Home›The Americas and the Caribbean›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 TodayAllPew 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 Hindu population at nearly 1.2 billion as of 2020, up 126 million from 2010, with about 99 percent of the world's Hindus living in the Asia-Pacific region and roughly 95 percent in India alone. (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)The 2021 census of England and Wales recorded six thousand people identifying their religion as Rastafari, a narrow national figure. The movement's heartland following in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean, and its diaspora elsewhere, is not captured by any comparable census, and estimates of the global total commonly run into the hundreds of thousands. (1)Adherents Today MaximumAll6000 (1)1,200,000,000 (1)2,000,000,000 (1)2,300,000,000 (1)Adherents Today MinimumAll6000 (1)1,200,000,000 (1)2,000,000,000 (1)2,300,000,000 (1)Ban or Official WatchlistAllJamaica: founder Leonard Howell convicted of sedition 1934; the Pinnacle commune raided and demolished by police, 1954 (1)Basis of the Membership FigureAllChurch-Reported Rolls (1)Independent Survey (4)National Census (1)Scholarly or Demographic Estimate (4)Current StatusAllRastafari continues today as a living movement, most visibly associated worldwide with reggae music and with the continuing use of ganja as a sacrament by many adherents. (1)Traditional Maya religious practice continues today, often blended with Catholicism, in living communities across the Maya region. (1)Era of DeclineAllAztec public religion was suppressed following the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlan, with temples destroyed and conversion to Christianity enforced through the sixteenth century. (1)Organised state worship of Inti declined rapidly after the Spanish conquest of the 1530s, though elements of Andean religious practice persisted alongside and blended with Catholic observance. (1)Era of Decline End YearAll1572 (1)1600 (1)Era of Decline Start YearAll1521 (1)1533 (1)Establishment StatusAllVaries by Province (3)Form of the ConfessionAllHinduism has no single creed and no central authority to issue one. Adherence centers on orthopraxy, correct ritual and social practice, rather than a shared confession, and schools agreeing on almost no metaphysical claim, including atheistic Samkhya and materialist Charvaka, are still counted within the tradition. A formula such as the Gayatri Mantra marks a school, not the whole of Hinduism. (1)The 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 single; Leonard Howell was among the first Kingston preachers, from 1933 (1)None; Hinduism has no founder and no founding event (1)The Prophet Muhammad (c. 570-632) (1)How the Expectation Is EnforcedAllCodified Obligation With Consequences (1)Customary Norm (2)Legal StatusAllJamaica's Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act, 2015, passed in February 2015 and in force from 15 April 2015, decriminalised possession of small amounts of cannabis and separately provided that adherents of the Rastafarian faith aged 18 or older, or Rastafarian organisations, may apply for authorisation to cultivate ganja for use as a sacrament at locations registered as places of Rastafarian worship; Jamaica is widely described as the first country to explicitly legislate for the religious use of cannabis, though the Rastafari community has reported continued inconsistent enforcement despite the law. (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 (4)2011-01-01 (1)2011-01-27 (1)2011-12-19 (1)2012-01-01 (1)2012-12-18 (1)2017-01-01 (1)2020-01-01 (3)2021-05-12 (1)Membership Over TimeAllA 2017 government survey, relayed in the U.S. State Department's 2020 religious freedom report, found 3 percent of Haiti's population formally identifies as Vodou, a self-identification figure that undercounts actual practice, since many practitioners identify primarily as Catholic or Protestant while also practicing Vodou. (1)Barbados's 2010 national census recorded Rastafarians at 1.0 percent of the population, against 75.6 percent Christian, an actual census count for a second Caribbean state independent of Jamaica's own figure. (1)By 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 Hindu population had grown 12 percent to nearly 1.2 billion, remaining stable as a share of world population since non-Hindus grew at about the same rate; 99 percent of Hindus worldwide live in the Asia-Pacific region and about 95 percent in India alone. (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)Ennis B. Edmonds's 2012 Oxford academic overview estimates that 700,000 to 1 million people worldwide have embraced Rastafari, a scholarly extrapolation rather than a census count, since no country outside Jamaica and a handful of other Caribbean states asks about Rastafari on its census at all. (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 December 2012 Global Religious Landscape study, Pew Research Center estimated about 1 billion Hindus worldwide as of 2010, 15 percent of the global population, while noting a lack of census or survey data on Hindu subgroups in most countries. (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)Jamaica's 2011 Population and Housing Census counted 29,026 people identifying as Rastafari, about 1 percent of the island's population, an actual census count rather than an extrapolation, with the strongest parish followings in St Andrew (7,630) and St Catherine (4,557). (1)Pew's June 2025 update put its own 2010 Hindu estimate at a little under 1.1 billion, close to but modestly higher than the 2012 report's figure for the same year, a mild revision rather than the sharp divergence seen in the same pair of studies' Buddhist figures. (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)Representatives of the National Confederation of Haitian Vodou (KNVA), the practitioner community's own leadership, estimate that more than half of Haiti's population practices Vodou, generally alongside Catholicism or Protestantism rather than as an exclusive identification, a gap the same report attributes in part to social stigma against openly identifying as Vodou. (1)Origin AccountAllAztec, or Mexica, religion developed within the broader Mesoamerican religious tradition and reached its best documented form in the Triple Alliance centred on Tenochtitlan before the Spanish conquest of 1519 to 1521. (1)Christianity 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)Hinduism has no single founder or founding event; scholars trace its roots to the blending of Vedic religion, brought by Indo-Aryan migration, with indigenous religious traditions of the Indian subcontinent over more than a millennium. (1)Inca religion frequently traced the ruling line to founding ancestors said to have emerged from the earth or from Lake Titicaca, most famously Manco Capac at Cusco. (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)Maya religion developed across Mesoamerica over more than two thousand years among Maya speaking peoples, with no single historical founder, and is documented through inscriptions, painted ceramics and surviving books such as the Popol Vuh. (1)The movement drew heavily on the Pan Africanist teaching of Marcus Garvey and on readings of biblical prophecy that early adherents understood as pointing to Ethiopia and to the coronation of Haile Selassie. (1)Origin PeriodAllNo founding event (1)Origin Period End YearAll1000 BCE (1)500 BCE (1)50 (1)632 (1)1428 (1)1438 (1)1800 (1)1935 (1)Origin Period Start YearAll2000 BCE (1)1500 BCE (1)30 (1)610 (1)1325 (1)1400 (1)1700 (1)1930 (1)Place of OriginAllJamaica (1)Roman Judaea and Galilee, spreading through the eastern Mediterranean (1)Saint-Domingue, now Haiti (1)The Andes, centred on Cusco (1)The Hijaz, in western Arabia: Mecca and Medina (1)The Indian subcontinent, chiefly the Indo-Gangetic plain (1)The Maya lowlands and highlands of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras (1)The Valley of Mexico, centred on Tenochtitlan (1)Position on MarriageAllMarriage may licitly be polygynous (1)Position on SexualityAllSame-sex orientation or practice is held to bar full membership or participation (2)The body holds no single settled position; the question is actively and openly contested within it (1)Position on UsuryAllInterest of any kind on a loan is forbidden (1)Practice StatusAllDiscontinued as a state religion (2)Living, and practised in varied local forms (3)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)Rastafari theology grounds its opposition to homosexuality in scripture read through the movement's own lens: Leviticus 18:22 is taken as proof of divine condemnation, and homosexuality is held to belong to Babylon, the corrupt modern order, rather than to Zion, the righteous homeland Rastafari look toward. Among the Bobo Shanti Mansion specifically, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is read as God's own judgment on a society that tolerated it. Rastafari has no central teaching authority and considerable diversity exists among individual practitioners and Mansions, but journalism drawing on independent reporting and Jamaican LGBT advocacy organizations documents this reading as widespread rather than an isolated view, tied in Jamaican public life to hostility expressed through dancehall and reggae culture more broadly. (1)Standard Rate ExpectedAllTwo and a half percent. (1)Standing Giving ExpectationAllDana, giving, is not a single uniform rule in Hindu tradition but a textual category examined at length across dharmashastra literature. Maria Heim's academic study Theories of the Gift in South Asia traces how thinkers writing across roughly 1100 to 1300 CE debated whether a gift is fully voluntary or carries an obligatory dimension, a live question precisely because the dharmashastra sources themselves classify gifts along a spectrum running from daily, expected household giving to occasional, circumstance-bound giving and freely chosen giving, without resolving which end of that spectrum binds an ordinary householder. Dakshina, the gift or fee traditionally owed an officiating priest at the close of a ritual, sits at the more expected end of the same spectrum: its Vedic root, traced to a fee due the priest, originally a cow, makes it read as more customary and completion-bound than a purely charitable dana, though its scale is set by custom and the giver's own means rather than by any stated rate. Hinduism has no single hierarchical body, no synod and no magisterium, that could codify either dana or dakshina into a binding rule with a stated percentage or a stated penalty for falling short; what the textual and scholarly record shows is a customary norm of long standing, carried by tradition and ritual expectation rather than by institutional enforcement. (1)Rastafari has no professional priesthood and no central authority positioned to set a shared financial obligation on its adherents; the movement holds that no mediator stands between the worshipper and Jah, so no clergy exists in a role that a tithe would exist to support. Rastafari itself is decentralized and organized on a largely sectarian basis into separate mansions, chiefly the Nyahbinghi, the Bobo Ashanti and the Twelve Tribes of Israel, each with its own local practice, and no giving requirement shared across the movement as a whole is documented in the available sources. Giving at gatherings, groundings and reasoning sessions is a matter of local, voluntary contribution rather than a codified duty. (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 TodayAllHistorical; not practised continuously (2)Living tradition, practised today (6)Supreme BeingAllAllah, God, held to be one and without partner or equal. (1)Hindu theology ranges from devotion to a single supreme deity, most often Vishnu or Shiva depending on the tradition, to a broader vision in which many deities are held to be manifestations of a single underlying reality, Brahman. (1)Inca religion held Inti, the sun, as the principal state god and divine ancestor of the ruling Inca line, though the creator god Viracocha was regarded by some accounts as more fundamental still. (1)The triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one being in three persons. (1)TheologyAllAncestor-centred (1)Henotheistic: a supreme being above served lesser divinities (1)Monistic: one ultimate reality behind all appearance (1)Monotheistic: one God (3)Panentheistic: the divine both within the world and beyond it (1)Polytheistic: many gods (4)Transgression CategoryAllAdharma, action contrary to one's dharma or to cosmic and moral order, is the broad Hindu category of wrongdoing. (1)Akl mal al-yatim: consuming the wealth of an orphan. (1)Al-tawalli yawm al-zahf: fleeing from the battlefield. (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 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)BrowseCompareAztec ReligionPrincipal Tradition Of1 entryChristianityPrincipal Tradition Of2 entriesHaitian VodouPrincipal Tradition Of1 entryHinduismPrincipal Tradition Of2 entriesInca ReligionPrincipal Tradition Of1 entryIslamPrincipal Tradition Of3 entriesMaya ReligionPrincipal Tradition Of2 entriesRastafariPrincipal 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? Open the first one.Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.