Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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All Core Tenets

The claims a tradition treats as central, the propositions an adherent is expected to affirm rather than the customs they are expected to keep. This is the largest belief subcategory by a wide margin, reflecting how much of what a tradition holds is filed here by default when it does not fit a narrower belief type such as a dietary restriction or a moral precept.

Facts
Overview
What Defines This Grouping
The central affirmations of a tradition, stated one at a time. What counts as a core tenet is set by each tradition, and traditions differ over whether assent to stated propositions is what makes a member: creedal Christianity and Islam draw such lists explicitly, while Judaism, Hinduism and most Indigenous traditions do not. 2
Status
Standing as a Comparative Category
Used, but its validity as a comparative category is disputed 3
Directory
Category
Beliefs & Restrictions 1
Comparison
Primary Academic Discipline
Comparative Religion 4
Learn More
The core tenets

This group gathers the core tenets of the traditions, the central affirmations and defining beliefs that stand at the heart of a religion or worldview, the doctrines a tradition holds as essential to its identity. It is the largest belief grouping in the atlas.

The browser will find the core tenets the atlas gathers from across the traditions. The entries describe each belief in its own terms, distinguishing what a tradition affirms of itself from the historical and comparative perspective of scholarship.

All Core Tenets
Filter Results368 entries

A closed community forbidding conversion and intermarriage

Core Tenets

A Continuous Prayer Ministry Answers Requests Sent from Anywhere

Core Tenets

A Disciple May Hold No Other Sufi Affiliation

Core Tenets

A Divine Element Is Trapped in Matter and Wakes Through Knowledge

Core Tenets

A lay movement without a priesthood

Core Tenets

A male-only ordained ministry

Core Tenets

A married clergy and no monastic rule

Core Tenets

A Married Parish Priesthood With Celibate Bishops

Core Tenets

A Muslim Who Commits a Grave Sin Ceases to Be a Believer

Core Tenets

A person carries a ka, the vital force needing offerings after death, and a ba, the mobile aspect of self that can leave the tomb and move between the dead and the living.

Cosmological Beliefs

A Solitary Report Is Weighed Against the Established Principles of the Quran

Core Tenets

A Transmitted Report Outweighs Reasoning by Analogy

Core Tenets

Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani Is the Supreme Helper Among the Saints

Core Tenets

Adiaphora, things indifferent

Core Tenets

Advaita Vedanta (nondualism)

Cosmological Beliefs

Ahimsa in the extreme

Moral Precepts

Ahura Mazda as the one supreme creator

Core Tenets

Alcohol and intoxicants are forbidden

Prohibitions

Alcohol, tobacco, coffee and tea are forbidden

Prohibitions

All phenomena lack intrinsic nature (svabhava)

Cosmological Beliefs

Al-Masalih al-Mursala: Unstated Public Benefit Is a Ground for Ruling

Core Tenets

An Eastern Liturgical Rite in Full Communion With Rome

Core Tenets

An Expanded Biblical Canon Including Enoch and Jubilees

Core Tenets

Analogical Reasoning Is Not a Source of Law

Core Tenets

Anatta: no permanent self

Cosmological Beliefs

Ancestors continue to watch over and can bless or punish their living descendants

Cosmological Beliefs

Ancestral Sin as Inherited Mortality Rather Than Inherited Guilt

Core Tenets

Anekantavada (many-sidedness of truth)

Cosmological Beliefs

Antinomian transgression

Moral Precepts

Aql: Reason Stands Beside Quran, Sunna and Consensus as a Source of Law

Core Tenets

Arminianism (free will and universal atonement)

Core Tenets

Ascetic renunciation and celibate monasticism

Core Tenets

Atheistic Satanism (Satan as symbol of the self)

Core Tenets

Auspicia: Jupiter's Consent Read in the Birds

Core Tenets

Authority of the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence

Core Tenets

Autocephaly and Conciliar Governance Without a Universal Primate

Core Tenets

Baptism in the Holy Spirit

Core Tenets

Barakah: Blessing Flows Through the Saints and Their Tombs

Core Tenets

Belief May Not Be Concealed, Whatever the Danger

Core Tenets

Belief should be proportioned to the evidence

Moral Precepts

Believer's baptism (credobaptism)

Core Tenets

Beyond the great state gods, each person had a personal god, an ili, who watched over them individually and explained private suffering or fortune when appeased or neglected.

Core Tenets

Biblical inerrancy

Core Tenets

Bidah: Innovation in Religion Is to Be Rejected

Prohibitions

Bondye

Cosmological Beliefs

Both the Sanskrit Vedas and the Tamil Hymns of the Alvars Are Revelation

Core Tenets

Buddhahood in this very body (sokushin jobutsu)

Core Tenets

Buddha-nature in all beings

Core Tenets

Caste Hierarchy and Vedic Ritualism Are Rejected

Core Tenets

Celibacy required of all members

Moral Precepts

Cessation of the miraculous spiritual gifts

Core Tenets

Chalcedonian Christology (Two Natures in One Person)

Core Tenets

Christian pacifism (nonresistance)

Moral Precepts

Christian perfection (entire sanctification)

Core Tenets

Closed communion

Core Tenets

Community of goods

Moral Precepts

Complex marriage

Moral Precepts

Conditional immortality (annihilationism)

Cosmological Beliefs

Congregational Chanting of the Divine Names Is the Practice Appointed for This Age

Core Tenets

Congregational church governance

Core Tenets

Connexionalism

Core Tenets

Contemplative Prayer Worked Through the Faculties of Chochmah, Binah and Daat

Core Tenets

Continuation of the spiritual gifts (charismata)

Core Tenets

Continuing revelation through living prophets

Core Tenets

Daimoku: chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo

Core Tenets

Deed Before Creed: Conduct, Not Belief About God, Is the Ground of Religious Life

Moral Precepts

Dependent origination (pratitya-samutpada)

Cosmological Beliefs

Descended from Zoroastrians who migrated to India

Core Tenets

Devotion to a Rebbe and mystical joy

Core Tenets

Dharma: righteous duty

Moral Precepts

Dhikr Is Made Aloud in Assembly

Core Tenets

Dhikr Is Made Silently in the Heart

Core Tenets

Do not kill (First Precept)

Moral Precepts

Do not mix meat and dairy

Dietary Restrictions

Do Ut Des: I Give So That You May Give

Cosmological Beliefs

Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, as the highest teaching

Core Tenets

Ecumenical Councils Continue and Are Confirmed by the Pope

Core Tenets

Elijah Muhammad Is the Messenger of God

Core Tenets

Emptiness (sunyata)

Cosmological Beliefs

Episcopal church governance

Core Tenets

Esoteric and exoteric teaching as one

Core Tenets

Esoteric interpretation of scripture (batin)

Core Tenets

Eternal progression and exaltation

Cosmological Beliefs

Eternal security of the believer

Core Tenets

Every Believer Must Follow a Living Jurist in Matters of Law

Core Tenets

Exclusive worship of the Goddess

Core Tenets

Fasting from dawn to dusk in Ramadan

Moral Precepts

Fasting in Lent

Moral Precepts

Fate Binds Even the Gods

Cosmological Beliefs

Five Eternal Differences Divide God, Souls and Matter

Core Tenets

Foot washing as an ordinance

Moral Precepts

Formal debate as a means of realization

Core Tenets

Free inquiry must not be limited by dogma or authority

Moral Precepts

Genius and Juno: The Indwelling Spirit of a Person

Cosmological Beliefs

God Appeared in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad

Core Tenets

God created the world but does not intervene in it

Core Tenets

God Has No Eternal Attributes Distinct From His Essence

Core Tenets

God Is an Indwelling Principle of Good Rather Than a Being Apart from the World

Core Tenets

God Is Omnipresent and That Presence Is the Only Reality

Core Tenets

God's Attributes Are Affirmed as Revealed, Without Asking How

Core Tenets
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source
3. Belief, Language, and Experience
Rodney Needham, Basil Blackwell, 1972
4. Wikipedia: Comparative religion
WikipediaComparative religion, opening definition
Quote, Comparative religion, opening definition
Comparative religion is the branch of religious studies that systematically compares the doctrines, practices, themes and impacts (including migration) of the worlds religions.
View the Source
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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