Curated playlist
Polytheism
- TaoismPersecution in China helped turn Taoism into a world religion.
- Nation of IslamThe Nation of Islam began with a stranger preaching to African Americans in Detroit in July 1930. He gave his meetings three days a week, and they drew crowds of 7,000 to 8,000 people, most of them migrants from the American South. The man…
- PolytheismThe word polytheism was coined to win an argument against the Greeks. Philo of Alexandria built it from Greek roots.
- BuddhismBuddhism teaches that no permanent self or soul exists in anything. So what is reborn? Traditions disagree.
- HinduismThe word Hindu began as a foreign name drawn from a river. Hindus did not coin it themselves.
- MonolatryMonolatry means worshipping one god while accepting that other gods exist.
- Canaanite religionIn Canaanite myth, the death god Mot swallowed the storm god Baal. With Baal gone, drought overtook the earth.
- AnimismAnimism is the belief that rivers, rocks, animals, storms and even words carry a spirit of their own. Among many indigenous peoples, the idea is so basic to daily life that their languages have no word for animism. Often they have no word…
- Chinese folk religionYou do not convert to Chinese folk religion. You take part by belonging to a village, kinship group or temple.
- ConfucianismChina blamed Confucianism for its humiliation, yet a national Confucian Church was established there in 2015.
- MormonismMormonism is a name that the largest church bearing it has, since 2018, been pushing people to use less. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, based in Utah, wants distance from the label. Yet the word persists, because it…
- Aztec religionAztec priests once chose a young man to live as the god Tezcatlipoca for a year. He was then sacrificed.
- TengrismKalmyk troops carried a Tengrist war god's yellow banner into Paris. Tengrism is a sky-god faith of the steppes.
- ShintoIn Japanese, eight million kami means infinity, not a count. It is how Shinto says supernatural beings are everywhere.