Home›Africa›Principal Tradition OfBrowse ByPrincipal Tradition OfThis page groups sacred regions by their formal rank within one specific faith. Wikipedia notes that Jerusalem "is the holiest city in Judaism and Christianity and the third-holiest city in Islam (behind Mecca and Medina in the Arabian Peninsula)." Browsing by principal-tradition-of lets a visitor find every region holding the same rank within its faith.FactsPrincipal Tradition OfSourcesComments (0)Reader Challenges (0)FactsDirectoryCategoryWell-attestedRegions 1Principal Tradition OfFilter Results8 entriesAdherents TodayAllEstimated at somewhere between about 1.1 million (roughly 3 percent of the Oromo population) and 5 million, depending on how broadly related subsets of the religion are counted; the range remains disputed among scholars of African religion. (1)Pew Research Center's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020 report estimates the global Jewish population at about 14.8 million as of 2020, the smallest of the major world religions measured, concentrated primarily in Israel and the United States. (1)Pew Research Center's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020 report puts the global Christian population at 2.3 billion as of 2020, about 28.8 percent of the world's population, up 122 million from 2010 even as its share of world population fell. (1)Pew Research Center's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020 report puts the global Muslim population at 2.0 billion as of 2020, about 26 percent of the world's population, up from 1.7 billion in 2010 and growing about twice as fast as the world's population as a whole over that decade. (1)Adherents Today MaximumAll5,000,000 (1)14,800,000 (1)2,000,000,000 (1)2,300,000,000 (1)Adherents Today MinimumAll1,095,000 (1)14,800,000 (1)2,000,000,000 (1)2,300,000,000 (1)Basis of the Membership FigureAllIndependent Survey (3)Scholarly or Demographic Estimate (2)Era of Modern RevivalAllFrom the early 1990s, when Irreecha returned as a mass public festival and Oromo institutions gained formal recognition in Ethiopia. (1)Establishment StatusAllDeclared Not Established (1)Varies by Province (2)Form of the ConfessionAllThe Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed are the two most widely shared credal statements across the branches of Christianity. (1)The shahada, the declaration that there is no god but God and Muhammad is His messenger, is Islam's central creed and the first of the five pillars. (1)FounderAllJesus of Nazareth; the movement was organised by his followers after his death (1)Muslims hold Islam to be the restoration of the primordial religion rather than a new founding (1)None in the historical sense (1)Not established. The ethnographic literature does not establish a founder figure for Bwiti the way it does for the Kongo prophetic churches; names associated with the spread of the Fang branches circulate at second and third hand and are entangled with initiation material that is not public. (1)The Prophet Muhammad (c. 570-632) (1)Tradition traces the covenant to Abraham and the Torah to Moses (1)How the Expectation Is EnforcedAllCodified Obligation With Consequences (1)Customary Norm (1)Marriage Position DetailAllQur'an 4:3 states: "And if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphan girls then marry (other) women of your choice, two or three, or four." Classical and contemporary Sunni and Shia jurisprudence alike reads this as permitting, not requiring, a man to be married to up to four wives at one time, on two conditions: material justice between the wives, in spending, clothing, and time, which Qur'an 4:129 immediately qualifies by noting that perfect justice in feeling, as opposed to material treatment, is not humanly possible and so is not what is required; and the financial capacity to support each wife. Monogamy remains the ordinary practice for most Muslims worldwide; the ruling recognizes polygynous marriage as licit rather than mandating it. (1)Membership Figure As OfAll2010-01-01 (2)2011-01-27 (1)2011-12-19 (1)2013-01-01 (1)2020-01-01 (3)Membership Over TimeAllBy 2020, the same Pew study found the global Christian population had risen by 122 million to 2.3 billion, even as its share of world population fell from 31 percent to 28.8 percent, as Sub-Saharan Africa overtook Europe as home to the largest share of the world's Christians. (1)By 2020, the same Pew study found the global Muslim population had grown 21 percent to 2.0 billion (26 percent of world population), growing twice as fast as the rest of the world's population over the decade, driven by Muslims having more children and a younger average age than members of any other major religion. (1)By Pew's 2020 "Jewish Americans in 2020" survey, that share had grown to 2.4 percent of US adults, an estimated 7.5 million people, a national self-identification measure rather than any single body's own membership rolls. (1)In its December 19, 2011 Global Christianity report, Pew Research Center estimated 2.18 billion Christians worldwide as of 2010, nearly a third of the estimated 6.9 billion global population, compiled from a country-by-country analysis of about 2,400 sources including censuses and nationally representative surveys. (1)In its January 27, 2011 report, Pew Research Center estimated about 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide as of 2010, 23.4 percent of the estimated 6.9 billion global population, compiled from roughly 1,500 sources across 232 countries and territories. (1)In Pew Research Center's 2013 "A Portrait of Jewish Americans" survey, 2.2 percent of US adults, an estimated 6.7 million people, identified as Jewish, according to Pew's 2020 follow-up report summarizing both waves. (1)Pew's June 2025 update to its global religion modeling revised its own 2010 Christian estimate down slightly to 2.1 billion (31 percent of world population), a mild revision of the 2011 report's 2.18 billion figure for the same year, both recorded here side by side rather than one replacing the other. (1)Pew's June 2025 update to its global religion modeling revised its own 2010 Muslim estimate upward to 1.7 billion (24 percent of world population), a modest revision of the 2011 report's 1.6 billion figure for the same year, both recorded here side by side rather than one replacing the other. (1)Observance NoteAllIrreecha, the thanksgiving festival held at water as the rains end, draws very large crowds at Hora Arsadi in Bishoftu and at other waters. (1)Origin AccountAllChristianity traces its origin to the life, teaching, crucifixion and, in the faith of its adherents, resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth in Roman Judea in the first century. (1)Islam traces its origin to the revelations received by the prophet Muhammad in Mecca and Medina in the early seventh century, collected as the Quran. (1)Jewish tradition traces its origin to God's covenant with Abraham and, most definitively, to the covenant given to Moses and the people of Israel at Sinai after the exodus from Egypt. (1)What the San communities of the southern Cape believed, in the period before their languages ended, is not known. (1)Origin PeriodAllCoalesced among the Fang and neighboring peoples of Gabon from the nineteenth century onward, as those communities built a new religious synthesis out of older initiation structures, colonial disruption and missionary Christianity; not founded at a single datable moment. (1)Indigenous west-central Africa; pre-colonial to present (1)Judaism proper takes shape after the Babylonian exile (1)No datable founding (1)No datable founding. Rock art in southern Africa spans many millennia, but whether the religion recorded from the 1870s is continuous with the tradition that produced that art is argued rather than established. (1)No datable founding. The name Waaqa has cognates across the Cushitic languages, including Somali Waaq and Rendille Wakh, which places the sky god long before the recorded Oromo movements of the sixteenth century. (1)The tradition is older than the Zulu kingdom of the early 19th century (1)Origin Period End YearAll400 BCE (1)50 (1)632 (1)Origin Period Start YearAll586 BCE (1)30 (1)610 (1)Place of OriginAllGabon, extending into Equatorial Guinea and southern Cameroon, strongest among the Fang, the Mitsogo and the Apindji. (1)KwaZulu-Natal, in southern Africa (1)Roman Judaea and Galilee, spreading through the eastern Mediterranean (1)Southern Africa: present-day Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and southern Angola. (1)The Hijaz, in western Arabia: Mecca and Medina (1)The Oromo-speaking regions of Ethiopia, extending into northern Kenya. (1)The southern Levant: the highlands of Israel and Judah (1)West-Central Africa (1)Position on MarriageAllMarriage may licitly be polygynous (1)Position on SexualityAllSame-sex orientation or practice is held to bar full membership or participation (1)The body holds no single settled position; the question is actively and openly contested within it (2)Position on UsuryAllInterest is permitted but bound by ethical constraints against exploiting the poor (1)Interest of any kind on a loan is forbidden (1)Practice StatusAllLiving, and practised in varied local forms (1)Partly restricted: some elements are closed to outsiders (3)Sexuality Position DetailAllChristianity is governed by no single worldwide teaching authority, and its major bodies read at every point on this question today. The Roman Catholic Church's Catechism of the Catholic Church holds that homosexual acts are contrary to natural law while insisting that persons with homosexual tendencies must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity, and reserves marriage to a man and a woman. The Russian Orthodox Church's Basis of the Social Concept, adopted at its Jubilee Bishops Council in August 2000, names homosexuality a sinful distortion of human nature and bars anyone who promotes it as a norm from work with children or youth or from military or reformatory positions, reaching beyond ordination. The United Methodist Church, one of the tradition's largest global bodies, ended its forty-year ban on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage at its 2024 General Conference. The Anglican Communion, in its own 2022 Lambeth Conference Call on Human Dignity, states that its forty-two member provinces hold differing convictions and pastoral practices on this question, some blessing same-sex unions and others continuing to hold that marriage is exclusively the lifelong union of a man and a woman. No statement speaks for Christianity as a whole. (1)Classical Islamic jurisprudence treats homosexual acts, generally termed liwat in the legal literature, as unlawful across all four Sunni schools, though the schools differ on the exact legal category and punishment. The Shafi'i, Hanbali and main Maliki position hold the punishment mirrors that for zina under the hadd category, a fixed penalty applied only under strict evidentiary conditions such as four eyewitnesses or a clear confession; the Maliki school's own harshest reading holds both parties subject to execution regardless of marital status; the Hanafi school instead leans toward a discretionary punishment, ta'zir, set by a judge rather than a fixed hadd penalty, on the reasoning that the specific evidentiary threshold hadd requires was not met by the available textual evidence. Across all four schools, the same-sex attraction itself is treated as distinct from the act and is not, on its own, held to be sinful; the legal rulings address conduct. (1)Judaism is governed by no single worldwide teaching authority, and its recognized movements read at every point on this question today. The Reform movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis authorized rabbis to officiate at same-sex ceremonies in 2000 and, in a 2014 responsum, held that a same-sex union may constitute Jewish marriage, kiddushin, in the full sense. The Reconstructionist and Humanistic movements likewise affirm same-sex marriage and ordain LGBTQ clergy. The Conservative movement's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards issued a combined responsum in 2006 that itself left the question unsettled, approving some liberalizing opinions on ordination and commitment ceremonies alongside others that retained the traditional prohibition, so both readings stand as valid within the movement. Orthodox Judaism, including its Modern Orthodox and Haredi streams, holds that the Torah forbids homosexual acts and sanctions only the marriage of a man and a woman, generally without denying a gay Jew ordinary synagogue membership. No statement speaks for Judaism as a whole. (1)Standard Rate ExpectedAllTen percent. (1)Two and a half percent. (1)Standing Giving ExpectationAllMa'aser kesafim, giving one tenth of income to charitable causes (tzedakah), is a widely practiced Jewish norm modeled on the Torah's agricultural tithes. Most halachic authorities today hold that it is not itself a biblical or rabbinic commandment but a minhag, a custom, though a small number of authorities have argued it carries binding force; the debate itself is long standing and unsettled rather than resolved in either direction. (1)Zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam, obliges a Muslim whose accumulated wealth exceeds a minimum threshold (nisab) to give 2.5 percent of that qualifying wealth annually. The Quran (9:60) names eight categories of recipients. In several Muslim-majority countries zakat is collected by the state itself rather than left to the individual, giving the obligation a legal as well as a religious force there; elsewhere it is a personal duty of conscience understood to be as central to Islamic practice as prayer and fasting. (1)Status TodayAllLiving tradition, practised today (7)Suppressed, then revived (1)Supreme BeingAllAllah, God, held to be one and without partner or equal. (1)Nzambi a Mpungu, the remote creator (1)Nzame, a creator figure from Fang cosmology, appearing within Bwiti's wider cosmology rather than as a separately worshipped deity outside it. (1)The God of Israel, understood as one, without partner or physical form, referred to in the Hebrew Bible by the name written as the tetragrammaton. (1)The triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one being in three persons. (1)Waaqa, the sky, addressed also as Waaqa Tokkicha, the one Waaqa, and as Waaqa Gurraacha, the black or dark Waaqa, a term of reverence rather than of colour. (1)TheologyAllAncestor-centred (3)Animist: persons and powers in land, water and living things (1)Duotheistic: a divine pair (1)Henotheistic: a supreme being above served lesser divinities (3)Monotheistic: one God (4)Transgression CategoryAllAkl mal al-yatim: consuming the wealth of an orphan. (1)Al-tawalli yawm al-zahf: fleeing from the battlefield. (1)Avon: iniquity, a sin arising from desire or moral failure, held more culpable than chet. (1)Chet: an unintentional sin, literally a missing of the mark, wrongdoing through error rather than intent. (1)Pesha: transgression, a willful rebellion against God, the most severe of the three, an intentional defiance rather than a lapse. (1)Qadhf: slandering chaste, believing women with unchastity. (1)Qatl al-nafs: killing a soul that Allah has forbidden, except by right. (1)Riba: consuming usury or interest. (1)Shirk: associating partners with Allah, the first and gravest of the Seven Destructive Sins (as-sab al-mubiqat). (1)Sihr: magic or sorcery. (1)Sin, understood as thought, word, deed or omission contrary to the will of God, ranging in Catholic moral theology from venial to mortal sin. (1)Usury Position DetailAllThe heter iska, literally a permit for a joint venture, restructures what would otherwise be an interest bearing loan between Jews into a shared business investment: the party supplying the capital and the party using it become partners sharing profit and loss rather than creditor and debtor, so any return the capital earns is a business profit, not loan interest, and the Torah's prohibition on taking interest from a fellow Jew (Exodus 22:24, Leviticus 25:36-37, Deuteronomy 23:19) is honestly not triggered rather than evaded on paper. The mechanism's formalization is credited to named medieval authorities, Rabbi Baruch ben Isaac's Sefer Ha-Terumah and Rabbi Yisrael Isserlin's Terumat Ha-Deshen among them, developed across the medieval period rather than at a single settled date. It remains in common use today, including for interest bearing accounts at banks under rabbinical supervision. (1)The Quran's treatment of riba came in stages rather than all at once. An early Meccan verse, Surah Al-Rum 30:39, contrasted interest unfavorably with charity as moral guidance, without yet imposing a legal ban. After the migration to Medina the tone sharpened: Surah Al-Nisa 4:161 rebukes an earlier community for taking interest despite being forbidden it, and Surah Al-Imran 3:130, revealed after the Battle of Uhud, specifically condemns compounding interest. The final and complete prohibition, covering interest of any kind, came in Surah Al-Baqarah 2:275-281, revealed near the end of the Prophet's life and describing persistence in the practice as tantamount to war against God and His messenger. This is why contemporary Islamic finance avoids interest bearing loans altogether, structuring transactions instead as profit and loss sharing partnerships or cost-plus sales. (1)BrowseCompareBwitiPrincipal Tradition Of1 entryChristianityPrincipal Tradition Of8 entriesIslamPrincipal Tradition Of7 entriesJudaismPrincipal Tradition Of1 entryKongo ReligionPrincipal Tradition Of1 entrySan ReligionPrincipal Tradition Of1 entryWaaqeffannaPrincipal Tradition Of1 entryZulu Traditional ReligionPrincipal Tradition Of1 entrySources1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category TreeComments (0)No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.Sign in to join the discussion.Reader Challenges (0)No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? 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