A couple of weeks ago I was reading a chapter on Animism from The Compact Guide to World Religions. The chapter was written by Dean Halverson who also edited the book. The article was enlightening in context of the recent posts on TFI and the spiritual direction that they have taken over the years. I've included a link to a PDF article on Animism by Halverson below. I'm assuming that it's the same article that he wrote for the book, but I'm not certain. However, here's a few highlights from the chapter on Animism just to whet your appetite:
The term "animism" comes form the Latin word anima, which means "soul" or "breath" As such, it refers to that which empowers or gives life to something. It follows, then, that animism is the religion that sees the physical world as inter-penetrated by spiritual forces -- both personal and impersonal-- to the extent that objects carry spiritual significance and events have spiritual causes.
Thus, if there is an accident, or if someone is sick, there are spiritual reasons behind such things that must be taken into consideration. Otherwise, the cause behind the accident or the sickness cannot be fully understood or remedied.
The animistic form of a religion is call "folk religion," such as "folk Hinduism" or "folk Islam." The tendency for people to gravitate toward a folk form of their religion explains why many people who come from a country with a Hindu or a Buddhist heritage do not believe the way the "textbook" description of their religion says they should believe.
Why should we seek to understand animistic religions? After all, aren't those the kinds of religions that are practiced by primitive tribal groups
wearing weird masks and dancing around a fire? How relevant can such a primitive religious system be to the people with whom we "rub shoulders" who are both modernized and well-educated?
It is important for us to understand animism because it is both pervasive and attractive to people.
We in the U.S. have witness this tendency to move toward animism in the phenomenon of the New Age movement. When that movement began 20-30 years ago, meditation, in which the mediator sought to experience unity with the divine oneness, was central to the movement. But now channeling -- contacting one's personal spirit-guide -- rival meditation as being at the center of the movement. Again, this is an example of humanity's tendency to move from an abstract concept of God -- to divine oneness-- to filling the void with personal spirit-beings.
This tendency also explains why many in our secularized culture, in which God has been replace by the theory of evolution, have become so enamored with angels and with SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) during the past years.
So animism needs to be understood because it is the form of religion to which people gravitate.
Religion Watch reported, for example,
The new religions making the most impact in Japan today are those stressing individual spiritual powers and techniques...Today's young recruits are little interested in religious doctrine. The focus on the current wave has turned from belief to techniques (Cimino.6-7)
PDF by Dean Halverson on Animism
http://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/15_2_PDFs/01_Halverson_05.pdf
Here's the book that he edited:
http://commerce.parable.com/parable/item_1556617046.htm
Here's an on line article on Animism from Probe Ministries: