View a FREE sample

This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What major change did Islam cause?
(a) Great social and moral change among the Arabic people
(b) Putting women on an equal status as men
(c) Tollerance for different religions
(d) Exemplifying the different classes of people

2. How did Judaism affect human coexistence?
(a) Judaism set the pattern for preemptive wars.
(b) Judaism established the need for moral restraints in the danger zones of human existence.
(c) Judaism justified the use of slave labor.
(d) Judaism laid the foundations of communism.

3. As a chosen people, what were the Jews to do?
(a) Sing and pray
(b) Write and read
(c) Serve and suffer
(d) Teach and compel

4. What was the scratched drawing that came to identify Christians with the Good News?
(a) The sign of the fish
(b) The ankh
(c) The eye of God
(d) The star of David

5. What is the central essence of the Catholic mass?
(a) Faith, hope, and charity
(b) The death, burial, and resurrection of Christ
(c) Candles, incense, and holy water
(d) The birth, death, and ascension of Christ

6. How does Islam nail down the actions of humans?
(a) Advised against, forbidden, and allowed
(b) Good, evil, hopeful, and accidental
(c) Forbidden, indifferent, and obligatory
(d) Wrong, right, exceptional, and loving

7. How is the length of Jesus' ministry best described?
(a) It was cut short by his resurrection
(b) It was short and then he was crucified.
(c) It lasted four decades before he was crucified.
(d) It lasted thirty years and then he was crucified.

8. Why do primal religions draw no strict lines between the temporal and the spiritual?
(a) They are concerned with the preservation of natural and cosmic harmony.
(b) They do not see a difference between the two at all.
(c) They are not sure which one they are in most of the time.
(d) They do not have a concept of the spiritual.

9. Why does Huston Smith say attempts to unite Protestantism have failed?
(a) Because of reluctance to let go of certain tenets
(b) Because no one tried to do it
(c) Because people like change
(d) Because people gave up too quickly

10. How does the aboriginal see the figures of antiquity?
(a) As gods who made the world
(b) As geniuses that fashioned everything so perfectly in the ordinary world
(c) As primatives who had to learn everything the hard way
(d) As special creatures put here by God to fashion the world

11. How do Muslims justify Islam's history of aggressiveness?
(a) That it never happened at all
(b) That it was no different from other major religions.
(c) That is was needed only at the beginning of the religion
(d) That it was misrepresented by European historians

12. What is the attitude toward the idea that humans are the holder of absolute truth?
(a) It is what all Protestants claim.
(b) It is to be rejected.
(c) It is to be listened to.
(d) It is to be accepted after close study.

13. What was the main cause of the rise of Protestantism?
(a) Language barriers
(b) Acceptance of Eastern orthodoxy
(c) Different interpretation of scripture
(d) Eccliastical excesses in the Roman church

14. What is the function exclusive to the shaman in primal religion?
(a) To bypass symbolism and go directly to the spiritual source
(b) To deal only with evil spirits
(c) To teach the youth about tribal traditions
(d) To make symbols for the tribe to see but not understand

15. Where did the Jews find a greater meaning in life?
(a) Through troubles
(b) Through mysticism
(c) Through revelation
(d) Through philosophy

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the main thing gleaned from reading the Tao Te Ching?

2. What is the Jewish attitude toward history?

3. What are the three areas of mysticism in Sufism?

4. What does Huston Smith say about the existence of religions prior to the historical ones of the last 4,000 years?

5. What happened to Islam after the death of Muhammad?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 776 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample