Religion

Pentecostalism, Fermented Milk, and Coffee in Ethiopia’s Sidama Region

Cultural Geography, Religion, Sub-Saharan Africa / By

Several recent posts have mentioned the recent growth of Pentecostal Christianity in Ethiopia, noting that a significant portion of the Oromo people, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, now follow the faith. Pentecostalism originated in Los Angeles, California in the early twentieth century and is now growing explosively in many parts of Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Most Ethiopian Pentecostals are members of smaller ethnolinguistic groups that are concentrated in the southern highlands. One of these is the Sidama, Ethiopia’s fifth largest group, numbering some four to five million. After a long period of lobbying and protests, the Sidama were… – Read More

Religion, Ethnicity, and Conflict in Ethiopia and Eritrea

Cultural Geography, Insurgencies, Religion, Sub-Saharan Africa / By

Some journalists and scholars have tried to link conflicts in Ethiopia and Eritrea to religious divides that are either insignificant or nonexistent. The most egregious example was that of Samuel Huntington in this famous (infamous?) book, The Clash of Civilizations (1996). Huntington portrayed the war that was then being waged between Ethiopia and Eritrea as a religious/civilizational conflict, one pitting Christian Ethiopia against Muslim Eritrea. Maps based on Huntington’s work thus depict Eritrea as a Muslim country (see the figure below). Most actual assessments, however, find that Eritrea is roughly half Muslim and half Christians, although some… – Read More

Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity is NOT Eastern Orthodox, But It Did Influence Protestantism

Cultural Geography, Religion, Sub-Saharan Africa / By

Ethiopia is a predominantly Christian county, with around two-thirds of its people belonging to a Christian church. Roughly 44 percent follow Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity (the Tewahedo Church), and little over 20 percent belong to a Pentecostal denomination.

Many sources erroneously depict the Tewahedo Church as part of the Eastern Orthodox branch of Christianity, putting it in the same category as Greek Orthodoxy, Russian Orthodoxy, Serbian Orthodoxy, and so on. Even highly reputable publications such as the Pew Research Center make this error (see the figures posted below)… – Read More

Iran’s Striking Decline in Religiosity

Protest Movements, Religion, Southwest Asia and North Africa / By

The GAMMAN survey on religious beliefs in Iran, discussed in yesterday’s post, has some interesting and unexpected results. According to conventional sources, over 90 percent of Iran’s people follow Shia Islam; according to GAMAAN, only around a third of the Iran people actually believe Shia doctrine. Most of the rest are supposedly either non-religious or religiously heterodox in one way or another. If these results are accurate, Iran is much more similar to Europe in terms of religiosity than it is to most other Middle Eastern countries. Although the GAAMAN results may be exaggerated, it is clear… – Read More

Could Iran’s Government Fall?

Geopolitics, Regionalism, Religion, Southwest Asia and North Africa / By

In lecturing last night in my Stanford University Continuing Studies (adult education) class on the current protest movement in Iran, I asked one big question and provided three different possible answers. The question was: “Could massive, determined and prolonged protests bring down the Iranian Government?”

The first answer was “extremely unlikely.” Massive protests have been occurring almost continually in Iran since the so-called Green Movement of 2009, but none has shown any sign of appreciably weakening the Iranian government. In comparative terms as well, protest movements rarely result in such a major change. Repression generally works… – Read More

The Geography of Religion in Montana (and the Rest of the US)

County Atlas of Montana, Cultural Geography, Montana Atlas, North America, Religion / By

The map of religious adherence in the United States defies some common perceptions. Membership in a religious organization, for example, is shown as higher rate in southern New England than in the eastern part of the so-called Bible Belt. The data used to make these maps, however, are not necessarily accurate, and they do not measure the intensity of religious belief. Religious adherence, moreover, has been declining almost everywhere over the past several decades. But the basic patterns depicted in… – Read More

Cannabis Legalization and the Electoral Geography of Montana

County Atlas of Montana, Cultural Geography, Montana Atlas, North America, Religion / By

Only two reliably Republican-voting states have fully legalized cannabis: Montana and Alaska.  It is not coincidental that both are in the West. Western conservatism leans in a more libertarian direction than Southern or Midwestern conservatism, with the important exception of the deeply religious LDS (Mormon) region centered on Utah and eastern Idaho. – Read More

Radicalization of Russia’s Muslims—Are Crimean Tatars Next? (Part 2)

Asya Pereltsvaig, Cultural Geography, Geopolitics, Guest Posts, Insurgencies, Myth of the Nation-State, Nationalism, Protest Movements, Religion, Russia, Ukraine, and Caucasus / By

[Part 1 can be read here. Thanks to Iryna Novosyolova for a helpful discussion of some of the issues discussed in this post.]

 

In 2014, the Russian Federation acquired another Muslim group that may prove troublesome both within Russia and globally: the Crimean Tatars. According to the 2002 Russian census, there were only 4,131 Crimean Tatars living in the country, concentrated in Krasnodar Krai in southern Russia; the March 2014 annexation of Crimea, however, brought with it some 245,000 Crimean Tatars. The referendum, which allegedly showed an overwhelming desire of the people of Crimea to… – Read More

Radicalization of Russia’s Muslims—Are Crimean Tatars Next? (Part 1)

Asya Pereltsvaig, Cultural Geography, Guest Posts, Insurgencies, Myth of the Nation-State, Nationalism, Religion, Russia, Ukraine, and Caucasus, The Caucasus, Uncategorized / By

[Thanks to Iryna Novosyolova for a helpful discussion of some of the issues discussed in this post.]

 

A recent article in Foreign Affairs listed the use of the French language as the best predictor of a country’s rate of Sunni radicalization and violence, and particularly of the percentage of a country’s Muslim population that joins in the international Jihad. According to ICSR estimate, of all Western European countries France has supplied the largest number of foreign fighters to ISIS in absolute terms, whereas Belgium leads in per capita terms (40 per million population)… – Read More

Tatarstan: A “Hostage of Freezing Relations between Russia and Turkey”?

Asya Pereltsvaig, Autonomous Zones, Education, Energy, Ethnicity, Guest Posts, Linguistic Geography, Myth of the Nation-State, Religion, Russia, Ukraine, and Caucasus / By

[Many thanks to Ekaterina Lyutikova for most helpful discussions of some of the issues discussed in this post, as well as for the photos, some of which are used as illustrations below. I’m also grateful to Martin W. Lewis for helpful discussions and edits and for modifying the Wikipedia map of Percentage of Ethnic Tatars, used below.]

Tatarstan_location

Tatarstan has not been much of a geopolitical hotspot in recent years and has largely remained “under the radar” for most mainstream Western media. This may soon change, however… – Read More

Is Japan a Religiously Divided Country? Fabian Drixler on Japan’s East/West Divide

Cultural Geography, East Asia, Religion / By

 

Japan Religion MapI was surprised by the depiction of Japan in Scolbert08’s map of world religion. The map depicts the main island of Honshu as essentially bifurcated into a more Buddhist west and a more Shinto east and northeast*; Shinto is also shown as more prevalent on the island of Shikoku and to a lesser extent in southern Kyushu, whereas Hokkaido in the far north is also shown as slightly more Buddhist. Okinawa in the far south, in contrast, is mapped as “other,” which in this case evidently… – Read More

Most Moravians Live In Tanzania: The Global Spread of the Moravian and Mennonite Faiths

Cultural Geography, Religion, World / By

The Moravian Church has a good claim to being the oldest Protestant denomination, tracing its origin back to the Bohemian Reformation of the early 15th century, closely associated with Jan Huss. “Hussites” were persecuted at the time and eventually defeated in battle, and during the Counter-Reformation, Bohemia and Moravia were brought back into the Roman Catholic fold. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia today, however, some 100,000 to 180,000 people belong to the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, which follows the traditions of the Bohemian Reformation, although it did not break away (again) from the Roman Catholic Church until after… – Read More

The Global Spread of Heterodox Christianity

Cartography, Cultural Geography, Religion, World / By

Other Religion Map 1As noted in an earlier post, I regard Scolbert08’s map of world religions as a cartographic masterpiece. I do, however, have some qualms about the categories that it employs. I am particularly dissatisfied with the “other” grouping, which is composed, according to the key, of indigenous/animist Other Religion Map 2faiths, non-Trinitarian Christianity, and Sikhism. These religions, or groups of religions, hardly belong together. The map’s general classification scheme, moreover, reserves three and a third of its nine categories… – Read More

Intriguing Patterns in Scolbert08’s Map of Religion in Insular Southeast Asia

Cultural Geography, Religion, Southeast Asia / By

Insular Southeast Asia Religion MapScolbert08 does an excellent job of mapping the religious complexity of Insular Southeast Asia and Papua New Guinea. I have therefore posted a detail of his or her map of world religion that focuses on this region, both with and without my own annotations. Many interesting and important spatial patterns of religious affiliation are revealed on the map.

Scolbert08’s map does not show the presence of animism (mapped as “other”), which is widespread across the eastern portion of the region. That is to be expected, however… – Read More