Comparative Religions and Denominations

Judaism and Mesopotamian religions have nothing in common as far as beliefs go, but it is theorized that they may share some laws and customs. The difference is the reason for the law.

they had certain duties they had certain duties

Zoroastrianism differed from previous religions in that it introduced a concrete morality. It is thought that this was the first known religion to speak of good and evil and the struggle between the two.

Not all Buddhists wear yellow robes. Only monks and nuns.

Originally, monks would make their robes from scraps of cloth they found in trash heaps and cemeteries. They would then smear them with clay to make them an even color. Later, they were allowed to dye them any color that one would find in dying leaves, such as red, yellow, orange, brown or maroon. Still it is customary to refer to them as being yellow, even though they may not actually be yellow. Part of this is because in some languages, such as Sinhalese, the word which we translate as "yellow" refers to any shade of yellow or orange.

ANSWER I will start this discussion by mentioning that Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in a burning hell. I emphasize the word burning because we believe in what the Bible calls, hell, sheol, or hades. We accept the explanation the Bible gives for hell, not the common one found in many religions. One such scripture is at Ecclesiastes 9:5,10, where it says, "For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten...All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in She´ol, the place to which you are going." Sheol is a place of inactivity, it is the common grave of mankind, not a place of torment according to the Bible. ANSWER All the Eastern Religions line up with the Jehovah's Witnesses and also do not teach there is a hell as the Bible teaches. CLARIFICATION The English word hell is translated from the Hebrew word Sheol and the Greek work Hades. JW's accept what the Bible says about Sheol and Hades, which does not always agree with what Christendom teaches about hell, so if there is dissagreement about hell between the Bible and what s popular, JW's accept what the Bible says. Here is a web address to what JW's believe about the subject: http://www.watchtower.org/e/20020715/article_02.htm

Shintoism is a local Japanese religious belief that Japan is the land of the gods and no other land is divine. Christianity believes Israel is God's land and Jerusalem the Holy City of Peace for all mankind.

Shintoism believes there's is the country of the gods which her people are descendants from. Christianity believes in only one God and all people have descended from His Creation of our first parents - Adam & Eve.

From the divine descent which fosters feelings of pride and superiority of the Japanese people, the Judeo-Christian Bible teaches against 'elitism.'

The 'Kami' of Shintoism might commune with those making themselves worthy through ritual cleansing/purification. The Christian God sent His Son to pay the price of mankind's sin and promises to make all who repent are baptized and become disciples (imitators) of Christ, spiritual sons and daughters of the God Family.

Referring to God's qualities. God is everywhere at the same time. There is nowhere where God is not at. God encompasses all things. nothing exists without God being part of their existence.

Anglicanism is simply the ancient Catholic Church, the Body of Christ in Britain! It was brought here in the ,'mists of time,' by,it is said, the brother of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ,S. Simon Zelotes.! There are no photo graphs or government records, but we do know that Christianity was here at a surprisingly early date and S.Dorotheus of Tyre, [Saint and Martyr] 303 Ad tells us so! The first Bishop of our Church being a friend of S.Paul's, mentioned in the Epistle to the Romans, Aristobulous.

It was and is an out showing of the Catholic Church of the first thousand years, before the split between East and West! Originally it was named simply the Church, but later there was a split between Celtic and Christians who were less isolationist. The latter became known as Anglicans by the eighth century to differentiate between the two sides, It was about 200 yrs later that the two sides rejoined and the name has remained ever since naming the ancient catholic church in this country!

it means last name

or thrid it means "OF GOD"

Christianity is the odd man out in this comparison. Both Cofucianism and Buddhism have a positive view of human nature, that mankind is basically good and that through a minimum of envcouragement can become better. Christianity has a negative view of humanity seeing people being inherently bad. The Ten Commandmaents exemplifies this position by laying out a set of "must do" laws that will over ride human nature with punishment for failure to comply.

Sociology is the study of social norms, usually of groups of people and how they respond or behave in a population set. It studies the normal social behaviors of different cultures. It studies society, social institutions and social groups.

The Shaking religion; Quakers, or Shakers, led by Mother Ann Lee, established one of the most successful insular religious communities of the nineteenth century. The Shakers have several "official" names: the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing; the Millennial Church; the Children of Truth; the Alethians (derived from the Greek word for truth). The sect first appeared as an offshoot of the Society of Friends (Quakers), around 1750 in Manchester, England. The leaders of the group--which was called the Shaking Quakers, or Shakers--were husband and wife ministers James and Jane Wardley. The Shakers broke off from the mainstream Quaker church and came under the influence of a group of charismatic preachers and miracle-workers called the "French Prophets." The Shakers were best known for the fervor of their worship services. Like the Quakers, Shakers would sit in silent meditation, waiting to be "moved by the Spirit," but the Shakers' response to this spiritual power was to tremble violently (hence "Shakers") and to spin and dance. Under the influence of the holy Spirit they engaged in group ring dances, marches, singing and shouting, speaking in tongues (glossolalia), prophecy, faith-healing, miracle-working, and spiritual trances, often accompanied by visons. The English mystic Ann Lee (1736-1784), who was baptized and married in the Church of England, was drawn to the Shakers in 1758, spending fifteen years with the sect before leading a small group of followers to America. Mother Ann (as her followers came to call her) frequently disrupted Anglican Church services, and was finally imprisoned following one such outburst. During her imprisonment she experienced a series of visions, which revealed that sex was the main cause of sin and should be avoided; that she herself was the fulfillment of Christ's Second Coming; and that it was her duty to carry the Word, which she embodied, to the New World. The Shakers already believed that Christ's Second Coming would be as a woman, so the idea that Mother Ann might represent that Second Coming was not dismissed out of hand, particularly as her charismatic personality, enthusiasm, and mystical visions clearly marked her as a prophet. In 1774 Mother Ann and eight of her followers emigrated to America, where they established the first Shaker settlement at Watervliet, near Albany, New York. During their first two years in America, they directed their efforts toward clearing the wooded land for planting, building their village, and seeking new converts to their faith. Some biographers believe that Mother Ann's original religious conversion, her revelatory visions, and her missionary zeal all grew out of early tragedy. She had been married to a blacksmith named Abraham Stanley, and they had had four children, all of whom had died in infancy. Mother Ann's rejection of the idea that God had sanctioned sex for reproduction and her insistence on the spiritual necessity of celibacy might well have been influenced by such experiences. Little is known of her life before her conversion because she avoided all discussion of it. As for as she was concerned, her life began when she became a Shaker. Mother Ann died in 1784, but her religious movement grew, reaching its peak between 1830 and 1850, with approximately 6,000 members. The sect was centered in New England, and at least twenty major Shaker communities were established in New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Maine. A number of communities were also established outside of New England, in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, and Florida. Shaker beliefs appealed to many people in the United States at that time, and the Shakers themselves were tireless, enthusiastic missionaries. Many were particularly drawn to the Shaker doctrine of radical equality: all human beings were the children of God, and all should be treated equally, regardless of sex, age, race, education, or wealth. The Shakers believed themselves to be a manifestation of the original pentecostal church of the Apostles, and their religious trances and glossolalia were echoes of what the Apostles themselves had experienced when the holy Spirit descended on them in the form of "tongues of fire, which parted and came to rest on each of them and they were all filled with the holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim" (Acts 2:3-4. Revised ed. of the "New Testament of the New American Bible." Iowa Falls: World, 1986. All references are to this edition.) From St. Peter's speech in Acts, in which he quotes the prophet Joel, the Shakers derived their belief in prophecies, visions, and miracles performed through the power of the holy Spirit: "'It will come to pass in the last days,' God says 'that I will pour out a portion of my spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophecy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams. Indeed upon my servants and my handmaids I will pour out a portion of my Spirit in those days, And they shall prophesy.'" (Acts 2:17-18) The Shaker belief that all property and profit should be commonly held for the benefit of all grew from the description in Acts of the communal life of the new Christian communities: "They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one's need" (Acts 2:42-45). Shaker communities usually consisted of two "families," of about thirty individuals each. Each family lived in a large house, but the sexes were rigidly segregated, using separate entrances, stairways, and sleeping quarters to avoid intermingling. Each family had two elders and two eldresses, who were responsible for the spiritual management of the family, and the elders answered to the "ministry"--which consisted of two elders and eldresses chosen from among the elders of the families. Detailed oral confession of sin before witnesses was considered to be necessary for salvation, and was required for admission to the sect. Confession was to be repeated frequently, each time a member felt that he had sinned. Because they repudiated the outside world, the Shaker communities made a strong effort to achieve self-sufficiency. The Shaker villages were models of nearly complete economic self-containment, and were highly successful. The Shakers were famous not only for their industriousness, but also for their ingenuity, for in their quest for self-sufficiency they invented a number of useful tools, including the circular saw (the buzz saw), the metal pen point, the clothespin, the washing machine, and the flat broom. Mother Ann's injunction, "Put your hands to work and hearts to God," was at the center of Shaker life and worship, and their high ideals were reflected in the quality of their products. They approached work as an act of worship, and aspired to a combination of simple yet beautiful design and fine craftsmanship. To this day the elegant simplicity and exquisite workmanship of Shaker furnishings and tools are highly prized. After 1860 membership in the sect began to decline. By 1874, their numbers had fallen from the high of 6,000 twenty years earlier to a mere 2,400. By the mid-1890's, only about 1,000 Shakers were left in the Shaker villages. After 1964, no new members were accepted into the sect, and by the 1980's, only a few aged sisters remained at the Sabbath Day Lake community in Maine. One obvious reason for the sect's decline is that unlike other Utopian communities, it was not marriage-based, and thus did not renew its numbers with children born into families. Because Shakers were celibate, their communities could grow only by constantly bringing in new converts, but as the nineteenth century progressed, new converts were harder to come by. The insular, communal Shaker way of life, and its rigorous spiritual discipline--including unquestioning submission to authority, celibacy, and strenuous manual labor--did not appeal as much to an American people so strongly influenced by the individualistic values of the late nineteenth century and by the promise of material comfort and reduced labor not only for the upper class, but for the common man as well. Although Shakerism was one of the nineteenth century's most successful experiments in religious communal living, it has subsided into a memory of idealistic devotion. Once thriving Shaker villages are now only museums, and the well-built, practical furnishings they were famous for are collectors items and museum pieces.

The Eastern (as opposed to the oriental) Orthodox Church in general (not just the Greek Orthodox jurisdiction) differs from the Catholic Church in:

Catholics believe the Pope is superior in authority in religious and administrative matters above all other bishops as well as having the ability to invoke papal infallibility when expressing dealing with dogmas affecting the belief of the universal Church with regards to Faith and Morals. (Jesus Christ granted Saint Peter, the first pope, this role when he said "thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven." - Matthew 16:18-19.) It is also held in Tradition that he is the infallable head. There are also many other Bible references, however that is the main one.

The Orthodox don't accept Christ's message to Peter as for him being the infallable head, they don't think he had any special difference.

The Catholic Church has the doctrine of the Virgin Mary's "Immaculate Conception", the Orthodox Church does not.

The Catholic Church believes in Purgatory, where the Orthodox does not believe in it.

There are tons of other minor differences, the ones above are just the major differences that I can think of.

Christianity is about belief and faith. it is really more a matter of faith. also, it requires a change of lifestyle. Christians make more since. Christianity is the only religion that has a bible traced back to 6000 years ago. it has the world's oldest living book! this book also holds prophesies that have been fulfilled, such as Israel coming back after being destroyed about 2000 years earlier. some prophesies are not yet fulfilled yet.

Catholics will be quick to assert that they ARE Christians; that in fact, they represent the original, true church of the first century. Yet when one gives proper respect to the Bible as God's word, Catholicism quickly runs into problems. 1 Timothy 4:1-3 - Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. "Giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy" can apply to any false doctrine, but look again at what follows: "Having their own conscience seared with a hot iron…" How else can one explain the rampant problems with pedophilia in the Catholic church? "Forbidding to marry…" A hallmark of Catholicism. "Commanding to abstain from foods…" Those under 30 or so may be too young to remember that the Catholic church used to forbid eating meat on Fridays. Even many public schools would serve fish sticks or fish sandwiches for school lunch on Fridays in deference to Catholic tradition. This prohibition has since been done away with, but the point remains: the Holy Spirit indicated that all of these things would be indicative of a departure from the faith. The Catholic church is specifically guilty of three of the five indicators spoken of in that one passage of scripture alone. But that's not all… Matthew 23:9 - Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. What is the Catholic title for a priest? Ephesians 5:23 - For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. The New Testament church had no earthly head; yet according to Catholics, the pope is the head of the church. In every way, Catholicism replaces NT church government with their own form of traditionalism. (Jesus' attitude toward worship by tradition is unmistakable: Mark 7:6, 7 - He answered and said to them, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: 'This people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.') 2 Thessalonians 2:3, 4 - Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Whether or not it was directly intended, the idea of a man "showing himself that he is God" certainly applies to the papacy, since Catholics are taught that in matters of church doctrine, the pope is infallible. What he says, goes, no matter what scripture says, thus the Catholic doctrine of "papal infallibility" exalts the pope above God! There are still more scriptural evidences that debunk the veneration of Mary and Saints (with a capital "S"), the use of images, the practice of infant baptism, purgatory (another Catholic doctrine that has recently been amended), the divide between clergy and laity; at almost every turn, scripture contradicts Catholicism, and vice versa. If all of this is true, how can it be possible? How can the supposed "universal church" be so at odds with the Bible? Even this question is addressed in scripture: 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12 -The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. To those who accept the Bible as God's word, the conclusion is clear. This is not to say that Catholics by and large are not fine, upstanding, well-intentioned people: they are, and should be commended as such. Nor is it so say that all Catholics are subject to the delusion Paul speaks of, but by all scriptural indications, they have been deceived and betrayed from the top down. It is their "upper management" that is deluded, and tireless in its efforts to keep the laity dependent upon their guidance, and ignorant of the truth. Luke 6:39 -Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into the ditch?

A Southern Baptist Church is part of the Southern Baptist Convention and hold to certain conservative beliefs although each church is fundamentally autonomous. There is a Southern Baptist Church actually in Northport, Washington 7 miles from the Canadian border so, location is not the only thing that determines Southern Baptist.

Actually, not only is location "not" the only thing, it isn't a factor at all. If a church is officially a member of the SBC, it is a Southern Baptist Church, no matter where it is located. There are Southern Baptist churches in many parts of the country and the world.

yes it is Many have used religion as a way to gain and keep power and control over people. However, to most people, religion is an important part of their spiritual lives that gives them moral direction and hope.

Islam was founded six Centuries after Christianity. In the Qur'an, God mentions Jesus as a prophet sent to the children of Israel, the Jews.

It honestly depends on what the thesis of the paper is.

If it is a comparison of the two faiths, perhaps "Paths to the Divine" or "Wandering in Search of Salvation".