Data source: Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| 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. |
| crypto-Communists | Secret sympathizers with Communism or secretly members of a Communist party. |
| crypto-Evangelicals | Secret Evangelicals or sympathizers with Evangelicalism in states or churches hostile to it. |
| crypto-Jews | Persons adhering secretly to Judaism though professedly Christians; including Marranos (qv). |
| crypto-Muslims | Persons adhering secretly to Islam, though professedly Christians. |
| cult | A religion or minority religious group holding beliefs regarded as unorthodox or spurious, a sect. |
| cultist | A devotee or practitioner of a cult; a sectarian. |
| cultural barrier | A cultural frontier (qv). |
| cultural distance | The number of cultural frontiers or barriers that exist between persons of one culture and those of another culture; up to a maximum of 6 frontiers. |
| cultural frontier | The line of demarcation between one culture and another. As defined in this Encyclopedia, there are up to 6 frontiers between any pair of the worlds’ cultures. |
| culture | The patterned way in which a homogeneous people do things together; an integrated system of socially standardized actions, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, values, customs and institutions, all learned rather than inherited, and artifacts characteristic of a community; the total pattern of human behavior and its products embodied in thought, speech, action and artifacts and dependent upon man’s capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations, which bind a society together and give it a sense of identity, dignity, security and continuity; a worldview at the center together with values, standards of judgement and conduct, language (with proverbs, myths, folk-tales, arts), land and a common history. |
| culture | A grouping of identical peoples in different countries all with the same total pattern of human behavior and its products. |
| culture area, culture province | A geographic unit in which are found similar cultures, i.e. similar patterns of cultural traits and similar modes of subsistence. |
| culture cluster | Termed here an ethnocultural family. |
| culture net | Termed here a local race. |
| culture world | Major 7-part culture classification variously defined as culture civilization, with its own characteristic culture worldview, and culture lifestyle, particularly noted for its stylized skin color or pigmentation, biogenetic pool, color pool. |
| cultures | The exact total of cultures or peoples in particular areas depends on the exact definition used. On our definition here, the world has 12,600 constituent peoples or cultures, with 13,000 distinct languages. |
| cultures, Christian | See Christian cultures. |
| curate | In Anglicanism and Catholicism, (1) a clergyman who has the cure or care of souls, (2) a clergyman assisting a rector or vicar. |
| cure of souls | The spiritual charge of a parish. |
| Curia | The full body of organized congregations, tribunals and offices that aid the pope in the administration and government of the Catholic Church. |
| cursillistas | Catholics attending a cursillo (qv). |
| Cursillistas | Catholics since 1949, and Protestants since 1970, who have attended and completed a short course or retreat under the movement Cursillos de Cristianidad; including many early leaders of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. |
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.