Data source: Gina A. Zurlo, ed., World Religion Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| measure | Extent, size, capacity, or dimensions as determined by a standard; any attempt to compare anything with a standard. |
| medium | In spiritism, an individual through whom other persons seek to communicate with the spirits of the dead. |
| medium-religionists | Followers of medium-religions, low or high spiritism or spiritualism. |
| megacity | A metropolis or other city with a population of over one million persons. |
| megametrodwellers | Persons residing in cities with populations greater than a million. |
| megapeople | An ethnolinguistic people speaking a single mother tongue whose population numbers over one million. |
| megareligion | A world religion or family of religions, usually with from one to 20 million adherents. |
| megarich | All millionaires of all kinds. |
| messianic movement | A nativistic religious cult led by a prophet proclaiming salvation and the destruction of foreign culture and influence. |
| messianism | An ideological movement or system of ideas that teaches the salvation of mankind through a messiah. |
| Metaphysical | Term for movements dating back from the 19th-century New Thought movement in the USA, including spiritualism, Theosophy, Religious Science, et alia. |
| Methodists | A Protestant tradition ex Church of England in 1795. Many Methodist denominations are usually called, classified, or coded ‘Wesleyan’, ‘Holiness’, ‘United’, although most belong to the World Methodist Council. In addition to Protestant bodies, many Methodist bodies are here classified as Independents. |
| metrodweller | A person residing in a city with a population greater than 300,000. |
| metropeople | An ethnolinguistic people or sociopeople resident in a metropolis, and forming a distinct homogenous group within it. |
| metropolis | The central city of a country or region or area, whether large or small (from the Greek for ‘mother city’). |
| migration | Geographical or spatial mobility; the declared intention to reside in or leave a country for at least a year. |
| millennialism | The doctrine that an earthly millennium of 1,000 years of universal peace and the triumph of righteousness will be fulfilled. |
| millionaire | An individual (or occasionally a family) worth one million USA dollars or over. |
| minor religions | Peripheral, marginal, or hidden groupings on the periphery of this survey’s definition of a religion. |
| missionary religions | A name given to those religions which undertake deliberate and organized missionary work in order to win converts in other countries and cultures. |
| mode | Mode denotes the way in which the people were interviewed (face-to-face, telephone, internet, cell phone, or mixed). All of the Census and Demographic and Health Surveys are conducted using face-to-face interviews of sampled people within a certain age group. |
| monastery | A house of religious retirement or seclusion from the world for persons under religious vows; in Catholic usage a house operated by a religious monastic order for men or women and always dependent on an abbey. |
| monastic order | A religious institute dedicated to the monastic life. |
| monasticism | The monastic life, system or condition; organized asceticism as practiced in a monastery. |
| monk | A man who is a member of a monastic order. |
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.