Christianity can be taxonomically divided into six main groups: the Church of the East, Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Restorationism. Protestantism includes many groups which do not share any ecclesiastical governance and have widely diverging beliefs and practices.
Muslims , Christians and Jews do all worship the same complex God. Yet, in spite of this, all believe that their religion contains the full and final revelation of the same God. Here is the origin of their unity.
Unitarians believe in the moral authority but not necessarily the divinity of Jesus. Their theology is thus opposed to the trinitarian theology of other Christian denominations.
The three religions of Judaism , Christianity and Islam readily fit the definition of monotheism , which is to worship one god while denying the existence of other gods. But, the relationship of the three religions is closer than that: They claim to worship the same god.
The word Hindu is an exonym, and while Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world, many practitioners refer to their religion as Sanātana Dharma (Sanskrit: सनातन धर्म: “the Eternal Way “), which refers to the idea that its origins lie beyond human history, as revealed in the Hindu texts.
Some of the main themes that Jesus taught, which Christians later embraced, include: Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. Forgive others who have wronged you. Love your enemies. Ask God for forgiveness of your sins. Jesus is the Messiah and was given the authority to forgive others. Repentance of sins is essential.
Most of the religions and denominations point to one God . But many religions and denominations have evolved over the centuries and many are still forming to connect or have a relationship with one God .
Omnism is the recognition and respect of all religions or lack thereof; those who hold this belief are called omnists (or Omnists). Many omnists say that all religions contain truths, but that no one religion offers all that is truth.
The world’s primary religions fall into two categories: Abrahamic religions, such as Christianity , Judaism, and Islam ; and Indian religions, which include Hinduism , Buddhism , Sikhism, and others. Of the world’s major religions, Christianity is the largest, with more than two billion followers.
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that God is one person, Jehovah. Jesus was Jehovah’s first creation. Jesus is not God, nor part of the Godhead.
Catholics believe that Jesus is God incarnate, “true God and true man” (or both fully divine and fully human).
The bare percentage of people who profess belief in a god has never been a good way of defining religious commitment. Some people believe in a personal, intervening god as defined by a religious creed. Others believe in a deist god , a cosmic watchmaker who wound up the universe and then stepped back.
Adherents in 2020
Religion | Adherents | Percentage |
---|---|---|
Christianity | 2.382 billion | 31.11% |
Islam | 1.907 billion | 24.9% |
Secular/Nonreligious/ Agnostic / Atheist | 1.193 billion | 15.58% |
Hinduism | 1.161 billion | 15.16% |
The earliest Christians maintained that Jesus was a human being who was made God – a god – a divine being. Later they ended up saying that Jesus was born to the union of God and a mortal because the Holy Spirit came upon Mary and that’s how she conceived Jesus , so Jesus literally had God as his father.
Among other non-Christians, however, beliefs that there are places of eternal reward and punishment after death are not as widely held. Roughly half or fewer of Hindus, Buddhists and Jews believe in heaven . And roughly a third or less of Buddhists, Hindus, and Jews believe in the concept of hell.