World Religions

An overview and summary of many of the main religions of the world, including Christianity, Judaism, and Eastern religions.

This paper examines most of the world’s religions and discusses them in the following contexts: founder and history; gods; views on creation; views on death and the afterlife; and major holidays, festivals, and rites.
The religions discussed are Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism, Shinto, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Baha’ism, Hinduism, and Wicca.
“Like Christianity is to Judaism, Buddhism formed basically as an offshoot of Hinduism. The historical Buddha, known as Gautama Buddha, was a high caste Hindu named Siddhartha who underwent a period of fasting and meditation with monks. Afterwards, he rejected some of the main tenets of Hinduism and preached a Middle Path or Middle Way between worldliness and extreme asceticism. A group of followers helped to organize the Buddha’s teachings into a formal religion, much as the Christian apostles and later theologians codified Christianity. Therefore, Gautama Buddha was not so much the founder of the religion as its key prophet and figurehead.”