The description person of faith (plural: people of faith) refers to any person who can be delineated or classified by an adherence to a religious tradition or
doctrine
Doctrine (from la, doctrina, meaning "teaching, instruction") is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the essence of teachings in a given branch of knowledge or in a belief syste ...
, as opposed to those who do not publicly identify or in any way
espouse a religious path.
The term people of faith has been increasingly used in the twentieth and twenty-first century by religious adherents in Westernized countries who are critical of a perceived increase in public disenchantment or de-emphasis upon accommodation for religious adherents, although the term itself is used more as a catch-all term which is intentionally
non-denominational or non-specific to any particular religious path. A person of faith is said to belong to a faith community or faith-based community.
The term is also criticized by advocates of
nontheistic positions for being inaccurate in its assumption of an underlying, unifying commonality between all religious observants - despite stark doctrinal differences and oppositional stances - simply for the purpose of reducing the influence of
secular
Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...
-minded individuals (similar to the term
person of color as a catch-all descriptor of non-white people, or the Islamic description of
people of the Book
People of the Book or Ahl al-kitāb ( ar, أهل الكتاب) is an Islamic term referring to those religions which Muslims regard as having been guided by previous revelations, generally in the form of a scripture. In the Quran they are ident ...
to describe the communities of adherents to
Islam,
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
, and
Judaism
Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in t ...
).
Persian term (in Islam)
In Islam, there is a Persian term called اهل ایمان, which literally means "people of faith". It is first founded in the Persian translation of the Quran by
Mirza Mahdi Elahi Ghomshei (1901 - 1973) based on the following example below:
.ای اهل ایمان ، روزی حلال و پاکیزهای که ما نصیب شما کردهایم بخورید و شکر خدا به جای آرید اگر شما خالص خدا را میپرستید
Meaning: O people of faith, eat the lawful and pure foods which We have bestowed upon you, and be grateful to Allah if you sincerely worship Him.
Source: Quran, Surah al-Baqarah, verse 172
References
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Neologisms
Religious identity