Portal:Religion
The Religion Portal
Religion is a range of social-cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements—although there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacredness, faith, and a supernatural being or beings. (Full article...)
Vital article
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which is the belief that at least one deity exists. (Full article...)
Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that Catherine de Parthenay, a 16th-century Huguenot leader, was a member of "a highly successful network of information" during the French Wars of Religion?
- ... that fictional religions, often described in speculative fiction, have in some cases inspired real religious movements?
- ... that the nonconformist minister Ichabod Chauncey was banished from England under the Religion Act 1592 and spent two years in exile in Holland where he published a defence of his actions?
- ... that a religious community is a group of people who practice the same religion, but do not have to live together?
- ... that Musa va 'Uj depicts figures from all three Abrahamic religions?
- ... that the capital of South Ossetia once had more Jews than Ossetians?
![A partially unrolled scroll. opened from left to right to show a portion of the scroll with widely spaced vertical lines of cursive Mongol script. Imprinted over two of the lines is an official-looking square red stamp with an intricate design.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/OljeituToPhilippeLeBel1305.jpg/260px-OljeituToPhilippeLeBel1305.jpg)
Several attempts at a military alliance between the Frankish Crusaders and the Mongol Empire against the Islamic caliphates, their common enemy, were made by various leaders among them during the 13th century. Such an alliance might have seemed an obvious choice: the Mongols were already sympathetic to Christianity, given the presence of many influential Nestorian Christians in the Mongol court. The Franks—Western Europeans, and those in the Levantine Crusader states—were open to the idea of support from the East, in part owing to the long-running legend of the mythical Prester John, an Eastern king in an Eastern kingdom who many believed would one day come to the assistance of the Crusaders in the Holy Land. The Franks and Mongols also shared a common enemy in the Muslims. However, despite many messages, gifts, and emissaries over the course of several decades, the often-proposed alliance never came to fruition. (Full article...)