Peterburgian Vedism "to know" ("vedat")—a semantic root which is shared in Slavic and Sanskrit languages alike—, and it expresses the difference between sight or knowledge and dogmatic belief ("verit"), the latter being typical of non-Vedic doctrines. According to one of the contemporary leaders of the Peterburgian Vedic movement, Roman Perin, "Rodnovery" defines the practised religion, while "Vedism" defines the philosophy or knowledge at its core. Vedism therefore is not a religion but pure knowledge. According to Bezverkhy, dogmatic religions such as Christianity, but also Brahmanism (the successor of Vedism in India), were created in order to control the masses. Bezverkhy codified his
Religion in Germany ethnic Jews with no religion, around 100,000 Yazidis, 130,000 Hindus, and 270,000 Buddhists. The latest census in 2011 found that Christianity was the religion of 51,865,590 people or 64.2% of the total population, among whom 24,869,380 or 31.2% were Catholics, 24,552,110 or 30.8% were Protestants of the Evangelical Church in Germany, 714,360 or 0.9% were members of Protestant free churches, and 1,050,740 or 1.3% were members of Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches. Jews were 83,430 people or 0.1%, and 2,116,460 or 2.7% were members of other religions. The remaining 26,265,880 people, or 33.0% of the total German population, were