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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the greatest threat to the primal religions?
(a) Passing time and literacy
(b) No missionary efforts
(c) Modern interpretation
(d) Disbanding of tribes

2. What is the only power that can face down the fear, distrust, prejudice, and suspicion of man?
(a) Totalitarianism
(b) Diplomacy
(c) Nuclear weapons
(d) Love

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

4. What teaching of Protestantism differs from Catholic doctrine?
(a) The importance of church attendance
(b) Justification by faith
(c) The importance of baptism
(d) The need for spiritual guidance

5. What happened to Islam after the death of Muhammad?
(a) It nearly died out until the Crusades.
(b) It spread all over the world in an area more vast than the Roman Empire.
(c) It became the accepted religion of Europe.
(d) It became purely political and lost its religious implications.

6. What saves the Christian in spite of his imperfect nature?
(a) The new name he bears
(b) The blood of Christ
(c) The sign of the fish
(d) The ekklesia

7. What does Huston Smith suggest is a way to look at the different religions?
(a) Like the pieces of broken pottery when you drop a plate
(b) Like a stained glass window where differences come together to form a picture
(c) Like interference on a television signal
(d) Like an explosion in a mattress factory

8. What was different between God and the gods of the people all around the Jews?
(a) God had prophets where the other gods spoke for themselves
(b) God is righteous where the other gods were not
(c) God showed His face where the others did not
(d) God has angels where the other gods do not

9. What creates the theater of the primal religion handed down orally?
(a) The spoken word has rhythms and accentuations not found on the printed page.
(b) Vocal impersonations of people and animals.
(c) Dances and pantomimes that accompany the spoken word.
(d) The larger outdoor setting of nature.

10. What two things became most important after Rome destroyed the temple in Jerusalem?
(a) The taxes and the Exodus
(b) The dispersion and Roman citizenship
(c) The traditions and the resistence
(d) The Rabbi and the synagogue

11. Why is there no word for "art" in tribal American Indian languages?
(a) Because they believe art will capture souls
(b) Because they do not have art
(c) Because to them everything is art
(d) Because no one has time for art

12. What is the contribution of the Torah and the Talmud?
(a) Important confirmation of secular histories
(b) Preservation of art and literature
(c) Great museum pieces
(d) Perpetuating Jewish history and language

13. What is the main thing gleaned from reading the Tao Te Ching?
(a) The idea that Tao is of the universe only
(b) The idea that the Tao is within us
(c) The idea that Tao is earth, wind, and fire
(d) The idea that it cannot be understood

14. When did the Christian church become the official religion in Rome?
(a) 33 A. D.
(b) 420 A. D.
(c) 1054 A. D.
(d) 313 A. D.

15. What are the three areas of mysticism in Sufism?
(a) Faith, hope, charity
(b) Love, ecstasy, intuition
(c) Prophecy, interpretation, seances
(d) Communication with the dead, using hallucinogens, speaking in tongues

Short Answer Questions

1. How is al-qur'an divided?

2. How does the Roman Catholic church view itself?

3. Why do primal religions draw no strict lines between the temporal and the spiritual?

4. What Jewish writing became a basis for all laws concerning moral restraint?

5. What is the sect of Islam that is introspective and mystic?

(see the answer keys)

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