Other Religions You Might Not Have Known About

Anyone remember that webcomic where it
has "Wikipedia" on top and a person is reading through a single article
and then three hours later winds up at a dozen or so pages completely
unrelated to the one he started at? Heh, it's so true and that's
actually how I came to discover these articles about other religions
that I already knew existed but never could place a name on. Read
through them, they're really interesting and rather enlightenning when
you think about how this could redefine the evolution of religion as
many of us know it:



Henotheism
- The belief in in the existance of multiple deities but limiting one's
personal worship practices to that of only one deity, or to one deity
as favored above others.



An example of this could be a form of Greek polytheism whereby certain
cities had a patron god or goddess, while still believing in the whole
pantheon.



Monolatrism
- a subset of henotheism; the belief in the existance of multiple
deities but limiting one's personal worship practices to that of only one deity.



An example of this (as detailed in the article) could be Mosaic Judaism
with the commandment "thou shalt have no gods before me" indicating
that there were other gods, but that the Israelites were to place YHVH
above the others. I forget what the exact passage is, but I think
there's one not too far after this one stressing that the Israelites
shouldn't worship any other gods at all,
since God was the one who saved them and he's jealous. This would then
distinguish Judaism as monolatric, different from general henotheism.



Kathenotheism
- a subset of henotheism; the belief in the existance of multiple
deities with the worship of one of those gods as supreme, depending on
the certain conditions.



This is sort of like how we have a different president depending on what term it is.



Panentheism - sort of the hybrid of deism (God made the universe) and pantheism (God is the universe).



This is actually fairly close to Native American, Buddhist, and mystic
beliefs (such as Kabbalah), as well as God's Debris. It's also closer
to what I presently believe. If we interpret John 1's description of
"the Word" as "the Logos," then the NT seems to present rather
panentheistic views at times.



Dystheism - the belief that God exists, but isn't completely good. He could even be 50-50 (neutral), or entirely evil.








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