Download Chapter 6: Religion Key Issue 1: Distribution of Religions

Chapter 6: Religion
Key Issue 1: Distribution of Religions
 Universalizing religions
 Ethnic religions
Geographers and Religion
 Geographers are not theologians so they stay focused on those elements of religion
that are geographically significant
 Geographers study spatial connections in religion:
 the distinctive place of origin
 the extent of diffusion
 the processes by which religions diffused
 Practices and beliefs that lead some to have more widespread distributions.
Universalizing Religions
A religion that attempts to be global, to appeal to all people, wherever they may be in the world, not
just to those of one culture or location
The Three Main Religions
 The three main universalizing religions are

Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism.
 Each is divided into branches, denominations, and sects.
 A branch is a large and fundamental division within a religion.
 A denomination is a division of a branch that unites a number of local congregations.
 A sect is a relatively small group that has broken away from an established denomination.
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Christianity and it’s Branches
 Christianity has about 2 billion adherents, far more than any other world religion, and has the
most widespread distribution
 Christianity has three major branches:
 Roman Catholic
 50%
 Protestant
 25%
 Eastern Orthodox
 10%
 Remaining
 15% consists of African, Asian, and Latin American Churches
Christian Branches in Europe
 Roman Catholic
- Dominant in SW and E
 Protestant
- Dominant in NW and N
 Eastern Orthodox
-Dominant in the East
The Eastern Orthodox Church
 More than 40 percent of all Eastern Orthodox Christians belong to the Russian Orthodox Church,
established in the sixteenth century.
 The Romanian church includes 20 percent of all Eastern Orthodox
Christians.
 The remaining 40 percent are included in 12 churches
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Christianity in the Western Hemisphere.
 The overwhelming percentage of people living in the Western Hemisphere—about 90 percent—
are Christian.
 Roman Catholics comprise 95 percent of Christians in Latin America, compared with 25 percent
in North America.
 Within North America, Roman Catholics are clustered in the southwestern and northeastern
United States and the Canadian province of Québec.
 The three largest Protestant denominations in the United States are Baptist, Methodist, and
Pentecostal.
Christian Branches in the U.S.
 The three largest Protestant denominations in the U.S. are Baptists, Methodist, and
Pentecostal, followed by Lutheran, Latter-Day saints, and churches of Christ.
 Members in some protestant churches varies by region:
- Baptists highly clustered in the SE
- Lutherans upper Midwest
- Latter-Day Saints in Utah
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Islam
 Islam, the religion of 1.2 billion people, is the predominant religion of the Middle East from
North Africa to Central Asia.
 However, half of the world’s Muslims live in four countries outside the Middle East: Indonesia,
Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India.
 The word Islam in Arabic means submission to the will of god, and it has a similar root to the
Arabic word for peace
 A follower of the religion of Islam is known as a Muslim, which in Arabic means one who
surrenders to God
 The Core of the Islam belief is represented by 5 pillars of faith:
 There is no god worthy of worship except the one God, the source of all creation, and
Muhammad is the messenger of God
 5 times daily, a Muslim prays, facing the city of Makkah (Mecca), as a direct link to God
 A Muslim gives generously to charity, as an act of purification and growth

A Muslim fasts during the month of Ramadan, as an act of self-purification
 If physically and financially able, a Muslim makes a pilgrimage to Makkah
Branches of Islam
 Islam is divided into two important branches:
 Sunni (from the Arabic word for orthodox)
 Shiite (from the Arabic word for sectarian, sometimes written Shia in English)
 Sunnis comprise 83 percent of Muslims and are the largest branch in most Muslim
countries.
 Sixteen percent of Muslims are Shiites, clustered in a handful of countries.
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Buddhism
 Buddhism, the third of the world’s major universalizing religions, has 350 million adherents,
especially in China and Southeast Asia.
 The foundation of Buddhism is represented by these concepts, known as the Four Noble Truths:
 All living beings must endure suffering
 Suffering, which is caused by a desire to live, leads to reincarnation (repeated rebirth in
new bodies or forms of life)
 The goal is to escape from suffering and rebirth into Nirvana, which is achieved through
mental and moral self-purification
 Nirvana is found through an eight fold path rightness of belief, resolve, speech, action,
livelihood, effort, thought, and meditation.
 Like the other two universalizing religions, Buddhism split into more than one branch, because
followers disagreed on interpreting statements by the founder Siddhartha Gautama.
 The three main branches are
 Mahayana. 56% found in China, Japan, and Korea
 Theravada. 38% found in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand
 Tantrayana. Remaining 6% found primarily in Tibet and Mongolia
 An accurate count of Buddhists is especially difficult, because only a few people
participate in Buddhist institutions.
 You can be part of the Buddhist faith as well as another Eastern religion, China
and Japan for example you may be Buddhist but at the same time in an ethnic
religion.
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Other Universalizing Religions
 Sikhism and Baha'i are the two universalizing religions other than Christianity, Islam, and
Buddhism with the largest numbers of adherents.
 Sikhism’s developed around 1500 AD in present-day Pakistan.
 An estimated 22 million followers
 All but 3 million Sikhs are clustered in the Punjab region of India
 Sikhism’s first Guru-religious teacher or enlightener, was Nanak
 God revealed himself to Nanak as the one supreme being, or creator
 Only god is perfect, but people have the capacity for continual improvement
and movement toward perfection by taking individual responsibility for their
deeds and actions on earth, such as heartfelt adoration, devotion, and
surrender to the one God.
 The most important ceremony was introduced by the tenth guru, Gobind Singh, is the
Amrit-baptism
 Gobind Singh was also the first to introduce the practice of men wearing the turbans on
their heads and never cutting their beards or their hair.
 Wearing a uniform gave Sikhs a disciplined outlook and a sense of unity of
purpose.
 The Baha’i religion is even more recent than Sikhism. (1844)
 An estimated 7 million followers
 It grew out of the Babi faith, which was founded in Shiraz, Iran
 From one of the disciplines came the underlying function of the faith, which is to
overcome the disunity of religions and establish a universal faith through abolition of
racial, class, and religious prejudices.
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