Data source: Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| dialogue | An exchange of ideas and opinions between a group of Christians and a group of non-Christians. |
| diaspora | A people of one country dispersed into other countries; the migration, spread, scattering, exile of a people abroad; especially the dispersion of Christians isolated from their own communions. |
| diaspora church | A church or denomination formerly strongly centralized but now dispersed thinly over a wide area including abroad. |
| diaspora missionaries | Full-time Christian workers who have usually themselves been emigrants, refugees, deportees or returnees, who now serve their own ethnic communities in diaspora as civilian or military chaplains, evangelists, religious educators, et alii. |
| dicastery | A department of the Roman Curia in Vatican City. The Curia has 28 principal dicasteries. |
| didache | (NT Greek). Teaching, the teaching of the Apostles. |
| differential fertility | The actual reproductive performance of one part of a population by comparison with that of another part. |
| Digambara | (‘Sky-clad’, or Naked, or Botika). A member of a major schism (AD 83) within Jainism originally abandoning all worldly possessions including clothes, and asserting that women cannot attain salvation. |
| digital computer | A computer that operates with numbers expressed directly as digits in a decimal, binary, or other system. |
| dignitaries | A collective term for clergy and hierarchs holding positions of dignity or honor in the church. |
| dimension | Empirical characteristic of a measurement, size, magnitude, activity, quality, extent, scope, often assuming an explanatory function. |
| diocesan | (1) Abishop having jurisdiction over a diocese. (2) Relating to a diocese. |
| diocesan association | In Anglican terminology, a loose organization of church members in Britain who raise money to support one particular Anglican diocese in a developing country. Some 25 exist in Britain. |
| diocesan bishop | A bishop having jurisdiction over a diocese. |
| diocesan clergy | In Catholic usage, secular clergy serving in a diocese, as contrasted with religious or regular clergy in religious houses or monasteries. |
| diocesan synod | In Catholic usage since Vatican II, a one-time occasion or assembly of the whole people of God (50% of whom must be priests). |
| dioceses | (symbol D). Areas over which bishops have ecclesiastical authority. |
| diplomatic representation | The Holy See, as a sovereign state, maintains diplomatic relations with 103 nations (in 1997) through 15 nunciatures with an apostolic nuncio, and 13 nunciatures headed by an apostolic pro-nuncio; and in addition maintains relations with nationwide Catholic churches through 5 apostolic delegations. |
| direct access | Access (qv) to Scripture in one’s own mother tongue. |
| directories | See yearbooks. |
| dirty money | Underground money, criminal profits, undeclared, unrecorded, untaxed, illegal monies of all kinds. |
| disaffiliated | One-time church members who later repudiate that membership, and in countries allowing it, obtain legal separation from their church. |
| disaffiliated Christians | Dechristianized persons, or post-Christians: baptized Catholics (or other Christians) enumerated as affiliated by a majority or state-linked church but who have recently formally withdrawn or disaffiliated themselves completely from Christianity and now profess to be non-religious (agnostics) or atheists; i.e. recent withdrawals from state or majority churches still however regarded as members by those churches, although in fact now backsliders, lapsed, or apostates. |
| disaster preparedness | Programs organized by churches and denominations, especially the Seventh-day Adventist Church, with relief, medical-aid centers and mobile disaster- aid units around the world ready to deal with either natural or man-made disasters as they arise. |
| disbelief | Refusal to believe; withholding or rejection of belief; atheism, skepticism, irreligion. |
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.