Data source: Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| Council for World Mission | Originated as London Missionary Society in 1795; 1955, renamed Congregational Council for World Mission; 1976, renamed Council for World Mission. |
| counseling | A professional service designed to guide an individual to a better understanding of his problems and potentialities by utilizing modern psychological principles |
| country | The land of a person’s origin, birth, residence or citizenship; motherland; a term covering both sovereign nations and non-sovereign territories. |
| country | A term covering both (a) sovereign nations, and (b) nonsovereign territories (dependencies or colonies) which are not integral parts of larger parent nations. |
| country’s population | Defined here as the total present-inarea resident population of a country at a given date or midyear date. |
| countrytrends | A shorthand term for all instruments, measuring devices, and measurements, country by country, of all varieties of variables and changes measured by churches and agencies in the pursuit of their global mission. |
| courier | A person carrying messages, news or information secretly or clandestinely to, within or from underground or illegal churches in anti-Christian lands. |
| covert evangelizers | Active Christians working anonymously or secretly. |
| credit unions | Co-operative savings and credit associations that make small loans to their members at low interest rates; widespread among Catholics. |
| creeds | Brief authoritative doctrinal formulae beginning ‘Credo’ (Latin: I believe) intended to define what a Christian synod or church holds to be true and essential, and to exclude false doctrine. |
| creole | In linguistic terminology, a composite language or pidgin (qv) that has become the standard or native language of a community. |
| Creole | In English usage, a Mulatto or person of mixed Black/White blood, or his language. In Spanish and French usage, a locally-born Spanish-speaking or French-speaking White (in the Antilles, Indian ocean, etc.), or his language. |
| creole | A hybrid or pijin language which has now consolidated into a language with its own mother tongue speakers. |
| Criollo | A Spanish-speaking Creole or Mulatto. |
| crisis theology | Neo-orthodoxy (qv), especially in its pessimistic view of human nature. |
| cross-cultural missionaries | Full-time Christian workers sent by their churches to work among peoples of a different culture, either within their own nations or abroad. |
| cross-cultural missions scale | A computed scale from 0-16 measuring the influence of cross-cultural missionary presence and activity within a people or other segment. |
| crown colony | A colony of Britain over which the British crown through a governor retains some control. |
| crude birth rate | The unstandardized birth rate, not adjusted for influence of age or other variables. |
| crude death rate | The unstandardized death rate, not adjusted for influence of age or other variables. |
| crusade evangelism | Mass evangelism through organized city-wide campaigns with most denominations co-operating. |
| crusades | Organized evangelistic mass campaigns in large cities a week or more in length. |
| Crusades | Seven major military campaigns from AD 1096- 1270 by the Western church to recover the Holy Land from Islam. |
| crypto-Christians | Secret believers in Christ not professing publicly, nor publicly baptized, nor enumerated or known in government census or public-opinion poll, hence unknown to the state or the public or society (but usually affiliated and known to churches), of 7 distinct types: (1) unorganized individuals secretly affiliated to or attending legal churches, including persons who choose to identify themselves publicly as non-Christians; (2) individuals or congregations permanently exiled, deported or in prison or labor camps, treated as non-religious by the state but who remain believing Christians; (3) members of unregistered denominations, and unregistered congregations in legal denominations, which are forced to operate illegally by the state’s refusal to grant registration (sometimes termed churches of silence, or catacomb churches); (4) members of organized deliberately-clandestine networks of illegal underground churches; (5) members of churches or marginal bodies in certain countries opposed to the state hence refusing to divulge their affiliation to census enumerators; (6) members of organized movements of believers in Christ who choose not to regard or identify themselves as Christians (but as Hindus, Muslims, non-religious, etc.); and (7) isolated radio believers (qv) in non-Christian or anti-Christian areas remote from existing legal churches. |
| crypto-Christians | Secret believers, hidden Christians, usually known to churches but not to state or secular or non-Christian religious society. |
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.