The 21st century Universal Life Church advocates for cooperation and understanding among the approximately 4,000 religions and their clerical potentates that represent the gods of planet earth.
The Universal Life Church believes despite our differences, “We Are All Children of the Same Universe”.
This website was created to provide insight and clarity to the complex history of humanoid reliance on shamans, witch doctors, prophets, and approximately 18,000 different gods and deities conjured since the beginning of time.
Throughout history, humans have held a myriad of religious beliefs. As people migrate throughout the world, they invariably carry their beliefs, customs, and culture with them to their new homes. Over time, foreign beliefs mix with domestic beliefs, creating new religious groups and sub groups. Each of these groups has their own unique history, tradition, and ideology.
All religions are in a perpetual state of change, providing a constant ebb and flow of adherents and beliefs.
To learn about how religions have formed and evolved, explore the History of Religion.
Religions Worldwide
Although the exact number is hard to estimate, most experts conclude there are over 4,000 different religions worldwide. Each has their own unique history, culture, practices, beliefs, challenges, and successes. Across time all religions expand and contract, migrate, divide, and evolve, providing a constant ebb and flow of adherents and beliefs.
Religions are living organisms. They go through metamorphosis as the societies they inhabit change and grow. They molt the skin of old customs when new ones are adopted. They cross- pollinate with neighbors and evolve with the passing of time. Christianity, for instance, received its monotheism from its mother – Judaea – but was fertilized by the new ideas of its founder and followers.
Christian - 31.2%
Muslim - 24.1%
Nonreligion and Folk Religion - 16%
Hinduism - 15.1%
Buddhist - 6.9%
Jewish- 0.2%
Over time, religions have developed into distinct, identifiable sects. But just as all humans share a common ancestor, so too do religions. The DNA of religions lives in their rites, writings and in the spoken traditions shared from generation to generation. Like in humans, this DNA does not live in a vacuum. Belief systems live through war, dissent, natural disasters and plagues. Judaism was criminalized during many centuries. The customary Jewish game ‘Dreidel’ arose among Jews in the Seleucid Empire as a way to practice their faith clandestinely. Amid persecution, the faith found a way.
Most Common Denomination by Country
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Throughout history, humans have held a myriad of religious beliefs. Since the beginning of time, tribes, cities, and civilizations have united beneath these belief systems to answer the big questions of the universe: examining everything from natural phenomena - like why the sun rises and sets - to more philosophical questions - like what happens after death.
Some cultures believed in a singular God; Some believed in hundreds. Some believed God(s) walked among us, intervening in our daily lives. Some believed in quieter God(s), who keep their hands clean of mortal follies and foibles.
As people migrate throughout the world, they invariably carry their customs and beliefs to their new homes along with their belongings. Over time, foreign beliefs mix with domestic, creating new beliefs. Religious groups expand, contract, divide, and evolve. As this cycle continues, intricate global patterns are formed.
Most Common Religion by Country
Christian - 31.2%
Muslim - 24.1%
Nonreligion and Folk Religion - 16%
Hinduism - 15.1%
Buddhist - 6.9%
Although the exact number is hard to estimate, most experts conclude there are over 4,000 different religions worldwide. Each has their own unique history, culture, practices, beliefs, challenges, and successes. All religions are in a perpetual state of change, providing a constant ebb and flow of adherents and beliefs.
Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and are five of the largest organized religions in the world. Over the last few thousand years, these religious groups have shaped the course of history and had a profound influence on the trajectory of the human race. Through countless conflicts, conquests, missions abroad, and simple word of mouth, these religions spread around the globe and forever molded the huge geographic regions in their paths.
This handy chart, created by researchers in cooperation with the Universal Life Church, tracks the development and evolution of all religious systems across time and space. While many of the belief systems you see here are still being practiced today; many more have since passed into myth. Eventually, we believe, all will become one under the guiding beliefs of the Universal Life Church.
