Friend

Is there a good acredited source where I could research information about the different religions of Central and South Americal as well As the regions of Africa. I wanted to do a comparative study with the Abrahamic Religions.

Thanks.

~ Friend ~

Sarpedon

I don't know about accredited, but I have a lovely book called "The New Funk and Wagnalls Standardized Dictionary of Mythology Folklore and Legend." Poorly organized, old, and sometimes spotty, yet it has a marvelous wealth of miscellaneous myth and folklore, including songs, and other rituals, and an extensive bibliography that you could use to find primary sources. In addition it has larger sections that summarize mythology of various regions. It also is written very dispassionately, and seems to analyse christian practices with the same evenhandedness as the other ones. Check it out.

Ojuice5001

African religions tend to believe in a Supreme God, but one who is much more remote than the god of the Abrahamic religions. They venerate their ancestors. They believe in an afterlife that is much like life on earth. They practice divination using ashes from a dead fire.

I don't know much about South American religions.

In eleventh grade, I abandoned atheism, and African religion was the first new faith I believed in. I actually based my belief on an incident I had read where their divination had allegedly made a specific prediction that was right. I ended up deciding that this was too anecdotal to be the basis of a religion, so I abandoned Zulu-theism in favor of deism. I didn't realize at the time that reason is just too shaky to be the foundation of a theology or rejection thereof.