Browse Creeds
17 results
Alawism
- Present
A secretive, syncretic community rooted in medieval Shiʿi currents and concentrated in Syria's coastal mountains, Alawism is a living, esoteric branch of Islam whose doctrines and social history have produced both internal diversity and intense external attention.
Alevism
- Present
Anatolian, syncretic, and politically distinct within Turkey: Alevism is a living, plural religious-cultural path that blends Shiʿite devotion, Sufi practice, Turkic and Anatolian folk forms, and a strong lineage-based communal structure centered in Anatolia and the Turkish diaspora.
Assyrian Church of the East
- Present
An East Syriac Christian communion with roots in Sasanian Mesopotamia, the Assyrian Church of the East is the living heir to a church that traveled the Silk Road to Tang China and developed a distinctive theological and liturgical idiom in Syriac.
Bahá'í Faith
- Present
A nineteenth‑century Persian movement that presents a theology of progressive revelation and an administrative order intended to foster global unity and social transformation.
Druze
- Present
A small, tightly knit Levantine ethnoreligion that emerged in the Fatimid milieu of the eleventh century, the Druze combine an esoteric theology, a principle of reincarnation, and communal secrecy that shapes their social life and public boundaries.
Ibadi Islam
- Present
An early, distinct school of Islam centered historically in Oman and parts of North Africa, Ibadi Islam preserves a community-centered model of religious authority and law that traces its roots to the formative century of Islam.
Karaite Judaism
- Present
A scripturalist stream within Judaism that grounds law and life directly in the Hebrew Bible and the judgment of individual and communal interpreters rather than in the rabbinic Oral Torah.
Mandaeism
- Present
A small, living Gnostic tradition rooted in late antiquity that preserves a distinctive dualist cosmology and ritual life centered on frequent baptism and a deep reverence for John the Baptist.
Orthodox Judaism
- Present
A living stream of rabbinic Jewish life that understands Torah as law (halakha) and constructs communal order through textual interpretation, continuity of practice, and institutional study.
Samaritanism
- Present
A small, living Israelite community that preserves its own version of the Torah and centers sacred life on Mount Gerizim, claiming continuity with ancient Israel while navigating modern politics and demographic fragility.
Sufism
- Present
A living, pan-Islamic current of inward practice and ethical formation, Sufism articulates ways of seeking God through love, remembrance, discipline, and the tutelage of saints and orders — from early ascetics to contemporary communities across Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and the West.
Sunni Islam
- Present
Sunni Islam is the majority branch of Islam that frames religious life around the Quran and the prophetic Sunnah while tracing its legal thought through four classical schools and a long caliphal and scholarly legacy.
Twelver Shia
- Present
A branch of Islam that centers divine leadership in a line of twelve Imams, Twelver Shia life and thought have been shaped by the memory of Karbala, the doctrine of the occulted Mahdi, and centuries of juristic and theological reflection about legitimate authority.
Yarsanism (Ahl-e Haqq)
- Present
A Kurdish esoteric faith centered on the belief that divine Reality periodically manifests within human figures, Yarsanism (Ahl-e Haqq) is a living, orally rooted religious tradition concentrated in the Hawraman and Kermanshah regions of western Iran and adjacent Kurdish areas of Iraq.
Yazidism
- Present
A tightly bound Kurdish ethnoreligion centered on the figure of Sheikh Adi and the venerated Peacock Angel, Yazidism is a living communal faith shaped by ritual, lineage, and a long history of marginalization.
Zaidi Shia
- Present
A branch of Shiʿism rooted in the activism of Zayd ibn ʿAli that gave rise to a distinct Yemeni imamate and a living juridical and political tradition often described as the 'Fivers' of Islam.
Zoroastrianism
- Present
One of the world's oldest continuously practiced religions, Zoroastrianism centers a moral cosmos of order and disorder whose theological language and ritual forms have been formative in the religious history of Iran and, by many accounts, influential in the wider West.