Religious Movements & Organizations
This general category includes a selection of more specific topics.
Religious Movements & Organizations Encyclopedia Articles
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Tenrikyō
Tenrikyō, (Japanese: “Religion of Divine Wisdom”), largest and most successful of the modern Shintō sects in Japan. Though founded in the 19th century, it is often considered in connection with the evangelistic...
Shaker
Shaker, member of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, a celibate millenarian group that established communal settlements in the United States in the 18th century. Based on the...
Rinzai
Rinzai, one of two major Zen Buddhist sects in Japan; it stresses the abrupt awakening of transcendental wisdom, or enlightenment. Among the methods it practices are shouts (katsu) or blows delivered by...
Mawlawīyah
Mawlawīyah, fraternity of Sufis (Muslim mystics) founded in Konya (Qonya), Anatolia, by the Persian Sufi poet Rūmī (d. 1273), whose popular title mawlānā (Arabic: “our master”) gave the order its name....
Radha Soami Satsang
Radha Soami Satsang, esoteric religious sect of India that has followers among both Hindus and Sikhs. The sect was founded in 1861 by Shiva Dayal Saheb (also called Shivdayal), a Hindu banker of Agra,...
Aladura
Aladura, (Yoruba: “Owners of Prayer”), religious movement among the Yoruba peoples of western Nigeria, embracing some of the independent prophet-healing churches of West Africa. The movement, which in...
Essene
Essene, member of a religious sect or brotherhood that flourished in Palestine from about the 2nd century bc to the end of the 1st century ad. The New Testament does not mention them and accounts given...
Counter-Reformation
Counter-Reformation, in the history of Christianity, the Roman Catholic efforts directed in the 16th and early 17th centuries both against the Protestant Reformation and toward internal renewal. The Roman...
Great Awakening
Great Awakening, religious revival in the British American colonies mainly between about 1720 and the 1740s. It was a part of the religious ferment that swept western Europe in the latter part of the 17th...
Yazīdī
Yazīdī, member of a Kurdish religious minority found primarily in northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, the Caucasus region, and parts of Iran. The Yazīdī religion includes elements of ancient...
Franciscan
Franciscan, any member of a Roman Catholic religious order founded in the early 13th century by St. Francis of Assisi. The Franciscan order is one of the four great mendicant orders of the church, and...
Society of Friends
Society of Friends, Christian group that arose in mid-17th-century England, dedicated to living in accordance with the “Inner Light,” or direct inward apprehension of God, without creeds, clergy, or other...
Pashupata
Pashupata, perhaps the earliest Hindu sect to worship the god Shiva as the supreme deity. It gave rise in turn to numerous subsects that flourished in Gujarat and Rajasthan, at least until the 12th century,...
Shvetambara
Shvetambara, one of the two principal sects of Jainism, a religion of India. The monks and nuns of the Shvetambara sect wear simple white garments. This is in contrast to the practice followed by the parallel...