WI: Major World Religion founded after Islam?

[Augustus Montes]

I don't think it will happen, and I don't want it to happen... not because I have something against Mormonism itself, but because right now, Mormonism is quite conservative. If it became less conservative, maybe it could have a chance.

Well, what we want to happen is pretty irrelevant to the creation of a different TL. I'm fairly certain no one wants 1984 to happen, and yet we still make such dystopian TLs.

At the same time, I'm not sure how realistic It is for Mornonism to take over in such a manner. Then again, how likely was it for Christianity to take over Rome?

 

[SunDeep]

Originally Posted by Mongo View Post
Sikhism is already fairly close, with ~30 million adherents. It was founded in 1699 as a reaction to Islam, incorporating a number of Abrahamic tenets but remaining a Dharmic religion. It definitely has a reputation as being a "warrior religion", the Sikhs are not noted for being pacifists.

If it were slightly more popular, and its adherents had succeeded in fully holding back the tide of Islam, it could certainly have spread through much of Southern and Central Asia, meeting the requirements of the OP.

Originally Posted by Ganesha View Post
Sikhism does sound like a good candidate.

There's a problem, however, which it shares with the Baha'i faith.

Neither religion proselytizes. One of the main reasons Christianity and Islam were so phenomenally successful, and continue to be, is that they actively seek out new converts. Without that, growth is a much slower process.
.....

Cheers,
Ganesha

The thing is, while Sikhism isn't nearly as active and aggressive in proselytizing as Christianity or Islam (or Mormonism) are- as one would should really expect from a religion which cites freedom of faith as a basic human right- it still does proselytize. Further back in its history, it was a far more evangelical faith than it is now- especially during the Sikh Empire's rule, when it's estimated that the Sikh share of the religious demographic in their empire- which extended across the Indian and Pakistani regions of Punjab, Kashmir, and Pakhtunkwa, coming up to a estimated population of 23>24M, or roughly 1.9% of the total world population- increased almost sixfold, from around 3% to 17% in the space of only 4 decades.

Since the conquest of its empire by the British East India Company, Sikhism's share of the world population has remained almost constant at roughly 0.35%; but if the Sikh Empire had endured longer, Sikhism would certainly have been a larger religion, perhaps even coming to hold a majority within their own kingdom if given enough time. If we look at the present-day geographic footprint of the Sikh Empire, it's currently home to almost 170M people (i.r.o. 2.4%W) IOTL. In a timeline where the Sikh Empire survived to the present day, the 100M mark might even be attainable without going out of the way to seek new converts further afield.

Even if we rule out the slightly (but not entirely) ASB possibility of such a Sikh Empire expanding its territories further over the years though, a Sikh missionary ITTL wouldn't necessarily be limited to focusing their efforts within their own borders. India, particularly Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and the rest of IOTL's Pakistan- adherence to Sikhism and public displays of faith may well become restricted, even persecuted to a degree the longer that the British Raj remains in charge and Sikh Raj remains free, with the religion becoming associated with resistance and anti-imperialism; but this association would also be one of the greatest enticements to take up the faith among the wider Indian populace.

Afghanistan would have been a tougher nut to crack, but the independent kingdoms along their mutual borders- including the strategically located Wakhan, which the Afghans only brought under their rule in 1883 after the British told them to, and still encompassed almost half the area of Tajikistan to boot- could have offered fertile preaching grounds, serving as a staging point to spread the message along the trading routes to the vast plains of Central Asia and Xinjiang (/Yaqub Beg's 'Kashgaria', depending on when they got there) which lay beyond.

Final thought though; the reason why the world's 4 largest religions, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism, are all so big, isn't just because of how hard they preached. It's because of the regimes which supported their expansion, and which still do support them to the present day. Historically, the overwhelming majority of 1st generation members of these big religions weren't spiritually won over by preachers, they were convinced to convert by far more logical, practical arguments. Convinced by militias and lawmen, in order to avoid execution or incarceration; convinced by landowners, so that they could have places to live and grow food; convinced by bureaucrats, who imposed discriminatory laws and taxes upon those who failed to follow the official religion. In the Sikh Kingdom, where none of these professions reputedly displayed any religious bias, would mere societal pressure and national pride have been enough...?

 

[Ganesha]

Final thought though; the reason why the world's 4 largest religions, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism, are all so big, isn't just because of how hard they preached. It's because of the regimes which supported their expansion, and which still do support them to the present day. Historically, the overwhelming majority of 1st generation members of these big religions weren't spiritually won over by preachers, they were convinced to convert by far more logical, practical arguments. Convinced by militias and lawmen, in order to avoid execution or incarceration; convinced by landowners, so that they could have places to live and grow food; convinced by bureaucrats, who imposed discriminatory laws and taxes upon those who failed to follow the official religion. In the Sikh Kingdom, where none of these professions reputedly displayed any religious bias, would mere societal pressure and national pride have been enough...?

Your analysis of Sikhism seems much better than mine, so I bow to your expertise there.

But in your characterization of the reasons for conversion to Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, you ignore the history of Hinduism.

Not only does Hinduism explicitly not proselytize (which has been followed in practice in most eras), it has been notable for a lack of state support over its long history. The Mauryas after Ashoka (and many Maurya successor states like the Palas) were state sponsors of Buddhism, and Hinduism came as close as it ever has to dying out. The Mughals and their predecessors sponsored Islam up to and even after Akbar's reign. Hinduism stands apart from the Abrahamic religions and from Buddhism - it endures in spite of constant outside pressure, and does not seek to spread.

Cheers,
Ganesha

 

[Errnge]

I personally am a big fan of the idea of the vikings reforming their religious systems and becoming aggressive religiously in response to encroaching christianity. if northern and western europe, as well as the baltic and russia, went pagan (or stayed pagan in some cases), that would certainly be interesting.

 

[caliburdeath]

I personally am a big fan of the idea of the vikings reforming their religious systems and becoming aggressive religiously in response to encroaching christianity. if northern and western europe, as well as the baltic and russia, went pagan (or stayed pagan in some cases), that would certainly be interesting.

I think you would have to have an earlier POD than the proselytizing into Scandinavia for that to work. Still, I love the idea.

 

[Errnge]

I think you would have to have an earlier POD than the proselytizing into Scandinavia for that to work. Still, I love the idea.

It's kind of an idea that is built on Great Man history theory, so it's kind of hard to talk about in hypotheticals

 

[Sift Green]

Maybe Mormonism will do to the United States and the West what Christianity did to the Roman Empire.

I don't think it will happen, and I don't want it to happen... not because I have something against Mormonism itself, but because right now, Mormonism is quite conservative. If it became less conservative, maybe it could have a chance.

It is an interesting thing to me that many people seem to think a movement has to become less or more of something in order to have long term success, especially when it comes to religions becoming less conservative. Yes, religions that are too conservative are not really capable of reaching out to others and gaining converts. However, people forget that if they make a religion too lax people do not feel the conviction necessary to change their ways and join the religion.

If we look at the corse of history the religions that succeed in the long term have been religions with a more conservative bent. Religions that have a more liberal bent tend to loose the "us and not us" boundaries that make it worth joining the religion instead of just listening to what they say and then ignoring it. The only religion I know of that actually benefits from being incredibly lax about ideas and doctrine is Hinduism, and that laxness serves to keep Hindus from seeing the need to study other religions, and doesn't help it grow.

I mean, staying with Mormonism as an example, their were two major Mormon Churches; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (I will reefer to it as LDS from this point on), and the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (today known as the Community of Christ, I will reefer to it as CoC from now on). Both the LDS church and the CoC reached the million member mark around the same time, and both were growing at a pretty decent speed. At this time, the only real difference between the churches was the LDS church believed that President Young and the Apostles had the priesthood authority to run the Church, and the CoC believed that you needed a blood decedent of Joseph Smith Jr. to have the authority to run the church. But then the CoC experienced financial trouble do to spending money they didn't really have, and accepted a bailout from a non-denominational group on the conditions that it liberalized some of its doctrine to make it resemble more mainstream non-denominational doctrine. The CoC's growth stopped after that. In an effort to start growing again, the CoC liberalized almost all of its doctrine to resemble the stereotypical liberals views on social issues. At that moment the CoC began to shrink. It is still shrinking today and it is starting to go through financial struggles again. The LDS church has maintained the core things that make it different from the rest of society, and it continues to grow.

The LDS church stayed conservative, and it is the Church that has now officially gone past the 15 million membership mark, is on par with Judaism in regards to official adherents, and is still growing fast enough to necessitate a construction program that completes one new chapel every workday of the year. The CoC became more liberal and it will be doing good if it continues to exist and not become a foot note in the history of the LDS church.

So I think Mormonism will keep growing perfectly fine without changing any of its positions.

Well, what we want to happen is pretty irrelevant to the creation of a different TL. I'm fairly certain no one wants 1984 to happen, and yet we still make such dystopian TLs.

At the same time, I'm not sure how realistic It is for Mornonism to take over in such a manner. Then again, how likely was it for Christianity to take over Rome?

Christianity took over the Roman Empire because Constantine made it take over the Roman Empire. Although an estimated third of the Roman Empire was Christian at that time, Christianity wasn't large enough to actually take over the empire at that time. Constantine saw a religious group that had a strong conviction that could serve the empire well if it had more direction (it had no real direction do to a loss of leadership when the apostles were killed).

So Constantine took Christianity and started to shape it and give it a new direction. He was able to shape it do to a lack of leadership. This was one of the reasons why Constantine and his associates found the Christianity of their day appealing. Mormonism would be different.

Mormonism is unique among religions because its leadership is still around to lead. This means that it is too coherent of a structure to become integrated into a nation the way that past religious movements have been.

So I don't see Mormonism taking over the U.S. the same way that other religions have dominated the societies in the past. If Mormonism dominates a country it will be do to the majority of that areas people converting. I think that is possible given enough.

 

[Incognito]

I don't think it will happen, and I don't want it to happen... not because I have something against Mormonism itself, but because right now, Mormonism is quite conservative. If it became less conservative, maybe it could have a chance.

You know, I'm no Mormon but I find it funny that a religion that advocated the abandonment of monogamy and reached out to people of colour in 1800s is "too conservative" in your view .

 

[SunDeep]

You know, I'm no Mormon but I find it funny that a religion that advocated the abandonment of monogamy and reached out to people of colour in 1800s is "too conservative" in your view .

Well, the oldest, most conservative branches of Islam also advocated the abandonment of monogamy, and even those regimes who enslaved 'people of colour', both Christian and Islamic, 'reached out' to them as prime targets for conversion. So, yeah, by contemporary standards, Mormonism is pretty conservative; but personally, I'm with Sift Green in thinking that this actually gives the faith a better chance of success in expanding its membership.

Still, it's pretty hard to imagine a timeline which could allow for 100M+ Mormons prior to the present-day, and if there was one, it'd be extremely ASB. Perhaps an outcome to a full-on nuclear WW3 in which Utah remains virtually unscathed, becoming the centre of a new national entity when the USA balkanises, with polygamy enforced as official policy to mount a aggressive re-population drive?

 

[othyrsyde]

I personally am a big fan of the idea of the vikings reforming their religious systems and becoming aggressive religiously in response to encroaching christianity. if northern and western europe, as well as the baltic and russia, went pagan (or stayed pagan in some cases), that would certainly be interesting.

That would be tight.

 

[tuareg109]

I'm just wondering--no offensive incredulity or snarkiness intended--why Mormonism and Catharism aren't considered as part of Christianity for the purposes of this thread?

 

[caliburdeath]

I'm just wondering--no offensive incredulity or snarkiness intended--why Mormonism and Catharism aren't considered as part of Christianity for the purposes of this thread?

They are; in the same way that Christians are Jews. While they remain more connected with other forms of Christianity OTL, if they were bigger and with some hand-waving in an ATL the division might be enough to make them think of themselves as Judaism 3.0 Instead of Christianity 1.4

 

[tuareg109]

They are; in the same way that Christians are Jews. While they remain more connected with other forms of Christianity OTL, if they were bigger and with some hand-waving in an ATL the division might be enough to make them think of themselves as Judaism 3.0 Instead of Christianity 1.4

*Judaism 4.0* You're forgetting Islam

I definitely see your point, I understand now.

 

[Sift Green]

I'm just wondering--no offensive incredulity or snarkiness intended--why Mormonism and Catharism aren't considered as part of Christianity for the purposes of this thread?

Personally I consider them Christian. I think when people classify them as non-christian they are ether using a definition that goes along with a pop-culture mindset that says they aren't Christian, or they are grouping religions according to the books that are considered scripture and not scripture. I.e. Jews and Christians are different because Jews don't accept books written after a certain date scripture, and Christians are not Jews because they accept books written between 1 A.D. and 70 A.D. as scripture in addition to those books written before 1 A.D. One needs to remember that Christianity and Judaism started out as the same thing, but as the Apostles started to spread the message of Jesus as a savior from sin the Jews were opposed to this began to move away from doctrines that were considered too Christian; and as more people of non-Jewish decent began to convert to Christianity they began to reject ideas that were too Hebrew to mesh with the philosophical traditions of the day.

In other words, the Jews of the First century did not want the Christians to be Jews, so they did everything they could to eject them from the concept of Judaism. At the same time the formally pagan christians did not want to be considered Jewish, so they accepted this rejection and made the gap wider.

A similar kind of thing seems to be the reason for people considering Mormonism and Catharism to be non-christian. Mainstream Christianity did not want to consider them Christian, so they tried to crush them (just like mainstream Judaism tried to crush the Apostles). They succeeded with Catharism, but when they failed with Mormonism they moved on to try and eject Mormonism from the concept of Christianity. The difference here is that unlike the formally pagan Christians that did not like certain Hebraic ideas and were willing to accept that rejection, Mormons do not want to accept that rejection.

Personally, I feel that by the time Mormonism is big enough for people to call it the next major religion the only people that will reject Mormonism's Christianity will be small diehard sects and certain historians and social studies that like to split hairs.

 

[Sift Green]

They are; in the same way that Christians are Jews. While they remain more connected with other forms of Christianity OTL, if they were bigger and with some hand-waving in an ATL the division might be enough to make them think of themselves as Judaism 3.0 Instead of Christianity 1.4

*Judaism 4.0* You're forgetting Islam

I definitely see your point, I understand now.

And I see that in the time it took me to type that, the question was already answered to the satisfaction of the asker.

Oh well, better luck next time.

 

[caliburdeath]

*Judaism 4.0* You're forgetting Islam

I definitely see your point, I understand now.

I didn't forget Islam, they would've considered that heretical, and that they were the 'true' Judaism 3.0

 

[tuareg109]

And I see that in the time it took me to type that, the question was already answered to the satisfaction of the asker.

Oh well, better luck next time.

I never mind reading a deeper explanation.

I didn't forget Islam, they would've considered that heretical, and that they were the 'true' Judaism 3.0

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Hinduism is one of those hard to define things that comprises multitudes of schools of thought and is subject to interpretation.

By the same token, what if Confucianism became more of an organized religion at some POD post-Islam and later on became recognized as a true religion?

I have a feeling that even in Hendryk's Superpower China, you couldn't really say that Confucianism is a major world religion. It's more of a system of ethics, various schools of ideology, and a way for society to be organized. It's almost like categorizing secular humanism as a faith. (Comparative religion must be interesting in his world.) But maybe if Confucianism had more supernatural and ritualized elements, or whatever it is that makes a religion a religion, it would be considered as one like how Hinduism is?

 

[raharris1973]

A Viking analogue of Islam might do it:

The old "submission" timeline from soc.history.what-if featured a prophet launching a new messianic religion at the time of Viking expansion

http://groups.google.com/groups/sea...&as_usubject=Submission&as_uauthors=&safe=off

Scandinavia and the British Isles belonging to such a new religion might not meet the population requirements of the OP, but if descendants of Scandinavian followers of the faith end up becoming a substantial basis for the population of the Americas, or have wild political, and religious, success in western Europe or Russia, that could work.

A second, somewhat similar choice would be a Slavic analogue of Islam, where a Slavic prophet with a slavonic liturgy preempts the spread of Christianity in northeast Europe. presuming Russian becomes a going concern, its going to mean alot of people.

As a third choice, if you come up with anything that catches on really big in China (or India), that would do the trick. And, as the discussion on Sikhism shows, India was more open to a new prophetic teaching than the Muslim or Christian world.

Violating the OP, because Manichaenism predates Mohammed, might be Manichaenism becoming the faith of Turkic tribes, and they could end up replacing Islam with it in areas where they have prolonged political power and demographic settlement.

 

[Sift Green]

Hinduism is one of those hard to define things that comprises multitudes of schools of thought and is subject to interpretation.

That is kind of what I meant when I said Hinduism is the only religion I know of that has benefitted from a lax view of ideas and doctrine. By not having a core set of doctrines beyond some vaguely defined concepts of karma and reincarnation, all of these thousands of different schools of thought popped up and present thousands of different things that Hindus will still call Hindu. Because of all the radically different kinds of Hinduism it is difficult for someone who grew up in that culture to view another religion as not Hindu. Sense they have difficulty viewing other religions as not Hindu they don't bother looking into other religions as they have been raised too syncretistic to comprehend fundamental differences with a passing glance. (At least this has been my experience with the few Hindus I have meet).

And as I said before, the benefit is in keeping its adherents from investigating other religions in any manner past a polite "Oh, thats nice," before moving forward doing what they are used to doing. It doesn't help spread Hinduism beyond the Sub-continent and the ethic groups that are decedent from there. In order for something to be appealing to join you have to have clear lines to define what you are joining.

Now I suppose their are branches of thought in Hinduism that might have enough of a conservative bend in doctrinal principles to spread and grow, but I think those groups ether end up being classified as non-hindu by sociologists after they reach a certain point in development, like Jainism; or they have never bothered to spread beyond their immediate surroundings in India. After all, one of the key things people use when they try to define Hinduism is the Indian saying "All paths lead to God," so the motive to spread doctrine and ideas has probably never been a major part of the mishmash we call Hinduism.

By the same token, what if Confucianism became more of an organized religion at some POD post-Islam and later on became recognized as a true religion?

I have a feeling that even in Hendryk's Superpower China, you couldn't really say that Confucianism is a major world religion. It's more of a system of ethics, various schools of ideology, and a way for society to be organized. It's almost like categorizing secular humanism as a faith. (Comparative religion must be interesting in his world.) But maybe if Confucianism had more supernatural and ritualized elements, or whatever it is that makes a religion a religion, it would be considered as one like how Hinduism is?

I suppose the first question that needs to be asked here is: "What is the line between religion, philosophy, and ideology?" It is a line that is difficult to draw as it is incredibly easy to blur. I know some schools of Islam that view Islam as all three. Also, Greek Philosophy is usually just considered a philosophy in-spite Neoplatonism and some other branches being treated like religions by the people who practiced them.

So I don't think it would be that difficult for a school of Confucian thought to become considered a full blown religion.