Data source: Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| World Council of Churches | (WCC). The major ecumenical body, founded 1948. |
| World Evangelical Fellowship | (WEF). A loosely-organized global Conservative Evangelical alliance, which only accepts as members national alliances or councils or fellowship. |
| world evangelization | The goal of the proclamation of the Gospel of Christ to all persons in the world; the professed goal of all Christian confessions and communions. |
| world evangelization | The term used for the goal of reaching the entire world with the gospel of Christ, or of giving every people and population on Earth the opportunity to hear the gospel with understanding and to become disciples of Christ. |
| World Methodist Council | (WCM). The major Methodist world communion. |
| world religion | A universal religion (qv). |
| world religion | A worldwide universal religion with from 1 million to 10 million adherents. |
| world religions | The major religions of the world defined here as those with (in AD 2000) over 2% each of the world’s population, as follows: Christianity (33.0%), Islam (19.6%), Hinduism (13.4%), Buddhism (5.9%), Chinese folk religion (6.4%), excluding (because local not universal) primal or tribal religion (3.8%), but including Asiatic New Religions (1.7%); also atheism (2.5%) and agnosticism (12.7%) regarded as worldwide quasi-religions. |
| World Wide Web | A hypermedia-based system for browsing Internet sites, housing millions of home pages, including most Christian organizations. |
| world-religionists | Followers of the world’s major religions (see definition under world religions). |
| worldview | A general understanding of the nature of the universe and of one’s place in it; outlook on the world, ideology, a cosmological conception of society and institutions. |
| worship center | A church building or congregation’s premises or other place for regular weekly services of Christian worship. |
| worship centers | Distinct organized groups or congregations of Christian worshippers of any tradition or confession; usually measured by church buildings, chapels, regular worship premises, sites, stations, centers, outposts, preaching points, parishes and quasi-parishes. |
| yearbooks | Christian or church yearbooks, handbooks, directories, periodical lists, and other listings significant at national, international, denomination and confessional levels, number over 5,000. |
| Yearly Meeting | An organizational unit of the Religious Society of Friends composed of many Quarterly Meetings (local congregations), the most comprehensive Quaker administrative body. |
| Yellow Hat | (Reformed). Lamaism, or Yellow Church (in Tibetan, Dge-lugs-pa or Gelukpa, ‘Model of Virtue’). That part of Tibetan Buddhism in which monasteries and monks have accepted the 14th-century reforms of the monk Tsong-Khapa. Its executive head is the Dalai Lama; The Panchen Lama also comes from this grouping. |
| Yezidis | Yazidis. Members of a 12th-century syncretistic religious sect in Iraq; now mainly in Turkey, Iraq and Kazakhstan and classified here as Neoreligionists. |
| younger churches | A term sometimes used for the newer or relatively-recent denominations of the Third World, in contrast to the older churches of Europe and North America. |
| youth organizations | Christian organizations serving youth, significant at the national or wider levels number over 500. |
| Yugoslav rite | A Byzantine rite for Catholics in Yugoslavia, discontinued in 1990. |
| Zambo | (Sambo). A Spanish-speaking Latin American of mixed Negro and Amerindian origin; in Portuguese, a Cafuso. |
| Zaydis | (Zaidis). A Muslim sect in Yemen that constitutes one of the 4 major branches of Shia Islam recognizes a continuing line of imams descended through Zaid (the 5th imam), and is closest to sunna in its doctrine. |
| zionist | An African type of charismatic indigenous movement or church; also termed spirit, spiritual, Spirit dominated, pentecostal, aladura (qv), enthusiastic, faith-healing, etc. |
| Zionists | Southern Africa charismatic Christians in Black indigenous churches. |
| zone | In linguistic classification, a glossozone (qv), numbering 100 across the world. |
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.