ABSTRACT
Many scholars regard faith as an essential component of religion. Indeed, it is not uncommon to encounter religions frequently referred to as faiths, this despite the fact that references to something akin to faith—especially as traditionally understood with its roots in Protestant Christianity—plays very little role in the claims or the literature of other groups known as religions. The English word “faith” derives from the Anglo-Norman and Old French feid, feit, and fait, which in turn come from the classical Latin fides. The latter has a rather broad semantic range including everything from trust and guarantee to honesty and what we might today designate as belief. Recent years have continued to witness this local and situated term expanded in a way that makes it seem synonymous with “religion.” Thus, we now routinely hear of “the Jewish faith,” “the Muslim faith,” or “the Hindu faith”.
