Maximum world religious diversity without eliminating Christianity or Islam

[Kyro92]

Today there are only four religions whose faithful exceed 1% of the world's population: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism(and arguably a fifth, if we include the nebulously defined Chinese religious/philosophical traditions). And of those four/five, Christianity and Islam have a near-duopoly outside of the Eastern half of Eurasia, with most of their faithful following relatively orthodox(from an outsider's perspective) denominations.

With a POD no earlier then Abu Bakr's victory in Ridda wars(so avoiding the obvious cop-out of "no Caliphate"), how much more diverse could the world's religious landscape be?

 

[A Most Sovereign Lady]

Make the Abrahamics less murder-happy regarding anyone who doesn't follow their god.

 

[Timaeus]

Have the Caliphate somehow not defeat either the Romans nor the Sassanids, instead going south down through Axum? That would keep Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism from fading, perhaps?

 

[Torbald]

Heresies, heresies everywhere

 

[Timaeus]

Heresies, heresies everywhere

But OP implied that those don't count.

 

[Deleted member 97083]

Justinian successfully reunites the Empire, making Christianity (at least Chalcedonian Christianity) a Roman-Empire-only thing that no one outside of the Empire wants to adopt for fear of becoming a Roman puppet.

When Islam appears, the Byzantines ally with the Persians and prevent the Caliphate from expanding. The maximum extent of Christianity and Islam is the Mediterranean+Arabia.

 

[Timaeus]

Justinian successfully reunites the Empire, making Christianity (at least Chalcedonian Christianity) a Roman-Empire-only thing that no one outside of the Empire wants to adopt for fear of becoming a Roman puppet.

When Islam appears, the Byzantines ally with the Persians and prevent the Caliphate from expanding. The maximum extent of Christianity and Islam is the Mediterranean+Arabia.

Hm. But by the time of Justinian, many of the Germanic people had already converted to Arian Christianity.

 

[Deleted member 97083]

Hm. But by the time of Justinian, many of the Germanic people had already converted to Arian Christianity.

True but only the ones that migrated into the Roman Empire. The few Christians on the other side of the Rhine/Danube can be re-paganized by Anglo-Saxons and Slavs. Crucially, the Anglo-Saxons made parts of Britain Norse religion majority, and the Slavic tribes were able to partially reverse Christianization in Illyria and what would be Austria. Not due to conversion in either case, but settlement/assimilation. Add the Vikings later and the Hungarians and Cumans and you've got some significant reinforcement of paganism; all the while, Christianity is seen as the religion of the Roman Empire and only the Roman Empire.

Meanwhile, the Franks can be fully settled inside of Gaul rather than at its northern periphery, preventing them from getting any proto-crusader ideas about the Saxons.

 

[Sian]

who's to say that Arian Christianity might not take the same route as Arabic Christianity which could be argued morphed (fairly aggressively temporally speaking) into Islam,

 

[Deleted member 97083]

who's to say that Arian Christianity might not take the same route as Arabic Christianity which could be argued morphed (fairly aggressively temporally speaking) into Islam,

That's definitely a possibility, although without the simultaneous, combined influences of Judaism, Pre-Islamic Arabic polytheism, Arabic culture, and the Christian desert monastic traditions, then an Arian Christianity turned separate religion will be significantly different from Islam. There could be strong similarities though.

 

[Sian]

That's definitely a possibility, although without the simultaneous, combined influences of Judaism, Pre-Islamic Arabic polytheism, Arabic culture, and the Christian desert monastic traditions, then an Arian Christianity turned separate religion will be significantly different from Islam. There could be strong similarities though.

I didn't even try to say that Arian Christianity would turn into something remotely similar to Islam ... Just that it would take a somewhat similar turn as Arabian Christianity (IIRC its all but acknowledged that Mohammed was layman Christian (if of the oriental 'school') to some extent, before he founded Islam) In that it would later be morphed into a completely different religion, even if it perhaps was still considered to be of the Abrahamic school ...

 

[Russian]

The most fascinating variant is making Genghis Khan a religious figure, a prophet, similar to Muhammad in Arabia.
In OTL shamanistic tengrism was quite powerful among the Mongols; the shaman Kokochu (Teb-Tengri) even competed with Genghis Khan himself for power over the Mongols (Genghis khan sanctioned his younger brother Temuge to kill Kokochu in a staged wrestling match).
And that incident somehow frustrated Genghis Khan and he became suspicious of tengrism and started to support some other religions without giving any preference to the "national" Mongol religion.

But what if... I mean the PoD:
- after killing the shaman Kokochu, Genghis Khan realized the strength and importance of the 'national' tengrism and started to 'hear voices from the sky', to 'see things', to 'communicate with the heaven'.
In OTL there was "Yasser by Genghis Khan" a code of law or something like that, at least there's a strong evidence that it existed. It functioned like Quran for the Mongols with exception that it didn't deal with religion and didn't have any religious authority; and consequently the "Yasser by Genghis Khan" was substituted by Islamic or Buddhist codes.

In ATL the "Yasser by Genghis Khan" is a religious text and all the Mongols are prohibited to profess any other religion but tengrizm, and start to propagate the 'Mongol tengrizm', converting other peoples, starting with nomads obviously.
Of course "Mongol Tegrizm by Genghis Khan" would be a mix of shamanism with Nestorianism, Buddhism, Islam and what else, but all the world religions are the mix.

Voila! The new world religion!

 

[Vuru]

Well, you make other religions more organized (pretty much every pagan religion) and less national and exclusive (judaism, zoroastrianism)

There you go, the world is a shitshow of religions that want to kill each other probably

 

[GeographyDude]

@Russian

' . . And that incident somehow frustrated Genghis Khan and he became suspicious of tengrism and started to support some other religions without giving any preference to the "national" Mongol religion. . '

Ah, a non-goody-two shoes reason for supporting religious liberty.

 

[Arkenfolm]

More Manichaean Turks. Khazars convert to Manichaeanism instead of Judaism, and spread this religion far more widely than they spread Judaism OTL. Large segments of the Turkic peoples end up Manichaean. The Golden Horde converts to Manichaeanism, basically meaning the religion of most Turkic peoples in Russia is Manichaeanism. Pockets of Manichaeanism survive in the Middle East as well because of Turkic invasions and migrations.

Perhaps Islam is weakened in parts of Central Asia leading to more Manichaeans (or even Buddhists). In places like Xinjiang, the Uyghurs are all almost all Manichaean. In China, Manichaeanism maintains itself as a major minority, perhaps bigger than the Hui. Total number of Manichaeans should maybe be about 50-75 million.

Oh, and let's have fewer pograms and of course no Holocaust to increase the number of Jews. Maybe also have Karaite Judaism survive in larger numbers, as well as the Samaritans. Total number of Jews and Samaritans would be maybe 20-22 million.

 

[JackLumber]

I always did kinda like the idea of Arian christianity morphing into a kind of Germanic monotheism

 

[Crying]

For maximum religious diversity you need three things that are simple, but highly unlikely (as in ASB) to happen:

- You need most, countries (or at least most of the major ones) to be very religiously tolerant.
- You need people to generally be more stubborn and cling to their beliefs/be more resistant to conversion.
- You need religions to be less organized and codified, so that splinter sects can develop more often.

 

[CountPeter]

I always did kinda like the idea of Arian christianity morphing into a kind of Germanic monotheism

That could hypothetically be possible.
I could never find where it has been sourced from, but numerous history books I have read have mentioned a popular story regarding the spread of Christianity to the Germanic/Norse peoples. As the story goes, the preists would respond to the germanic apocalyptic myth with a fun twist; it had already happened in the last cycle and that the Bible told the story of the returned Baldr's reign. I have no idea if this happened or not, but there are interesting parrallels with the Irish book of Invasions, which likewise transformed traditional pagan myth into a Christian context.

If you buy the idea that Arian Christianity would have led to a less united "romanisation"/unifcation of the church in western europe, and you also buy the story above, it isn't outside the realm of reason that a germanic monotheism could have come about.