Ethnic Religions

Ethnic religions are associated with a particular ethnic group and are regarded as the defining component of its culture, language, and customs. The group and its beliefs are inextricably linked. Typically, these beliefs only pertain to and are practiced by the members of a particular ethnicity. A trait common among ethnic religions is that they are exclusive to members born into the group. These closed systems are the opposite of universal religions which are open to all and actively pursue and accept converts.This webpage describes 156 of potentially thousands of world ethnic religions. If you grow weary of scrolling, you can access them individually through a dropdown menu on the homepage.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of these parochial religions. To lump them together in a single category, Ethnic Religion, only indicates the quantity of human beings that adhere to this smorgasbord of faiths. Qualitatively, they are incredibly diverse and, to those on the outside looking in, frequently mysterious and unfathomable. Membership is a birthright, and not a conscious and voluntary choice. Below are brief descriptions of many of these ethnic religions. An estimated 300 million adherents places this category near the top of the 21 super-catagories of major world religions located on the homepage. Were they catagorized separately, they might rank so far down in any list they might be overlooked or ignored, Considered individually, their adherants would represent an infinitesimally small fraction of total world population. A few more populated belief systems are included in this umbrella grouping, some which are described in seperate pages of this website (Judaism and Rastafarianism, for example). Every major world religion had its origin in the context of a particular ethnic group, so every world religion is an ethnic religion. Many of the religions described are no longer practiced because the cultures they arose from or pertain to no longer exist. Nevertheless, these extinct belief systems are of great historical interest. However isolated in time or space an ethnic religion may be, or may have been, it typically influences neighboring ethnic beleif systems.