World Religions

Introduction to World Religions Study Guide This group emerged from the Bible Student movement and was founded by Charles Taze Russell in the late 1870s. He started the Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society. Joseph Franklin Rutherford organized and made more doctrinal changes, and based the group’s name on Isaiah 43:10-12 in 1931: Jehovah’s Witnesses. Jehovah’s Witnesses are known for their door-to-door preaching and giving out literature, such as The Watchtower and Awake . They refuse military service and blood transfusions. They consider the name “Jehovah” as necessary for proper worship. They reject Trinitarianism, inherent immortality of the soul, and hellfire. Members do not celebrate Christmas, Easter, birthdays, holidays, or customs they consider to be pagan. They refer to their body of beliefs as “the truth” and consider themselves to be “in the truth”. They consider secular society to be morally corrupt and under the influence of Satan. They limit their social interaction with non-Witnesses. Those who do not hold their beliefs receive disciplinary action and they disfellowship them, or expel them. Baptized individuals who formally leave the church are considered disassociated and are also shunned. If they request it and are deemed repentant, they can be accepted back into the church. Their beliefs of not serving in the military and not saluting the national flag has resulted in some trouble with the government worldwide. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been persecuted, and activities have been banned or restricted in some countries. 9.7 Mormonism Mormonism is the predominant religious tradition of the Latter-day Saint movement. In the 1820s, Joseph Smith, Jr. founded the movement. As it grew in the 1830s and 1840s, Mormonism distinguished itself as a non-traditional Protestantism. This is a new, non-Protestant faith. After Smith’s death, the Mormons followed Brigham Young west and called themselves the Church of the Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). There are other variations of Mormonism, such as Mormon fundamentalism, which has maintained practices and doctrines associated with polygamy that have been discontinued by the LDS church. There is a common set of beliefs, including the use of and belief in the Bible and other religious texts, such as the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. They also accept the Pearl of Great Price as part of its scriptural canon, with a history of teaching eternal marriage, eternal progression, and plural marriage. There are cultural Mormons who identify with the culture, but not the theology. 9.8 Evangelicalism Evangelicalism is a protestant Christian movement that began in the 17 th century and became an organized movement in the 1730s in the Methodist Church of England and with the Lutheran Pietists in Germany and Scandinavia. During the series of Great Awakenings of the 18 th and 19 th ©2018 Achieve Page 92 of 96