Why religion matters: religious literacy, culture and diversity

1.

WHY RELIGION MATTERS:
RELIGIOUS LITERACY,
CULTURE AND DIVERSITY

2.

One in three (32%) people worldwide identify
themselves as Christian. With approximately 2.2
billion individuals, this makes Christianity the
most numerous religion by population across
the globe.
Islam is the second largest religion in the
world according to population
affiliation. Approximately 25% of the world’s
population (around 1.7 billion individuals)
identify as Muslim.

3.

With around 225 million Muslims, Indonesia is home to the
greatest number of the world’`s Muslim population. Indonesia is
constitutionally a secular state, although one province operates a
form of Sharia (Islamic law), which you will learn more about
later this week. In 2010, 87% of the population of Indonesia
identified as Muslim, with registered minorities of Christians,
Hindus, Buddhists and Confucians.
The United States is home to the largest number of the
world’s Christians, with 250 million people identifying as
Christian. This accounts for about 70% of the population,
shared among a variety of Protestant denominations and
Catholicism. However, the religious landscape in the
United States is constantly changing and the number of
those with no religious affiliation is growing.

4.

Diversity in Christianity
Christianity, for example, seems to be practised in so many
ways that some people have raised the question of whether it is
one religion or many. Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy,
Coptic Christianity and Protestantism are probably the main
strands. Protestantism in particular is further divided into a
number of different traditions, including, for example,
Anglicans, Methodists and Presbyterians. Moreover, many
independent Pentecostalist churches have developed since the
early 20th century.

5.

Diversity in Islam
Sunni and Shia Muslims agree that there is only one God, that
the Qur’an is the final word of God, revealed through the
Prophet Muhammad (570–632 CE), the last in a series of
prophets, and that there will come a day of judgement when
humans will be punished or rewarded according to how far they
have followed God’s rules.

6.

Sufism, sometimes referred to as Islamic mysticism, may be
described as a process of personal transformation that brings a
person closer to God. Sufism can be found in both Sunni and
Shia traditions.
Sufis use various techniques to facilitate this process. Probably
the best-known is the whirling dance of the Mevlevi Sufi
brotherhood, associated with the thirteenth-century poet
Jalaluddin Rumi.

7.

‘Sharia’ is often translated as ‘Islamic law’, the
term Sharia refers to the path or way that leads
humanity towards salvation.
For example, regarding custody of children in
the case of divorce, in the Shafi’i school, when
a boy or girl reached seven years of age they
could choose which parent they wanted to live
with. According to the Hanifi school, by
contrast, a girl should stay with her mother until
puberty.

8.

Hare Krishna
In the 1960s some young Europeans began dressing in
traditional Indian clothing, singing and dancing the praises of
Krishna in public. These young people were some of the first
non-Indians to ‘covert’ to a Hindu tradition.
The converts to the Hare Krishna movement undertook
serious lifestyle changes. Initiates were required to take a
Sanskrit name and agree to spend about two hours each
day chanting. Many of their parents were scared that their
children had joined a ‘cult’ and not a legitimate religion.