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Chapter 6The Cultural Landscape:
Religion
KEY ISSUES
*WHERE ARE RELIGIONS DISTRIBUTED?
*WHY DO RELIGIONS HAVE DIFFERENT
DISTRIBUTIONS?
*WHY DO RELIGIONS ORGANIZE SPACE IN
DISTINCTIVE PATTERNS?
*WHY DO TERRITORIAL CONFLICTS ARISE AMONG
RELIGIOUS GROUPS?
Geographic study of religion: highlighting the tension
between scale, globalization, and local diversity
 People draw from their religion their core values and
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beliefs
Some religions are designed to appeal to people
throughout the world, whereas others appeal to people in
geographically limited areas
Religious values are important in understanding how
people identify themselves, as well as understanding how
they organize their landscapes
Most, but not all, religions require exclusive adherence
Like language, migrants take their religion with them,
and while they learn the language of the new
environment, they retain their religion
© 2011 Pearson Education, Inc.
KI 1- Where Are Religions Distributed?
 Geographers distinguish two types of religions:
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Universalizing religions: Seek to appeal to all people
Ethnic religions: Appeal to a smaller group of people living in one place
© 2011 Pearson Education, Inc.
KI1-Where Are Religions Distributed?
 Universalizing religions: Seek to appeal to all people
58% of the world’s population practices a universalizing religion
 Nearly 90% of the people living in the Western Hemisphere are
Christian
 5% belong to other religions
 6% belong to no religion

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Christianity
The largest world religion (about 2 billion adherents)
 Many adherents in Europe, the Americas
 Three major branches
 Roman Catholicism (51 percent)
 Protestant Christianity (24 percent)
 Orthodox or Eastern Orthodox (11 percent)

• Other, smaller branches of Christianity comprise 14 percent of all
Christians
Distribution of Christians in the
United States
Figure 6-2
KI1-Where Are Religions Distributed?
 Universalizing religions (continued)
 Islam

The second-largest world religion (about 1.3 billion adherents)
 Significant clusters in the Middle East, North Africa, and South
Asia
• Half the world’s Muslims live in 4 countries outside the middle east:
Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India

Two significant branches
 Sunnis (83 percent)
• The word Sunni comes from the Arabic for “people following the
example of Mohammad

Shias or Shiites (16 percent)
• The word Shiite comes from the Arabic word for “sectarian”

Core of Islamic belief = the five pillars
KI1-Where Are Religions Distributed?
 Universalizing religions (continued)
 Islam

Core of Islamic belief = the five pillars
 1. There is no god worthy of worship except the one God, the
source of all creation, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.
 2. Five times daily, a Muslim prays, facing the city of Makkah
(Mecca) as a direct link to God.
 3. A Muslim gives generously to charity as an act of purification
and growth.
 4. A Muslim fasts during the month of Ramadan as an act of selfpurification.
 5. If physically and financially able, a Muslim makes a pilgrimage
to Makkah.
KI1- Where Are Religions Distributed?
 Universalizing religions (continued)
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Buddhism
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About 400 million adherents (difficult to quantify)
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Three branches
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Significant clusters in China, Southeast Asia
Mahayana (China, Japan, Korea)
Theravada (Southeast Asia)
Tantrayana (Tibet, Mongolia)
The Four Noble Truths
 1. All living beings must endure suffering.
 2. Suffering, which caused by desire to live, leads to reincarnation
 3. The goal of all existence is to escape from suffering and the
endless cycle of reincarnation into Nirvana, which is achieved
through mental and moral self purification
 4. Nirvana is attained through an Eightfold Path, which includes
rightness of belief, resolve, speech, action, livelihood, effort,
thought, and meditation.
KI1- Where Are Religions Distributed?
 Ethnic religions: Appeal to a smaller group of people;
clustered distribution

Hinduism
The third-largest religion in the world (900 million adherents)
 97 percent of Hindus are found in India, the rest in Nepal
 Many paths to spirituality. You may chose which is best for you as
long as you stay in harmony with your true nature.
 Path of knowledge
 Path of renunciation
 Path of devotion
 Path of action
 Hinduism does not have a central authority or holy book
 There are no set rituals; you select those that fit you and your station
in life

KI1- Where Are Religions Distributed?
 Ethnic religions (continued)
 Other ethnic religions
Confucianism (China)
 Prescribed a series of ethical principles for the orderly conduct of
daily life, such as following tradition: emphasized public service
 Daoism (China)
 Following the mystical and spiritual aspects of life, Daoists seek the
“Way”, or Path.
 Daoists believe not everything is knowable.
 Shinto (Japan)
 Acknowledge the divine in everything, including rocks ,trees,
mountains and certain animals
 Became a political cult under the reign of the Emperor Meiji (18081912), when he declared himself divine
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KI1- Where Are Religions Distributed?
 Ethnic religions (continued)
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Other ethnic religions

Judaism (today: the United States, Israel)
• 1/3 of the population of Jews live in the U.S., 1/3 live in Israel, 1/3 the rest
of the world

The first monotheistic religion: belief in one all powerful God
• Migrated from present day Iraq, to Canaan, (present day Israel), 4,000
years ago
• Offered a sharp contrast to Polytheism, practiced by all the neighboring
people at the time of its inception
• Jews consider themselves “chosen” or set apart by God to live according to
his ethical and moral principles, “The Ten Commandments”
Two of the three main universalizing religions find their roots in
Judaism
 Ethnic African religions
 Animism (belief inanimate objects in nature have spirits)

• 12% of the people in Africa follow traditional ethnic religions
• Hard to classify due to a lack of written history or sacred texts
• Botswana is the one place in Africa where the majority of the population
adheres to animism today
Ethnic Religions
Judaism
Hinduism
Figure 6-5
Figure 6-4
Religions of the United States
KI 2- Why Do Religions Have Different Distributions?
 Origin of religions
 Universalizing: precise origins, tied to a specific founder
 Christianity
 Founder: Jesus and his teachings
• Roman Catholics accept the teachings of the Bible, as well as the interpretations of
those teachings by the church hierarchy, headed by the Pope in Rome
• Orthodoxy comprises the faith and practices of a collection of churches that arose in
the eastern part of the Roman Empire in the 5th Century
• Protestantism is generally thought to have begun when Martin Luther (a Roman
Catholic priest) ushered in the Reformation by nailing his 95 thesis or arguments to
the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral on Oct. 31, 1517, demanding Reformation within
the Church

Islam
 Prophet of Islam: Muhammad
 Two branches: Sunni and Shiite go back to the earliest days of the religion and reflect a
disagreement over the line of succession after the death of the prophet

Buddhism
 Founder: Siddhartha Gautama
 Theravada, the oldest of the two largest branches, believes they are closest to Buddha’s
original thinking
 Mahayana, the other large branch, believes they can help more people because their
approach is less demanding and more all encompassing
Why Do Religions Have Different Distributions?
 Origin of religions
 Ethnic: unclear or unknown origins, not tied to a specific founder

Hinduism
 No clear founder
 Earliest use of Hinduism = sixth century B.C.
• Referred to people living in what is now India

Archaeological evidence dating from 2500 B.C.
• Earliest surviving Hindu documents were written around 1500 B.C.E.
• Aryan tribes invaded India from 1400 B.C.E. and brought with them the
Indo European language and their religion
Why Do Religions Have Different Distributions?
 Diffusion of religions
 Universalizing religions:
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Christianity
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Diffuses via relocation and expansion diffusion
Hearth was Palestine- Missionaries carried the religion along the Roman Empire’s
protected sea routes and excellent roads
Islam
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The hearths where the 3 originated are based on key events in the lives of the three
key individuals
All three were founded in Asia
Followers transmitted the message to people living elsewhere, thus defusing them
across the globe
Diffuses to North Africa, South and Southeast Asia
Islam diffused through Muslim armies conquering countries throughout what is
now the Middle East
Buddhism
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Slow diffusion from the core
Emperor Asoka of the Magadham Empire became a Buddhist and helped and sent
missionaries into other parts of Asia spreading the religion
Diffusion of Universalizing Religions
Figure 6-6
Why Do Religions Have Different Distributions?
 Limited diffusion of ethnic religions

Universal religions usually compete with ethnic religions
Ethnic religions lack missionaries dedicated to converting people
Examples of mingling:
 Christianity with African ethnic religions
 Some African ethnic religions that honor ancestors have merged with
Christian religions creating thousands of hybrid religions
 Buddhism with Confucianism in China and with Shinto in Japan
 Japan has many people who claim both Shintoism and Buddhism. The
nation is unable to accurately identify the numbers: it could be 4 million or
100 million
Ethnic religions can diffuse with migration: adapting and adopting universal
religions
Judaism = exception
 Historically Judaism has been practiced in may locations because of the
Jewish Diaspora in A.D. 70
 Jews retained separate religious practices from the people they lived among
 Ghetto; City neighborhoods defined by law to be inhabited only by Jews.
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Why Do Religions Have Different Distributions?
 Holy places
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In universalizing religions
 Buddhist shrines
 8 places holy to Buddhists, they signify important events in Buddha’s life
 Holy places in Islam = associated with the life of Muhammad
 A pilgrimage, or hajj is expected of every healthy Muslim who can afford
it to visit the holy sites associated with the life of Muhammad
In ethnic religions
 Ethnic religions are highly clustered because they are tied to the physical
environment
 Holy places in Hinduism = closely tied to the physical geography of India
 Hindus believe they achieve purification by bathing in certain rivers in
India
 Cosmogony in ethnic religions
 Ethnic religions acknowledge the relationship between humans and
nature
 Distinct principles that center around the origins of the universe and the
laws that govern the universe
Why Do
Religions Have
Different
Distributions?
Holy places in India for
Hinduism
Figure 6-17
Why Do Religions Have Different Distributions?
 The calendar
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In ethnic religions = celebration of the seasons
 The Jewish calendar
 Judaism is classified in part as an ethnic religion because the major
holidays are based on events in the agricultural calendar of the Jewish
Homeland
 Agricultural holidays gained importance because they also coincided
with events of the Exodus out of Slavery in Egypt
 The solstice
 Many ethnic religions find importance in the Winter and Summer
Solstices
 Winter Solstice is the shortest time of daylight/Summer Solstice, when
the daylight is longest.
In universalizing religions = celebration of the founder’s life
 Holy days celebrate important events throughout the year
 Christian holy days have been incorporated into other, more ancient holy
festivals
Why Do Religions Organize Space in Distinctive Ways?
 Places of worship
 Many types: Christian
churches, Muslim
mosques, Hindu
temples, Buddhist and
Shinto pagodas, Bahá’í
houses of worship
Figure 6-19
Why Do Religions Organize Space in Distinctive Ways?
 Sacred space
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Disposing of the dead/honoring the dead
 Important cultural moment; thought to be the original reason for early
humans to settle in one place
 Burial
 Christians, Muslims, and Jews establish cemeteries
 Other ways of disposing of the dead
 Not all faiths bury their dead
• Hindus generally practice cremation
Religious settlements
 Buildings for worship and burial places are small-scale manifestations of
religion on the landscape
 In some cases the entire settlement reflects the religion of the people:
Mormonism is an example
Religious place names

Migrating Roman Catholics have left their imprint on the landscape by assigning sacred
names to settlements or toponyms
Religious Toponyms
Figure 6-21
Why Do Religions Organize Space in Distinctive Ways?
 Administration of space
 Hierarchical religions: have well defined geographical structures
and organize territory into local administrative units

Latter-day Saints
 Strong organizational structure:
• Wards (app. 750 pop., Wards combined into stakes (5,000 pop.)
Boundaries are redrawn with expanding populations

Roman Catholics:
 Area and population vary according to historical factors and
distribution of Roman Catholics across the Earth’s surface
• The Pope
• Archbishops: heads a province, reports to the Pope
• Bishop: administrates a diocese (geographic organization),
headquarters in the see, the largest city in the diocese
• Priest: heads a parish, or local church, reports to the Bishop
Why Do Religions Organize Space in Distinctive Ways?
 Administration of space (continued)
 Locally autonomous religions
Islam
 Has no religious hierarchy
 No formal territorial organization
 Mosque is for public ceremony
 Individuals accountable for their own observances (i.e. prayer)
 Protestant denominations
 Very in geographic structure from extremely autonomous, to
somewhat hierarchical
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• Somewhat hierarchical: Episcopalian, Lutheran, and most Methodist
• Extremely autonomous: Baptist, United Church of Christ
 Judaism and Hinduism have no centralized structure
Roman Catholic Hierarchy in the United States
Figure 6-22
Why Do Territorial Conflicts Arise?
 Religions versus government policies
 The 20th Century was a century of global conflict: Two World
Wars, and the Cold War between supporters of democracy and
communism
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Religion versus social change
Taliban and Western values
 Hinduism and social inequality
 Caste system
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Religion versus communism
Eastern Orthodoxy and Islam in the Soviet Union
 Buddhism in Southeast Asia
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Why Do Territorial Conflicts Arise?
 Religion versus religion
 Fundamentalism:
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Literal interpretation and strict and intense adherence to basic
principles of a religion, religious branch, denomination, or sect
Religious wars in Ireland
Northern Ireland: Protestant, closely aligned with the Church of
England
 Ireland: Independent nation, Catholic
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Religious wars in the Middle East
Crusades (Christians in Muslim lands)
 Jews and Muslims in Palestine

Distribution of Protestants in Ireland
Figure 6-23
Two Perspectives on Palestine/Israel
Figure 6-26
Israel’s “Separation Fence”
Figure 6-27
The End.
Up next: Ethnicity