Data source: Gina A. Zurlo, ed., World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2025).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| ecumenical movement | The movement to bring together all denominations and Christian bodies for fellowship, consultation and joint action. |
| ecumenical patriarch | The patriarch of Constantinople, the highest ecclesiastical office in the Eastern Orthodox Church by virtue of a primacy of honour. |
| emigration | The movement of migrants out of one country into another. |
| eparchy | (1) In the Eastern Orthodox Church, a diocese or ecclesiastical province, especially in the early centuries CE. (2) In Roman Catholic usage a diocese of an Eastern rite, especially Malankara (India). |
| episcopate | The whole body of bishops; office of a bishop, or the period over which a bishop is in office. |
| Ethnic religionists | Followers of a pre-Christian religion tied closely to a specific ethnic group, with membership restricted to that group; usually animists, polytheists or shamanists. |
| ethnolinguistic people | Distinct homogeneous ethnic or racial group within a single country, speaking its own language (one single mother tongue). A large people spread across two, three, four or several countries is treated here as being two, three, four or several distinct ethnolinguistic peoples. |
| Evangelicals | Affiliated church members calling themselves Evangelicals, or all persons belonging to Evangelical congregations, churches or denominations; characterised by commitment to personal religion (including new birth or personal conversion experience), reliance on Scripture as the only basis for faith and Christian living, emphasis on preaching and evangelism and usually on conservatism in theology. |
| evangelisation | (1) The process of spreading Christianity; (2) the extent to which Christianity has been spread; (3) the extent of awareness of Christianity; (4) access to Christianity. |
| evangelism | The church’s organised activity of spreading Christianity, in circumstances it can control, in contrast to witness, which is the normal term for the informal, spontaneous, unorganised sharing by individual Christians in circumstances they do not control. |
| exarch | The primate of an independent Orthodox church, or a bishop with a special charge |
| exarchate | (symbol E). The jurisdiction of an exarch (qv). |
| folk-religionists | Adherents of local traditions or religions, often rural, in which elements of major world religions are blended with local beliefs and customs. |
| foreign missionary | Full-time Christian workers who work in countries in which they are not citizens but foreigners, for at least two years. |
| foreign missions | Christian outreach carried out in any other countries than where a sending church or mission is based. |
| fundamentalist | Relating to or characterised by extreme conservatism, especially religious conservatism. |
| Greek Catholics | Those using the Greek rite, under Rome. |
| Greek Orthodox | (1) Christians related to the Church of Greece and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople; often loosely used, instead of the more correct term Eastern Orthodox, to also include Slavic Orthodoxy. (2) Greek-speaking Orthodox using Greek rite. |
| Hidden believers in Christ | Members of non-Christian religions with faith in Christ who choose not to join Christian denominations but to remain in their religious and cultural contexts. |
| Hindus | Followers of the main Hindu traditions: Vaishnavism; Shaivism; Shaktism; neo-Hindu movements and modern groups; and other Hindu reform movements. |
| Holiness, Holiness Christians | Protestant tradition originating in Methodism. |
| Holiness-Pentecostals | Pentecostals teaching 3-crisis experience (conversion, sanctification, baptism of the Spirit). |
| home missionaries | Full-time Christian workers sent by their churches to missionary areas within their own countries. |
| immigration | The movement of migrants into a destination country in which they are not native. |
| independency | The ecclesiastical position rejecting control of churches by centralised denominationalist headquarters; organising churches and missions independent of historic Christianity. |
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.