Data source: Gina A. Zurlo, ed., World Religion Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| country | A term covering both (a) sovereign nations, and (b) nonsovereign territories (dependencies or colonies) which are not integral parts of larger parent nations. |
| creole | A hybrid or pijin language which has now consolidated into a language with its own mother tongue speakers. |
| culture | A grouping of identical peoples in different countries all with the same total pattern of human behavior and its products. |
| culture cluster | Termed here an ethnocultural family. |
| culture net | Termed here a local race. |
| culture world | Major 7-part culture classification variously defined as culture civilization, with its own characteristic culture worldview, and culture lifestyle, particularly noted for its stylized skin color or pigmentation, biogenetic pool, color pool. |
| dagoba | A stupa (qv). |
| Daoists | Followers of the philosophical, ethical, and religious traditions of China, sometimes regarded as part of Chinese folk-religion. Also spelt Taoists. |
| defections | Individuals lost from a religion or religious body either to other religions or religious bodies or to no religion (agnosticism, atheism). |
| deist | An adherent of deism, a rationalist movement based on natural religion, reason and morality, and belief in an otiose God. |
| demography | The scientific and statistical study of human populations, primarily with respect to their size, structure, density, growth, distribution, development, migration and vital statistics. |
| dharma | (Sanskrit). In Hinduism, social custom, the caste system, religion, the body of cosmic principles by which all things exist; in Buddhism, ideal truth element of existence. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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(or other Christians) enumerated as affiliated by a majority or state-linked church but who have recently formally withdrawn or disaffiliated themselves completely from Christianity and now profess to be non-religious (agnostics) or atheists; i.e. recent withdrawals from state or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. |
| disbelief | Refusal to believe; withholding or rejection of belief; atheism, skepticism, irreligion. |
| disestablishment | The act of a state in sundering the legal relationships between it and its established church or churches. |
| Divine Science | See Religious Science. |
| divinity | The science of divine things; the science that deals with God, his laws and moral government, and the way of salvation; theology. |
| doubly-counted religionists | Persons counted as belonging to 2 or more religions, hence counted twice in censuses. |
| Druzes | Members of an 11th-century Muslim Shia Ismaili schism with Christian and Jewish elements; strongest in Syria and Lebanon. |
| Dupka | Karma-pa or Red Hat (Unreformed) Lamaism (qv). |
| Eastern Orthodox | Chalcedonian Christians, sometimes collectively referred to as Greek Orthodox and excluding Oriental Orthodox (qv). |
| Eastern rite | (Oriental-rite) Catholics. All Catholics or Catholics in communion with the Church of Rome who follow rites other than the Latin rite (totaling 28 rites and sub-rites). A full listing is given in Table 1-5. |
| education rate | Percentage of the school-age population (aged 5-24) who are enrolled in schools. |
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.