12 Major World Religions Quotes

“To this faith, the world owes the modern institutional versions of orphanages, hospitals, and higher education, along with the intellectual revolutions of the Enlightenment. Renaissance painting and architecture, classical music, and the abolition movement, as well as the modern movements for workers’ rights, women’s suffrage, and civil rights, were all by-products, directly or indirectly, of Christian beliefs and actions. Despite Christianity’s positive influences in many areas, Christians were also responsible for the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Thirty Years’ War, the genocide of native civilizations in the Americas, the Salem witch trials, American slavery and the slave trade, the Third Reich in Germany, “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland, the Rwandan genocide, and other atrocities. Clearly, Christianity has been both a positive and negative force in the world.”
― Jason Boyett, 12 Major World Religions: The Beliefs, Rituals, and Traditions of Humanity's Most Influential Faiths

“Before the Germanic peoples adopted the Latin alphabet, their written language consisted of runes—mystical carved symbols that represented far more than just letters of an alphabet. The runes were considered a type of magic, which Odin attained by hanging himself upside down from a branch of Yggdrasil and piercing himself with the tip of his spear. He spent nine days and nights on the verge of death before the sacred runes accepted his sacrifice and revealed to him their secrets. METHODS OF PRACTICE The physical world was thought to be a manifestation”
― Jason Boyett, 12 Major World Religions: The Beliefs, Rituals, and Traditions of Humanity's Most Influential Faiths

“pantheistic. Unlike ancient Greek beliefs, in which Zeus ruled from his palace on Olympus, divinity wasn’t something separate from the visible world. The material and the spiritual were one and the same. Thor was thunder. Thunder was Thor. These beliefs or practices weren’t”
― Zephyros Press, 12 Major World Religions: The Beliefs, Rituals, and Traditions of Humanity's Most Influential Faiths

“By the time Jesus began a new movement within Judaism, Greek philosophy had begun to spread into Palestine and the lands surrounding it. Rome’s polytheistic religion may have been able to fold in the repurposed Greek deities, but Christianity forbade that. Arising from monotheistic Judaism, it viewed devotion to the Greek and Roman gods as pagan practices from which followers of Christ must abstain. As Christianity grew in influence— spreading into Greece and other parts of the Roman Empire—beliefs in the ancient gods of Greece and Rome began to decline. Centuries later, Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, giving the Christian church a much greater foothold. With this power, the Empire began to close temples and establish laws to prevent worshipping the false gods of the Pantheon. In 380 CE, Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica, instituting Christianity as the Roman Empire’s official state religion. Though a few pockets of polytheistic belief survived in the following centuries, this edict essentially ended the practice of the Greek religion. Zeus/Jupiter had lost his throne to Christ.”
― Zephyros Press, 12 Major World Religions: The Beliefs, Rituals, and Traditions of Humanity's Most Influential Faiths

“THE SOUL Along with the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks were among the first to distinguish the physical body from the soul. Greek philosophers like Socrates and Plato argued that the psyche, or soul, was a person’s nonphysical essence. External behavior was a reflection of the soul’s characteristics. At the time of death, the soul departed from the body and journeyed to the afterlife, which meant the presence of a soul was what distinguished a living human from a corpse. Plato’s teaching on the immortality of the soul may have influenced early Christianity, which differed from Judaism in this belief.”
― Zephyros Press, 12 Major World Religions: The Beliefs, Rituals, and Traditions of Humanity's Most Influential Faiths

“A Shia Muslim who grew up in India, Muhammad Ali Jinnah was”
― Zephyros Press, 12 Major World Religions: The Beliefs, Rituals, and Traditions of Humanity's Most Influential Faiths

“Ali ruled from 656 to 661 but believed Muhammad intended him to succeed him originally in 632, rather than Abu Bakr.”
― Zephyros Press, 12 Major World Religions: The Beliefs, Rituals, and Traditions of Humanity's Most Influential Faiths