Key Religious Terms and Concepts Glossary
Key Religious Terms and Concepts
Myth
Myth: A widely held but false belief or idea.
Ritual
Ritual: A religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.
Doctrine
Doctrine: A belief or set of beliefs held and taught by a church, political party, or other group.
Ethics
Ethics: Moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity.
Axis Mundi
Axis Mundi: The world center or the connection between Heaven and Earth.
Ghost Dance
Ghost Dance: A Native American religious movement of the late 19th century that sought to reunite the living with spirits of the dead, bring the spirits of the dead to fight on their behalf, make the white colonists leave, and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to Native American peoples throughout the region.
Vision Quest
Vision Quest: A rite of passage in some Native American cultures, typically involving a solitary journey into the wilderness to seek spiritual guidance and a vision.
High God
High God: A deity who is considered to be the supreme creator and ruler of the universe.
Yoruba
Yoruba: A large ethnic group in West Africa, primarily in Nigeria.
Orisha
Orisha: Any of several minor gods in the Yoruba religion.
Monism
Monism: The doctrine that only one supreme being exists.
Henotheism
Henotheism: Adherence to one particular god out of several, especially by a family, tribe, or other group.
Animism
Animism: The belief in a supernatural power that organizes and animates the material universe.
Syncretism
Syncretism: Exhibits blending of two or more religious belief systems into a new system, or the incorporation into a religious tradition of beliefs from unrelated traditions.
Mysticism
Mysticism: Belief based on union or communion with a deity or divine being.
Entheogen
Entheogen: A chemical substance, typically of plant origin, that is ingested to produce a nonordinary state of consciousness for religious or spiritual purposes.
Moksha and Rebirth
Moksha: The transcendent state attained as a result of being released from the cycle of rebirth: The process of being reincarnated or born again.
Karma
Karma: Destiny or fate, following as effect from cause.
Bhakti
Bhakti: Devotional worship directed to one supreme deity, usually Vishnu (especially in his incarnations as Rama and Krishna) or Shiva, by whose grace salvation may be attained by all regardless of sex, caste, or class. It is practiced by the majority of Hindus today.
Vedas
Vedas: The most ancient Hindu scriptures, written in early Sanskrit and containing hymns, philosophy, and guidance on ritual for the priests of Vedic religion. Believed to have been directly revealed to seers among the early Aryans in India and preserved by oral tradition, the four chief collections are the Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda, and Atharva Veda.
Samsara
Samsara: The cycle of death and rebirth to which life in the material world is bound.
Ahimsa
Ahimsa: The principle of nonviolence toward all living things.
Jina
Jina: A great teacher who has attained liberation from karma.
Tirthankaras
Tirthankaras: Is a savior and spiritual teacher of the dharma. The word tirthankara signifies the founder of a tirtha, which is a fordable passage across the sea of interminable births and deaths, the saṃsāra.
Four Noble Truths
Four Noble Truths: The four central beliefs containing the essence of Buddhist teaching.
Bodhisattva
Bodhisattva: A person who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so out of compassion to save suffering beings.
Theravada
Theravada: The more conservative of the two major traditions of Buddhism (the other being Mahayana) and a school of Hinayana Buddhism. It is practiced mainly in Sri Lanka, Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos.
Nanak
Nanak: Not seeking to create a new religion, he preached that spiritual liberation could be achieved through meditating on the name of God.
Gurdwara
Gurdwara: A Sikh place of worship.
Dao
Dao: Chinese tradition – living in harmony with the Tao.
Yinyang
Yinyang: Two principles, one negative, dark, and feminine (yin) and one positive, bright, and masculine (yang) whose interaction influences the destinies of creatures and things.
Ancestor Veneration
Ancestor Veneration: The custom of venerating deceased ancestors who are considered still a part of the family and whose spirits are believed to have the power to intervene in the affairs of the living.
Kami
Kami: A divine being in the Shinto religion.
Amaterasu
Amaterasu: Means “illuminate heaven.” She is the Sun Goddess and the most sacred of all Shinto deities.
Torii
Torii: The gateway of a Shinto shrine, with two uprights and two crosspieces.
Talmud
Talmud: The body of Jewish civil and ceremonial law and legend comprising the Mishnah and the Gemara. There are two versions of the Talmud: the Babylonian Talmud (which dates from the 5th century AD but includes earlier material) and the earlier Palestinian or Jerusalem Talmud.
Holocaust
Holocaust: A Jewish sacrificial offering that is burned completely on an altar.
Tanakh
Tanakh: Hebrew Bible.
Rabbi
Rabbi: A Jewish scholar or teacher, especially one who studies or teaches Jewish law.
Sacrament
Sacrament: A religious ceremony or act of the Christian Church that is regarded as an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual divine grace.
Eucharist
Eucharist: The Christian ceremony commemorating the Last Supper, in which bread and wine are consecrated and consumed.
Great Schism
Great Schism: The division or conflict in the Roman Catholic Church from 1378 to 1417, when there were rival popes at Avignon and Rome. Also called Schism of the West. The separation of the Eastern Church from the Western Church, traditionally dated 1054.
Trinity
Trinity: The Christian Godhead as one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Reformation
Reformation: A 16th-century movement for the reform of abuses in the Roman Catholic Church ending in the establishment of the Reformed and Protestant Churches.
Hajj
Hajj: The Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca that takes place in the last month of the year, and that all Muslims are expected to make at least once during their lifetime.
Kaaba
Kaaba: A cube-shaped building in Mecca, the most sacred Muslim pilgrim shrine, into which is built the black stone believed to have been given by Gabriel to Abraham. Muslims turn in its direction when praying.
Jihad
Jihad: A holy war undertaken as a sacred duty by Muslims.
Sunni
Sunni: Also called Sunnite. A member of one of the two great religious divisions of Islam, regarding the first four caliphs as legitimate successors of Muhammad and stressing the importance of Sunna as a basis for law.
Shia
Shia: One of the two main branches of Islam, followed especially in Iran, that rejects the first three Sunni caliphs and regards Ali, the fourth caliph, as Muhammad’s first true successor.