.
  • The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington, 1996

Criticism

• A "world religion" is a tradition that has achieved sufficient power and numbers to enter our history to form it, interact with it, or thwart it. We recognise both the unity within and the diversity among the world religions because they correspond to important geopolitical entities with which we must deal. All 'primitives,' by way of contrast, may be lumped together, as may the 'minor religions,' because they do not confront our history in any direct fashion. From the point of view of power, they are invisible.
  • Scholar of religion J. Z. Smith, 1998

• While the World Religions paradigm was brought in to allow the inclusion of non-Christian religions in education, it has instead remodelled them according to liberal Western Protestant Christian values (akin to what the Church of England promotes), emphasizing theological categories.
  • Scholar of religion Suzanne Owen, 2011