Data source: Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| tradition | The totality of beliefs and practices (doctrine, dogmas, polity, ecclesiology, founding, origin characterizing a particular Christian school of thought, not derived directly from the Bible but arising and handed down within the Christian community. |
| tradition | An ecclesiastical family or type of denominations sharing historical and/or many common features. |
| tradition, ecclesiastical | See ecclesiastical tradition. |
| tradition, ecclesiastical | De facto ecclesiastico-cultural grouping which has arisen during the course of Christian history. There are 4 major historico-cultural ecclesiastical tradtions, coalitions or ongoing or enduring streams of Christianity: Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism, and Independent Christianity. Formerly termed megablocs. |
| Traditional Catholics | Conservative Catholics (qv). |
| traditional religion | Often used of the dominant pre-Christian religion in a country, i.e. before the coming of Christianity. |
| traditionalist | One who adheres to tradition. |
| transbloc grouping | A large grouping of Christians sharing certain common central beliefs that transcend historic confessional bounds. |
| transconfessional | Church union negotiations between churches of 2 or more confessional families. |
| transient (noun) | A person who is present in a country or area temporarily before moving on; usually a visitor, tourist, person on business, military personnel, refugee, displaced person. |
| transient cults | Short-lived or ephemeral unorthodox or exotic religious movements. |
| transients | Impermanent, transitory, often homeless persons on the move. |
| translation projects | Member Bible Societies of the UBS were in AD 2000 engaged in a total of 685 translation projects (new translations of all or part of the scriptures). |
| translations | Total scripture translations published or available. |
| translinguals | Persons able to navigate with reasonable competence between 2 or more languages within their own language cluster (or, a wider definition, within their own language net). |
| travel intensity | The ratio of annual international travelers to a country or area (including tourists) divided by the size of the total resident population or, within a country, the proportion of adults in the population who go away on holiday in a year. |
| trend | The general movement over a sufficiently long period of time of some statistical progressive change; tendency. |
| trend | A tendency, change, rate of change in a religious population, event, condition, or property, which can then be measured; usually expressed per diem (day), per year, per decade, per century, or per millennium, etc. |
| tribal religionists | A collective term for primal or primitive religionists, animists, spirit-worshippers, shamanists (qv), ancestor-venerators, polytheists, pantheists, traditionalists (in Africa), local or tribal folk-religionists; including adherents of neo-paganism or non-Christian local or tribal syncretistic or nativistic movements, cargo cults, witchcraft eradication cults, possession healing movements, tribal messianic movements; still occasionally termed pagans, heathen, fetishists; usually confined each to a single tribe or people, hence ‘tribal or local as opposed to ‘universal’ (open to any or all peoples). |
| tribal religionists | Ethnoreligionists (qv). |
| tribe | A group of persons having a common character, occupation, avocation, interest, also common language, culture, territory and traditions. |
| tribunal | A court of church law at Rome; in particular the 3 senior courts, dating from the 13th and 14th centuries: Apostolic Penitentiary, Rota, and (the Catholic Church’s supreme court) the Apostolic Signature. |
| Tridentine | Pertaining to or resulting from the Council of Trent (AD 1545-63). |
| Tridentinists | Catholic traditionalists opposed to the reforms of Vatican II ( 1962-65) and upholding the Council of Trent (1545-63), including retention of the Latin mass and condemnation of Protestantism. In Europe, 20% of all RCs prefer the Tridentine mass. |
| trine | Threefold, triple. |
Data on 18 categories of religion, including non-religious, by country, province, and people.
Data on all religions, Christian activities, and trends.
Membership data, year begun, and rates of change.
Population and religion data on all major cities & provinces.
Detailed information covering religion, culture, and geography.
A repository of historical data, including a chronology of Christianity from the 1st to 21st centuries.