Western religions

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Western religions" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Western religions are the religions that originated within Western culture, which are thus historically, culturally, and theologically distinct from Eastern, African and Iranian religions. The term Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) is often used instead of using the East and West terminology, as these originated in the Middle East.

Western culture itself was significantly influenced by the emergence of Christianity and its adoption as the state church of the Roman Empire in the late 4th century and the term "Christendom" largely indicates this intertwined history.^[1] Western Christianity was significantly influenced by Hellenistic religion (notably neoplatonism) as well as the Roman imperial cult. Western Christianity is largely based on the Catholic Church's Latin Church tradition, as opposed to Eastern Orthodoxy, from which it was divided by the Great Schism of the 11th century, and further includes all Protestant traditions that split with the Catholic Church from the 16th century onward.

Since the 19th century, Western religion has diversified into numerous new religious movements, including Occultism, Spiritism and diverse forms of Neopaganism.