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About Traditional Folk Religions

  • Over 400 million people around the world practice traditional folk religions.
  • These religions are sometimes called traditional religions, folk religions, or indigenous religions.
  • Traditional, folk, or indigenous religions are closely linked to the culture and community where they are practiced.
  • Beliefs are shared orally from one generation to the next.
  • Folk religions have no founder or sacred texts.
  • Folk religions often combine with major religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.
  • There are many, many folk religions around the world. Some notable traditional religions include Chinese Folk Religion, Traditional African Religions, Aboriginal Australian Beliefs, and Native American Beliefs.

Chinese Folk Religions

Also called folk belief or minjian xinyang (民间信仰), Chinese folk religions were recorded as early as the Shang dynasty (c.1600-1046 B.C.E), well before Confucianism and Taoism. Folk religions originated in shamanism, and today include a broad range of beliefs and practices directed at supernatural forces — such as fortune telling and making wishes to ancestors and gods. Folk deities include the goddess of the sea (Mazu 妈祖) and the god of wealth (caishen 财神).

Source: Nadeem, Reem. “2. Confucianism, Taoism and Chinese Folk Religions.” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, 30 Aug. 2023, www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/08/30/confucianism-taoism-and-chinese-folk-religions/.

Aboriginal Australian Beliefs

Australian Aboriginal religion and mythology is the sacred spirituality represented in the stories performed by Aboriginal Australians within each of the language groups across Australia in their ceremonies. Aboriginal spirituality includes the Dreamtime (the Dreaming), songlines, and Aboriginal oral literature.

Aboriginal spirituality often conveys descriptions of each group's local cultural landscape, adding meaning to the whole country's topography from oral history told by ancestors from some of the earliest recorded history. Most of these spiritualities belong to specific groups, but some span the whole continent in one form or another.

Source: Wikipedia Contributors. “Australian Aboriginal Religion and Mythology.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Aug. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_religion_and_mythology.

Traditional African Religions

The traditional beliefs and practices of African people are highly diverse, including various ethnic religions. Generally, these traditions are oral rather than scriptural and are passed down from one generation to another through folk tales, songs, and festivals, and include beliefs in spirits and higher and lower gods, sometimes including a supreme being, as well as the veneration of the dead, and use of magic and traditional African medicine. Most religions can be described as animistic with various polytheistic and pantheistic aspects. The role of humanity is generally seen as one of harmonizing nature with the supernatural.

Source: Wikipedia Contributors. “Traditional African Religions.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 25 July 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_African_religions.

Native American Beliefs

Native American religions are the spiritual practices of the Native Americans in the United States. Ceremonial ways can vary widely and are based on the differing histories and beliefs of individual nations, tribes and bands. Theology may be monotheistic, polytheistic, henotheistic, animistic, shamanistic, pantheistic or any combination thereof, among others. Traditional beliefs are usually passed down in the forms of oral histories, stories, allegories, and principles.

Source: Wikipedia Contributors. “Native American Religions.” Wikipedia, 1 Mar. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_religions.

Subjects: Social Studies