Of Animism and Belief in Reincarnation

"In Oriental [and African] cultures there is widespread belief in reincarnation, while in religions of the Western world, like Christianity and Islam, there are the doctrines of resurrection and immortality of the soul. All of these can be understood, in animist terms, as ways of extending the life of the soul beyond the time of death. Being separable from the flesh, the soul has an afterlife and destiny of its own. Animism also explains why sacred objects and trinkets--things called 'fetishes'--are important to [animists]. Such people are not 'idol-worshipper,' as narrow-minded Christian missionaries used to describe them. They do not worship sticks and stones; they adore the 'anima' within, the spirit which--not wholly unlike the god of Christians themselves--gives the wood of the stick or substance of the stone its life and power."

Daniel L. Pals, Eight Theories of Religion

Religious Intolerance: As It was in the Beginning...

"While the [sixteenth century European] explorers traveled, their homelands often came ablaze
with the fires of persecution and war. Communities were split apart by ferocious quarrels over theology, first between Catholics and Protestants and later among the scores and even hundreds of different religious groups that began to appear in once-unified Christendom. Amid the storms of ecclesiastical conflict and political struggle that gripped the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is not surprising that concerned believers on all sides grew ever less certain that they alone held God's final truth in their hands. The deadly, destructive wars of religion, which persisted for more than a hundred years in some lands, led people to believe that the truth about religion cannot possibly be found in sects that were prepared to torture and execute opponents, confident their work was God's will."

Daniel L. Pals, Eight Theories of Religion