traditional religion
Indigenous spiritual practice
Traditional religion refers to indigenous spiritual practices and belief systems passed down through generations within a particular culture or region, as distinct from major world religions that spread through conversion or colonization.
The term often describes African, Native American, or other local faiths rooted in ancestral customs, animism, or nature worship: Many Nigerians practice traditional religion alongside Christianity or Islam.
Sometimes used more broadly for any long-established religious practice within a community.
- shrinesSacred devotional sites
- sacred fireReligiously significant perpetual blaze
- creation mythsTraditional origin-of-everything tales
- folkloreInherited cultural narratives
- prayerAddress to deity
rituals · rite of passage · ancestor worship · sacred groves · animism · divination · shamanism · medicine man · altars · holy water · ceremonies · harvest festival · blood sacrifice · indigenous knowledge · pantheon · family lineage · spirit world · priest
- Nigerian ReligionPentecostalism, orisha, megachurches, diviners, Easter celebrations
- ancient societiesMaya civilization, Mayan civilization, Aztec Empire, Inca Empire, African kingdoms
- AngolaLuanda
- Benin Kingdombronze plaques, bronze casting, brass plaques, ivory carving, ivory carvings
- Burkina Fasoprovinces, Po, Leo, French colonization, departments
- Ibibiomasquerades, ancestral worship, scarification
traditional religionneo-paganism
Revived pre-Christian spirituality
Scientology · Wicca · Unification Church · Mormonism · Hare Krishna
traditional religionatheism
Rejection of deities
secularism · secular humanism · irreligion · materialism · antitheism
traditional religionspiritual but not religious
Personal faith, no denomination
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