Data source: Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| regular attenders | Church members who attend Sunday worship weekly, monthly, or at the least once annually. |
| regular clergy | Religious clergy (qv) living under a monastic or similar rule. |
| regular communicant | A communicant (qv) who takes communion weekly, monthly, or at the least annually. |
| relational database | A collection of data items organized as a set of formally-described tables from which data can be accessed or reassembled. |
| religiocluster | A council or association of dissimilar religions which functions as its own religion. |
| religiometrics | The scientific measurement and analysis of religions and adherents, with special reference to description, analysis, trends. |
| religion | A religious faith, creed, communion, sect, cult, persuasion; a system of faith and worship, centrally concerned with the means of ultimate transformation. |
| religion | A religion is a grouping of persons with beliefs about God or gods, and defined by its adherents’ loyalty to it, by their acceptance of it as unique and superior to all other religions, and by its relative autonomy. |
| religion, comparative | Comparative study of the origin, development, and interrelations of the religious systems of mankind. |
| religion, organized | See organized religion. |
| religion, study of | See study of religion. |
| religionists | (1) Persons professing adherence to any religion, as contrasted with non-religious or antireligious persons or atheists. |
| religionists | Persons professing adherence to any religion, as contrasted with atheists or nonreligious persons. |
| religionless Christianity | A term coined by German theologian D. Bonhoeffer for genuine, biblical Christianity without religious trappings. |
| religio-political organizations | Bodies significant at the national or wider levels number over 200. |
| religiosity | Intense, excessive, or affected religiousness. |
| religious | Monks, friars, clerks, regular, sisters or nuns who are bound by professed vows, sequestered from secular concerns, and devoted to lives of piety. |
| religious | A noun in Catholic usage describing all clergy, monks, and nuns belonging to a community, order, institute, congregation, monastery, or convent. |
| religious affiliation | See affiliation, religious. |
| religious architecture | See architecture, religious. |
| religious barrier | A religious frontier (qv). |
| religious books, new | Global total of new titles each year 32,000, of which 26,100 were on Christianity. |
| religious Buddhists | Buddhists who profess Buddhism as both a family religion and also a personal religion. |
| religious change | Demographic changes from one religion or religious system to another in the course of a year. |
| religious clergy | In Roman usage, clergy who are members of religious orders or institutes. |
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.