RELIGIONS, CLASSIFICATION OF

the attempt to systematize and bring order to a vast range of knowledge about religious beliefs, practices, and institutions. It has been the goal of students of religion for many centuries but especially so with the increased knowledge of the world's religions and the advent of modern methods of scientific inquiry in the last two centuries. The classification of religions involves: (1) the effort to establish groupings among historical religious communities having certain elements in common or, (2) the attempt to categorize similar religious phenomena to reveal the structure of religious experience as a whole. Additional reading Two monographs dealing specifically with the classification of religions, each of which offers a survey of previous classifications in addition to the author's own scheme, are Duren J.H. Ward, The Classification of Religions: Different Methods, Their Advantages and Disadvantages (1909); and Fred Louis Parrish, The Classification of Religions: Its Relation to the History of Religions (1941), containing a full survey of classification schemes with brief characterizations of each and the best bibliographical guide for pursuing the subject in depth. Other books for further study are as follows: P.D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, 2 vol. (188789; Eng. trans. of vol. 1, Manual of the Science of Religion, 1891), which includes classification problems at the beginning of vol. 1; C.P. Tiele, Elements of the Science of Religion, 2 vol. (189799), a classic work by an important scholar on this subject; and F. Max Mueller, Introduction to the Science of Religion (1873), another classic work. Of more recent origin is Gustav Mensching, Die Religion: Erscheinungsformen, Strukturtypen und Lebensgesetze (1959), a popular manual of the history of religions that includes a long section on classification problems. Charles Joseph Adams