Data source: Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| denomination | Any agency consisting of a number of congregations or churches voluntarily aligning themselves with it. As a statistical unit in this survey, a ‘denomination’ always refers to one single country. Thus the Catholic Church, although a single organization, is described here as consisting of 236 denominations in the world’s 238 countries. |
| denominational | Relating to, or controlled by, a denomination. |
| Denominational Pentecostals | Church members belonging to Pentecostal denominations dating mainly from the first 2 decades of the 20th century and no later than 1945; also termed First-Wavers, or Classical Pentecostals. |
| denominationalism | Devotion to denominational principles or interests; the emphasizing of denominational differences to the point of being narrowly exclusive. |
| denominationalism | The promoting of centralized agencies exercising control or oversight over their recognized congregations. |
| denominationalist | A person, executive, board, or committee who actively or aggressively promote denominationalism. |
| denominationally-evangelized | Used of a people’s evangelization seen only from the standpoint of a single denomination which does not acknowledge the work of other denominations. |
| denominations | For exact definition, see above under denomination. |
| density | The quantity or number of copies of the Christian Scriptures physically present in an area or population at a specified time; and its relationship to Christian definitions of adequacy and sufficiency. |
| dental mission | A foreign missionary society specializing in dentistry and dental services. |
| dependency | A territory politically dependent on another country or nation. |
| dependent | An economically inactive person dependent on others. |
| depopulation | Population decline in a specific area. |
| deprogramming | The process of forcibly changing or altering a person’s religious beliefs; particularly, reversing the programmed indoctrination imparted by modern cultic organizations. |
| desacralization | The act of ceremonially divesting a taboo of supernatural qualities and rendering it non-sacred, also used for dechristianization (qv). |
| descriptor | Any describable property of a religious entity, characteristic, property, or data. |
| desertification | The process by which previously-valuable agricultural land or forest becomes a desert. |
| development | In Christian usage not only a techno-economic process but primarily a process by which both persons and societies come to realize the full potential of human life in a context of social justice with an emphasis on self-reliance (Montreux Conference Report), including a more equal distribution of wealth, including gross national product, in a just and human order. In this field, there are over 220 Christian organizations significant at the national or wider levels. |
| deviations, Christian | Marginal Christian movements regarded as departures from the established body of Christian beliefs. |
| devil | The personal supreme spirit of evil and unrighteousness in Jewish and Christian theology. |
| dharma | (Sanskrit). In Hinduism, social custom, the caste system, religion, the body of cosmic principles by which all things exist; in Buddhism, ideal truth element of existence. |
| diakonia | (Greek). Service to others; the witness of service. |
| dialect | A local or regional variety or variant of language. |
| dialectical materialism | The theory of reality advanced by Marx and Engels and adopted as official Soviet philosophy, maintaining the independent objective reality of matter and its priority both in time and logical importance over mind. |
| dialectical theology | Neo-orthodoxy (qv), holding that man’s attempts to know God by his own reasoning must give way to faith. |
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.