Data source: Gina A. Zurlo, ed., World Religion Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| Shaivites | Worshippers of Shiva (Siva) in several schools, including Pasupata, Kashmiri, Siddha, Gorakhnatha, Vira; also diversity according to geographic location in India. |
| shakubuku | (Japanese). The aggressive-conversion process practiced by the New Religious movement, Soka Gakkai. |
| shaman | A priest-doctor who uses magic to cure the sick, to divine the hidden, and to control events that affect people’s welfare. |
| shamanists | Ethnoreligionists with a hierarchy of shamans and healers. |
| sharia | (Arabic). Islamic law. |
| sheik, sheikh | Muslim religious leader or cleric or scholar; an Arab chief. |
| Shias | (Shi’is). Followers of the smaller of the 2 great divisions of Islam, rejecting the Sunna and holding that Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali was the Prophet’s successor and itself divided into the Ithna-Ashari Ismaili, Alawite and Zaydi sects. |
| Shintoists | Followers of the indigenous religion of Japan, a collective of native beliefs and mythology dating back to 660 BCE and includes worship at public shrines in devotion to a number of gods. |
| Sikhs | Followers of the Sikhism, founded by Guru Nanak in the 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent. Traditions include Akali, Khalsa, Nanapanthi, Nirmali, Sewapanthi, and Udasi. |
| skeptic | (skeptic). An unbeliever, agnostic. |
| skepticism | The doctrine that any true knowledge is impossible or that all knowledge is uncertain especially in matters of religion; agnosticism. |
| slumdwellers | Persons residing in make-shift dwellings on the streets of the world’s cities. |
| sociolect | An idiom or dialect differing from a standard only in pronunciation, accent, or special vocabulary. |
| sociology of religion | The study of religion from the standpoint of the science of society, social institutions, and social relationships. |
| sociopeople | A people or population group defined primarily by some sociological category such as class, caste, occupation, age, abode, for which a specific evangelistic strategy may be developed; sometimes regarded as a bridge people useful for initiating evangelism. |
| sorcerer | A person who practices sorcery; a wizard, magician. |
| sorcery | The use of power gained from the assistance or control of evil spirits, especially for divining; necromancy, wizardry, black magic. |
| source_type | Source of the data, such as Census, Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Afrobarometer Surveys, Pew Global Attitude Surveys (PGAP), World Values Surveys (WVS). |
| Southern Buddhism | Theravada or Hinayana (qv). |
| sovereign country | A nation, being an autonomous independent country free of external control. |
| speakers | Users of a language capable of conversing in it. |
| spirit writing | Automatic writing held to be produced under the action of spirits; pneumatography. |
| Spirit, Spiritual | Adjectives widely used among African indigenous churches and in their official names, referring to the element of their control by the Holy Spirit. |
| spiritism | Belief in the action or agency of spirits of the dead producing mediumistic phenomena. See high spiritism, low spiritism. |
| Spiritists | Non-Christian spiritists or spiritualists, or thaumaturgicalists; high spiritists, as opposed to low spiritists (Afro-American syncretists), followers of medium-religions, medium-religionists. |
Data on 18 categories of religion, including non-religious, by country, province, and people.
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