Groups Not Included in This List of World Religions

The following groups are religions, but have not been included in this list of major religions primarily for one or more of the following reasons:

• They are not a distinct, independent religion, but a branch of a broader religion/category.

• They lack appreciable communities of adherents outside their home country.

• They are too small (even smaller than Rastafarianism).

Mandeans: The Encyclopedia Britannica lists Mandeans separately, but they only have about 45,000 adherents in two countries, meaning they're far smaller than many new religious movements the Encyclopedia lumps together under "New Religionists." As small as the Mandeans are, we are not listing them as one of the largest "Major Religions." Britannica's decision to list Mandeans separately, while not listing larger but newer religions is due the their list's criteria, which emphasizes long-established yet post-literate religions. This Adherents.com listing, on the other hand, is based on contemporary size, without regard to age. PL Kyodan: They currently claim about 1 million adherents and 500 churches in 10 countries. But they're almost entirely in Japan. The group has a few branches in North America and Europe, and perhaps twenty in South America. So there is some spread beyond its home country, but with only about 500 branches worldwide, and with some question as to whether it has really emerged from it's original Shinto matrix, it may be inappropriate to call it a distinct major religion. Ch'ondogyo: About 3 million adherents total. Their numbers are almost entirely confined to Korea, however. Apparently a fusion of Christianity and traditional Korean religion. In North Korea, once Ch'ondogyo's center, where it was, for a time, the country's second or third largest religion, it has essentially been co-opted by the government and turned into a hollow appendage of Juche. Wonbulgyo: Another new Korean religion. The claim about 400 branches in Korea, and 30 in North America and Europe. They make some claims to be an emerging world religion, but as they call themselves "Won Buddhism," we include them within the greater body of Buddhism. Lively, but probably less than 150,000 adherents, making it even smaller than Zoroastrianism. Vodoun: Vodoun is classified here as a subset of African diasporic religion. New Age: New Age is an incredibly eclectic category, not a single religion. Although a large number of people hold beliefs which have been categorized as New Age, or participate in New Age practices, only a tiny percentage of people actually identify "New Age" as their religion. At this point "New Age" is more the umbrella term for a broad movement, rather than a religion. Some previous enthusiasts of New Age movements now prefer to be called pagans or Neo-Pagans. Seicho-No-Ie: This organization is large (perhaps 2 to 3 million members) and appears somewhat like a typical New Asian syncretistic religion, but its literature states that it is an interdenominational organization and not a religion. Furthermore, it does not seem to have spawned a distinctive religious culture anywhere outside of Japan, and perhaps not even in Japan -- certainly not to the degree that groups such as PL Kyodan and Tenrikyo have. Falun Dafa/Falun Gong: This is a relatively new movement (started in the mid-1980s) from China which purports to have 100 million adherents worldwide, 70 million in China. These numbers are obviously inflated; it is not true that 1 in every 58 people on the planet are adherents of Falun Dafa. A reasonable worldwide number that some newspapers have used is 10 million, but this is only a guess. The current crackdown on the movement by the Communist government is likely to increase the movement's growth both within and outside of China. Its status as a full-fledged "religion" is questionable, and it does not claim to be one in the traditional sense. For most practitioners it is more of a technique than a religion. However, the movement's literature states that deriving full benefit from the techniques precludes membership in other religions, and there are people who consider Falun Dafa their primary or only religion. But exclusive followers of this sort are in the minority. Furthermore, Falun Dafa is properly classified as a subset of Chinese traditional religion and not as a distinct religion, so it would not be classified as a "major world religion" even if it did have 100 million followers. Although the movement is verifiably large and widespread, its adherents appear to be almost uniformly ethnic Chinese. Their involvement with the movement is not really conversion to a different or foreign religion, but rather involvement in an evangelical/reform movement within their existing religious system. Sociologically, the Falun Dafa movement has many parallels to the Pentecostal movement and Billy Graham revivals within Christianity. Taoism: Included as a subset of Chinese traditional religion because of the impossibility of separating a large number of Taoists from traditional Chinese religionists in general. See note under Chinese traditional religion. Confucianism: See Chinese traditional religion. Roma: There are an estimated 9 to 12 million Roma (Gypsies; also "Rroma") in the world, concentrated in Europe, but also in North America, Australia and elsewhere. There is clearly a distinct set of Roma religious beliefs and practices, which scholars frequently describe as Aryan/Indian/Hindu in origin with an overlay of local (esp. European) religious culture (often Catholic). But the Roma are primarily classified as an ethnic or cultural group. Many clearly have a strong ethnic identity as Roma and a self-identified religious identity as Catholic or Protestant. The Roma illustrate how arbitrary the dividing lines between ethnicity, culture, and religion can be. Animal Rights: Although the Animal Rights movement (along with ethical vegetarianism, Veganism, PETA, etc.) is a large and rapidly growing socio-cultural-religious group, its proponents do not generally call it their "religion." Reliable statistics for the number of adherents for whom Animal Rights constitutes primary cultural/religious/philosophical identity, versus those who simply support certain positions of the movement, are unavailable. AR is a religion, but for the majority of Animal Rights supporters, AR functions as a movement and/or lifestyle choice, not their primary religion. (This is similar to the current broad support for the "Free Tibet" movement, most of which comes from non-Buddhists.) Other movements and groups which are not listed on this page but which function as the sociological equivalent of traditionally recognized religions are listed here.