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Evangelicalism, also called evangelical Christianity, or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide trans-denominational movement within Protestant Christianity that maintains the belief that the essence of the Gospel consists of the doctrine of salvation by grace alone, solely through faith in Jesus' atonement. Evangelicals believe in the centrality of the conversion or "born again" experience in receiving salvation, in the authority of the Bible as God's revelation to humanity, and in spreading the Christian message. The movement has long had a presence in the Anglosphere before spreading further afield in the 19th, 20th and early 21st centuries.
Religion is a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements; however, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion.
Comparative religion is the branch of the study of religions concerned with the systematic comparison of the doctrines and practices, themes and impacts of the world's religions. In general the comparative study of religion yields a deeper understanding of the fundamental philosophical concerns of religion such as ethics, metaphysics and the nature and forms of salvation. It also considers and compares the origins and similarities shared between the various religions of the world. Studying such material facilitates a broadened and more sophisticated understanding of human beliefs and practices regarding the sacred, numinous, spiritual and divine.
The world's principal religions and spiritual traditions may be classified into a small number of major groups, though this is not a uniform practice. This theory began in the 18th century with the goal of recognizing the relative levels of civility in different societies, but this practice has since fallen into disrepute in many contemporary cultures.
Growth of religion is the spread of religions and the increase of religious adherents around the world. Statistics commonly measure the absolute number of adherents, the percentage of the absolute growth per year, and the growth of converts in the world.
Christianity is the most prevalent religion in the United States. The Public Religion Research Institute's "2020 Census of American Religion", carried out between 2014 and 2020, showed that 70% of Americans identified as Christian during this seven-year interval. In a 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center, 65% of adults in the United States identified themselves as Christians. They were 75% in 2015 70.6% in 2014, 78% in 2012, 81.6% in 2001, and 85% in 1990. About 62% of those polled claim to be members of a church congregation. The United States has the largest Christian population in the world and, more specifically, the largest Protestant population in the world, with nearly 205 million Christians and, as of 2019, over 141 million people affiliated with Protestant churches, although other countries have higher percentages of Christians among their populations. The modern official motto of the United States of America, as established in a 1956 law signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, is "In God We Trust". The phrase first appeared on U.S. coins in 1864.
Peggy Levitt is professor and chair of the sociology department at Wellesley College and an Associate at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organization where she co-directs the Transnational Studies Initiative. Peggy writes regularly about globalization, arts and culture, immigration, and religion. Her latest book, Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation on Display, is published by the University of California Press.
Jacob K. Olupona is a Nigerian American professor at the Harvard Divinity School with a joint appointment as Professor of African and African American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.
The Abrahamic religions, also sometimes referred to as Abrahamism, are a group of monotheistic religions that strictly endorse worship of the God of Abraham. These most notably include Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as the Baháʼí Faith, Samaritanism, the Druze Faith, and others. The namesake for this group's identity is Abraham, a Hebrew patriarch and prophet who is extensively mentioned in many prominent Abrahamic scriptures, such as the Bible, the Quran, and the Kitáb-i-Aqdas.
Hector Avalos was a professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University, cultural anthropologist, and the author of several books on religion. Avalos was an atheist and advocate of secular humanist ethics.
Rodney William Stark is an American sociologist of religion who was a longtime professor of sociology and of comparative religion at the University of Washington. He is presently the Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University, co-director of the university's Institute for Studies of Religion, and founding editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion.
Christians are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words Christ and Christian derive from the Koine Greek title Christós (Χριστός), a translation of the Biblical Hebrew term mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ).
Edwin Scott Gaustad was a Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside. He achieved fame with his study of the genealogy of religion in the United States, Historical atlas of religion in America. The 1972 edition of this work has been used in secular histories of Mainline Protestantism and the Emergent church movement (denominationalism) for decades, and his a Religious History of America was a standard text for college students. A graduate of Baylor University and Brown University, Gaustad dedicated his career to sharing his expansive research on religious history. Gaustad was President of the American Society of Church History. Gaustad died March 25, 2011 in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the age of 87.
Infidel is a term used in certain religions for those accused of unbelief in the central tenets of their own religion, for members of another religion, or for the irreligious.
Postchristianity is the situation in which Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion of a society but has gradually assumed values, culture, and worldviews that are not necessarily Christian. Post-Christian tends to refer to the loss of Christianity's monopoly in historically Christian societies. For example, although the 2005 Eurobarometer survey indicated that the majority of Europeans hold some form of belief in a higher power, fewer point explicitly to the Christian God.
Sarah J. Mahler is an American author and cultural anthropologist. She was part of a group of anthropologists attempting to change migration studies to a more comprehensive way to understand how migrants crossing international borders remain tied to their homelands and how cultural practices and identities reflect influences from past and present contexts, called "transnational migration."
Abacoa is a community in Palm Beach County in the U.S. state of Florida, within the outer city limits of Jupiter. Construction began in 1997 on land once owned by the American businessman John D. MacArthur. The development is an example of the New Urbanism architectural movement in Florida.
Anna L. Peterson is an American scholar of religious studies who is currently a professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida, where she has worked since 1993. Her research variously concerns religion in Latin America and ethics—including religious ethics, Christian ethics, environmental ethics, animal ethics and social ethics. She is the author of five monographs: Martyrdom and the Politics of Religion ; Being Human ; Seeds of the Kingdom ; Everyday Ethics and Social Change ; and Being Animal.
In sociology, desecularization is the proliferation or growth of religion, usually after a period of prior secularization. The theory of desecularization is reactionary to the older theory known as The Secularization Thesis, which posits a gradual decline of religion to a point of extinction. In the last few decades, scholars have pointed to continued church attendance in Western countries, the rise in religious fundamentalism, and the prevalence of religious conflict as evidence of the continued relevance of religion in the modern world. A former proponent of the earlier secularization thesis, Peter L. Berger, has now expressed his support for the newer theory, stating that the world today "is as furiously religious as it ever was".
Cristina Rocha is an Brazilian-Australian Professor of anthropology at Western Sydney University. She works at the intersection between globalisation, migration and religion. She has written on Buddhism, New Age spirituality and most recently on pentecostalism.
