Data source: Gina A. Zurlo, ed., World Religion Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| Orthodox | In 4 traditions: Eastern (Chalcedonian), Oriental (Pre-Chalcedonian, Non-Chalcedonian, Monophysite), Assyrian Church of the East (Nestorian), and non-historical Orthodox. |
| orthodoxy | Right teaching in Christian theology, as contrasted with heresy and heterodoxy. |
| Orthodoxy | The systems of faith, practice and discipline of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches. |
| other religionists | A term used here in Tables 1 for total adherents of all other smaller non-Christian religious faiths, quasi-religions, pseudo-religions, para-religions, religious systems, religious philosophies and semi-religious brotherhoods (Gnostic, Occult, Masonic, Mystic, etc.). |
| otiose | Used of God in many pagan religions: remote, aloof, uninvolved, uninterested in the human race. |
| outer language | Alternative term for a language cluster (qv). |
| outer lingua franca | A common language with over 100,000 non-native speakers, and strictly defined as a language cluster (outer language) in World Language Classification; a lingua franca identical to a language cluster or outer language, with all component languages sharing 80% basic vocabulary of common human experience. |
| p.a. | Per annum, per year, each year, every year, annual, yearly, over the previous 12 months. |
| p.d. | Per diem, per day, daily. |
| pagans | (Latin: country-dwellers). Asomewhat outdated term for non-Christians, heathen, polytheists, animists, shamanists, et alii. |
| pagoda | A stupa (qv). |
| pantheism | A doctrine that the universe conceived of as a whole is God. |
| pantheist | A follower of pantheism. |
| parareligionists | Members of a body that is almost a religion, partly a religion, often self-identifying as such. |
| party | A politico-religious grouping of religionists with its major function as a political one. |
| passover | Annual Jewish religious festival commemorating deliverance from Egypt; for Christians, symbolic of Christ’s atonement for sin. |
| pastor | A clergyman, priest or minister responsible for the cure of souls. |
| pedigree | A religion’s coded family tree or lineage, relationship to existing religions, ancestry, line of descent. |
| Pentecostalism | A Christian confession or ecclesiastical tradition holding the distinctive teaching that all Christians should seek a post-conversion religious experience called the Baptism with the Holy Spirit, and that a Spirit-baptized believer may receive one or more of the supernatural gifts known in the Early Church: instantaneous sanctification, the ability to prophesy, practice divine healing, speak in tongues (glossolalia), or interpret tongues. |
| Pentecostals | Followers of Pentecostalism (qv), a major world tradition originating around 1900. |
| Pentecostals/Charismatics | Shorthand term for Pentecostal/Charismatic/Independent Charismatic. |
| people, people group | A grouping of individuals who perceive themselves to have a common affinity for one another because of their shared language, religion, ethnicity, residence, occupation, class or caste, situation, etc. or combination of these. The statistical unit ‘people’ in this survey always refers to a people, or part thereof, in one single country. |
| peripheral religion | A religion on the periphery of this survey’s definition of religion. |
| philosophy of religion | The search for the underlying causes and principles of reality in religion through logical reasoning rather than revelation. |
| pijin, pidgin | A hybrid contact language used for communication between groups having different native languages; when a pidgin becomes the mother tongue of a community it is customarily called a creole. |
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.