The Largest Religions Belong to Either of Two Types

Written by Dyami Millarson

The world’s largest religions fit nicely into two categories:

• Indian religions
• Semitic or Abrahamic religions

Based on the latter categorisation, we may also speak of ‘religions belonging to the Abrahamic tradition,’ which is a more verbose way to put it.

Buddhism and Hinduism belong to the Indian tradition, i.e., they are Indian religions, whilst Christianity and Islam belong to the Abrahamic tradition, i.e., they are Semitic/Abrahamic religions.

All of the strains of Germanic folk religion do not fit into any of these categories, but belong to their own separate category.

The Indian tradition is a category that is related to the Germanic tradition, because both traditions may be regarded as sub-categories of the Indo-European tradition. However, the Indian sub-category ranks among the largest religions of the world, whereas the other Indo-European traditions do not, so it is fair to count them separately.