There is a polyglot of deities, holdovers from ancient rural animism, including earth gods, sea gods, kitchen gods and hundreds of patron saints.

CNN: The Really Useful Guide

He believes that the shift from animism to centralized religion, and from an egalitarian to a hierarchical society, was the cause and not the effect of economic change.

NEWYORKER: The Sanctuary

It has the reek of the black-frocked missionary sniffing down his nose at the primitives animism without ever wondering if his own wine-and-a-cracker deity might not be just as phony as the numinous spirits of the riverbeds and pine forests.

FORBES: Quote for the Day