Religious studies

Die Sekte looks like English « sect » and is not used like it. In English a sect can be a neutral name for a branch of a religion: older books speak of Protestant sects, and news reports still speak of Sunni and Shia ones. German Sekte carries a verdict. It is the word a newspaper uses for a small, closed group suspected of controlling its members, much nearer to English « cult ». Calling a major tradition eine Sekte is an insult; a branch of a religion is eine Richtung or eine Strömung. That is why German religious studies mostly avoids the word and says Glaubensgemeinschaft instead. The rest of the list follows the same discipline: der methodische Agnostizismus leaves the question of truth open, and words such as das Heilige or die Frömmigkeit describe what people hold dear without taking a side.