Religious and Theological Abstracts is a database that indexes many religious and theological journals and other literature. One Guide to Research recently described it as a "popular reference" covering more than 600 periodicals in most major European languages beginning in 1958. It covers "a wide array of periodical literature, including Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

, Jewish

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

, and other world religions and some denominational and popular religious magazines."

A guide to how to acquire documents for libraries stated that

Because of the interrelationship between indexing and abstract services and the literature that they document, tools such as Religious and Theological Abstracts (1958-, Myerstown, PA), Religion Index One (1949-, Evanston, IL), and The Catholic Periodical and Literature Index (1930-, Catholic Library Association) often become de facto standards against which many librarians measure their collections. If a journal is indexed by one of these services, it becomes important on the grounds that the index service provides access points to the information contained in the articles themselves.

A guide to library research stated that "religion has its primary indexes in Religion Index One, Religion Index Two, Religious and Theological Abstracts, and a few other such titles."