This page groups religions by the rough size of their following, from faiths with a handful of adherents to the few traditions that dominate world population. Wikipedia notes that the four largest religious groups, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, together "account for 5.8 billion people and 73% of the population." Browsing by size lets a visitor see how a small or newer movement compares in scale to a religion counted in the billions.
Facts
Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryContested: whether this is a religion, a philosophy or an ethical system is a question the Western category itself produced, and the field has not settled it. The atlas classes it as religious because that is how it has been practised. 2 Overview
What Defines This GroupingChinese traditions centred on right conduct, social order and the correct performance of rites rather than on doctrine about gods, which nonetheless acquired temples, a canon, a calendar of observance and a religious life of their own. 2 Origins
Whose Classification This IsConfucianism is a European coinage, formed in Jesuit Latin from Kong Fuzi. Chinese usage names the ru, the classicists, and has no single word for the ism the Western term supposes. 3 Learn More
Chinese Ethical-Religious Tradition
This group holds a Chinese tradition classed as ethical-religious, a tradition rooted in the Chinese cultural world that functions at once as a system of ethics and social order and as a religion with rites and reverence. Confucianism is the paradigm case, oriented to moral cultivation, ritual propriety and the ancestors.
The browser will find the tradition the atlas classes here. The entries describe it in its own terms, noting the long scholarly debate over whether it is best called a religion, a philosophy, or both at once.
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. ConfucianismView the Source 3. The Five "Confucian" Classics
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.