Ethnic religions may include officially sanctioned and organized civil religions with an organized clergy, but they are characterized in that adherents generally are defined by their ethnicity, and conversion essentially equates to cultural assimilation to the people in question. Contrasted to this are imperial cults that are defined by political influence detached from ethnicity.

In antiquity, religion was one defining factor of ethnicity, along with language, regional customs, national costume, etc. As Xenophanes famously comments:

Men make gods in their own image; those of the Ethiopians are black and snub-nosed, those of the Thracians have blue eyes and red hair. (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 7.4)

With the rise of Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, ethnic religions came to be marginalized as "leftover" traditions in rural areas, referred to as paganism or shirk (idolatry).

The notion of gentiles ("nations") in Judaism reflect this state of affairs, the implicit assumption that each nation will have its own religion. Historical examples include Germanic polytheism, Celtic polytheism, Slavic polytheism and pre-Hellenistic Greek religion.

Contemporary ethnic religions are Shinto of the Japanese people, Judaism of the Jewish people (see: Who is a Jew?), and Hinduism^[1] (except for some, comparatively small Hindu movements: see Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?).

Over time, even revealed religion will assume local traits and in a sense will revert to an ethnic religion. This has notably happened in the course of the History of Christianity, which saw the emergence of national churches with "ethnic flavours" such as Germanic, Ethiopian, Armenian, Greek, Russian and others.

Indigenous traditional ethnic religions

• African
  • San religion
  • Yoruba religion
• Asian
  • Bön/Tibetan Buddhism
  • Chinese folk religion
  • Korean shamanism
  • Mandaeism
  • Ryukyuan religion
  • Shamanism in Siberia
  • Shinto (Japan)
  • Tengriism (Turkic-Mongolic)
  • Yazdânism (Kurdish)
  • Zoroastrianism (Parsi)
• Arctic
  • Sami religion / Noaidi
  • Shamanism among Eskimo peoples / Inuit mythology
• Indo-European
  • Folk Hinduism
  • Slavic Religion
  • Germanic polytheism
• North America
  • Anishinaabe traditional beliefs
  • Mesoamerican Calendar Religion / Mexico / Central America

Ethnic Christian Churches

• Armenian Apostolic Church
• Assyrian Christianity
• Bulgarian Orthodox Church
• Church of England
• Church of Scotland
• Church of Sweden
• Coptic Church
• Ethiopic Church
• Eritrean Orthodox Church
• Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark
• Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland
• Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland
• Evangelical Lutheran Church of Norway
• Georgian Orthodox and Apostolic Church
• Greek Orthodox Church
• Macedonian Orthodox Church
• Russian Orthodox Church
• Romanian Orthodox Church
• Serbian Orthodox Church

Folkish Neopagan revivals

• Baltic
  • Lithuanian
  • Latvian
• Celtic
• Finnish
• Germanic (Norse, Anglo-Saxon)
• Greek
• Slavic

See also

• Animism
• Civil religion
• Evolution of religion
• Paganism
• Pre-Christian Alpine traditions
• Shamanism

References

External links