Tricycle | Awake in the World

Dwight Eisenhower, a president not particularly remembered for his wit, once remarked that “all isms are wasms.” He was presumably referring, rather presciently, to the largely forgotten isms that were once perceived as a threat to truth, justice, and the American way: socialism and communism. But his remark points to the vaguely pejorative quality of “ism,” which suggests something that someone else believes in but will eventually abandon when they see the error of their ways. Where there is the one true faith - Christianity, for example - its rivals are isms of one kind or another. In the seventeenth century, only four religions were identified in the world: Christianity, Judaism, Muhammadanism, and Paganism (also known as idolatry). The history of the academic study of religion is in one sense a process of replacing Paganism with a larger list of isms: Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism, Sikhism, and Buddhism.