Religion

Human beings’ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of especial reverence. It is also commonly regarded as consisting of the way people deal with ultimate...

• abbess

  the title of a superior of certain communities of nuns following the Benedictine Rule, of convents of the Second Order of St. Francis (Poor Clares), and of certain communities of canonesses. The first historical record of the name is on a Roman inscription...

• abbot

  the superior of a monastic community that follows the Benedictine Rule (Benedictines, Cistercians, Camaldolese, Trappists) and of certain other orders (Premonstratensians, canons regular of the Lateran). The word derives from the Aramaic ab (“father”),...

• absolution

  in the Christian religion, a pronouncement of remission (forgiveness) of sins to the penitent. In Roman Catholicism, penance is a sacrament and the power to absolve lies with the priest, who can grant release from the guilt of sin to the sinner who is...

• acosmism

  in philosophy, the view that God is the sole and ultimate reality and that finite objects and events have no independent existence. Acosmism has been equated with pantheism, the belief that everything is God. G.W.F. Hegel coined the word to defend Benedict...

• Acosta, Uriel

  freethinking rationalist who became an example among Jews of one martyred by the intolerance of his own religious community. He is sometimes cited as a forerunner of the renowned philosopher Benedict de Spinoza. The son of an aristocratic family of Marranos...

• Adams, Hannah

  American compiler of historical information in the study of religion. Adams was the daughter of a notably eccentric bibliophile father whose lack of business acumen kept the large family in poverty. She inherited his love of books and his remarkable...

• adiaphorism

  (from Greek adiaphora, “indifferent”), in Christian theology, the opinion that certain doctrines or practices in morals or religion are matters of indifference because they are neither commanded nor forbidden in the Bible. Two adiaphorist controversies...

• aeon

  (Greek: “age,” or “lifetime”), in Gnosticism and Manichaeism, one of the orders of spirits, or spheres of being, that emanated from the Godhead and were attributes of the nature of the absolute; an important element in the cosmology that developed around...

• African religions

  religious beliefs and practices of the peoples of Africa. It should be noted that any attempt to generalize about the nature of “African religions” risks wrongly implying that there is homogeneity among all African cultures. In fact, Africa is a vast...

• agnosticism

  (from Greek agnōstos, “unknowable”), strictly speaking, the doctrine that humans cannot know of the existence of anything beyond the phenomena of their experience. The term has come to be equated in popular parlance with skepticism about religious questions...

• agunah

  in Orthodox and Conservative Judaism, a woman who is presumed to be widowed but who cannot remarry because evidence of her husband’s death does not satisfy legal requirements. The plight of the agunah has generated voluminous and complex treatment in...

• ahimsa

  Sanskrit “noninjury” in the Indian religions of Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, the ethical principle of not causing harm to other living things. In Jainism, ahimsa is the standard by which all actions are judged. For a householder observing the small...

• Ahl-e Ḥaqq

  (Arabic: “People of Truth,” or “People of God”), a secret, syncretistic religion, derived largely from Islām, whose adherents are found in western Iran, with enclaves in Iraq. They retain the 12 imams of the Ithnā ʿAsharīyah sect and such aspects of...

• Ajivika

  an ascetic sect that emerged in India about the same time as Buddhism and Jainism and that lasted until the 14th century; the name may mean “following the ascetic way of life.” It was founded by Goshala Maskariputra (also called Gosala Makkhaliputta),...

• Akālī

  Punjabi “Timeless One,” or “Eternal One” a movement in Sikhism. Akali also refers to any member of suicide squads in the armies of the Sikhs in India. The Akali suicide squads first appeared about 1690. Earlier in that century the Mughals had executed...

• akh

  in Egyptian religion, the spirit of a deceased person and, with the ka and the ba, a principal aspect of the soul. By enabling the soul to assume temporarily any form it desired for the purpose of revisiting the earth or for its own enjoyment, the akh...

• ʿAlawite

  any member of a minority sect of Shīʿite Muslims living chiefly in Syria. The roots of ʿAlawism lie in the teachings of Muḥammad ibn Nuṣayr an-Namīrī (fl. 850), a Basran contemporary of the 10th Shīʿite imam, and the sect was chiefly established by Ḥusayn...

• alchemy

  a form of speculative thought that, among other aims, tried to transform base metals such as lead or copper into silver or gold and to discover a cure for disease and a way of extending life. Alchemy was the name given in Latin Europe in the 12th century...

• ʿalenu

  (Hebrew: “it is our duty”), the opening word of an extremely old Jewish prayer, which has been recited at the end of the three periods of daily prayer since the European Middle Ages. The first section of the ʿalenu is a prayer of thanks for having set...

• Alpha and Omega

  in Christianity, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, used to designate the comprehensiveness of God, implying that God includes all that can be. In the New Testament Revelation to John, the term is used as the self-designation of God and...