Susan Kehr, age 13, of Rydal, Pennsylvania, for .her question:

How many religions are there in the world?

Religion is a sensitive subject and whatever we say about it, it is bound to annoy somebody. This is because, though the major religions are founded on the same basic concepts, most of them set forth a lot .of personal opinions. More than half of the .people in this world have very definite religious opinions. About 10 per cent of these feel that anybody else's religious opinions deserve at least a nasty letter and possibly a poke in the nose.

In the modern world, there are about a dozen major religions. Each one is based on the noble ideas of some wise teacher and stems from previous concepts held in the distant past. Human nature, however, tends to dispute basic teachings, especially those that mention how a person should behave. Hence, numerous denominations split off from the major religions. For example, almost a billion Christians worship in more than 300 different denominations. Yet all of them accept the gentle religion born in Bethlehem on Christmas Day, 1971 years ago.

Almost half a billion Asians are Hindus. Their kindly religion was founded around 2500 B.C. and stemmed from much older faiths of India. Almost half a billion persons are Moslems. Their faith of Islam is an offshoot of Christianity and was founded about  AW A.D. About 372 million persons accept the courteous faith of Confucius, founded about 500 B.C.

During this same era, Asia gave birth to three other major religions. Their followers include 77 million Buddhists, 54 million Taoists and some 77 million accept the official Shinto religion of Japan. The Hebrew religion id based on the teachings of Moses, who lived around 1200 B.C. More than two million Jews now live in Israel and another 12 million are citizens of other countries.

Religions grew up with human history and their basic concepts guided the long struggle toward civilization. Behind the multiple forms of worship, the major faiths are founded on a few noble ideals that no one can dispute. It is surprising that each ideal arrived at a certain stage of history, when people were ready for a nobler concept of human life on earth.

Let's not be disheartened because many people do not practice what they preach. For example, Islam means peace and kindness. Yet Moslems tried to spread their religion by the sword and practiced cruel human slavery. Christians have fought each other over different interpretations of their faith. The simple fact is that all religious ideals are guidelines    and if human nature were perfect we would not need them.

Primitive man sensed that there is more to this world than meets the eye and worshiped spirits in nature. Later cultures deified gods, goddesses and sacred animals. About 3,000 years ago, they began to sense One Supreme Being and felt some of this loving wisdom within themselves. This realization is our lesson for the present page of history. When we master it and enjoy living it, we shall be ready to cope with the next lesson in our divine human destiny. Perhaps then the conflicts of multiple religions will be remembered as our kindergarten days.