Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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Status Today

This page groups religions by their current standing, from a thriving global faith to one with only a small surviving community. Wikipedia notes that the Mandaeans, for example, "are the last surviving Gnostics from antiquity," a status very different from a religion still actively converting new adherents. Browsing by status today lets a visitor tell a living, growing tradition apart from one that survives only as a small remnant.

Facts
Status
Standing as a Comparative Category
Contested: ethnoreligious is a comparative compound rather than a self-description, and the line between a religion and a people is one that neither these traditions nor their histories draw cleanly. 2
Overview
What Defines This Grouping
Monotheistic traditions in which religious identity and membership of a particular people are the same thing, so that the tradition is inherited rather than joined and does not seek converts. 2
Directory
Category
Religions 1
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Ethnoreligious monotheism

This group gathers an ethnoreligious monotheistic tradition, a monotheism bound closely to a particular people and their descent, so that religion and ethnic identity are deeply intertwined and membership is largely by birth.

The browser will find the tradition the atlas classes here. The entries describe it in its own terms, noting how the religion functions as the faith of a specific community rather than a universalising mission.

Status Today
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
John Bowker (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997s.v. YazidisView the Source
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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