The global religious sceneEuropean merchants, soldiers, and missionaries also took Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, around the world, leading to its rapid spread, especially in the Americas. Islam, an alternative vision of belief in one God, also continued to expand across Afroeurasia, carried along the overland routes and long-distance sea lanes. While Christianity was sinking deep roots in the Americas, Islam gained millions of new adherents in West Africa, East Africa, southeastern Europe, Inner Eurasia, India, and Southeast Asia. Buddhism continued to grow in China, Japan, and Southeast Asia.
However, the major organized faiths—Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Daoism, Hinduism, and Judaism—had nothing like a monopoly on religious belief and practice in the world. Many believers in the major religions knew very little about the formal doctrines of their own faiths. They lived, rather, in a world dominated by beliefs in magic and spirits. Local, polytheistic religions declined on a world scale but continued to thrive in more remote places. Also, faiths involving syncretism, which means the meshing of beliefs and rituals of different traditions, became more common as the web of human interactions around the world tightened. |
syncretism - A blend or combination of different beliefs and practices, usually religious; the adoption of one group’s religious or other cultural beliefs and practices by another group.