Data source: Gina A. Zurlo, ed., World Religion Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| futures | Futurists usually speak of possible futures in the plural when discussing the future of a particular entity or concept, posing a range of 2 or 3 scenarios of the future instead of a more risky single future prediction. |
| Gelukpa | Yellow Hat (Reformed) Lamaism (qv). |
| general census | A population census in which all inhabitants of a country are counted simultaneously. |
| generation | The average period (about 30 years) between the birth of one generational group on Earth, and that of the next; a 30-year period. |
| geographic race | Subdivision of the 5 races of humankind, with each of the 13 geographic races being based on one continent or part thereof; also termed continental race, or regional race. |
| geolinguistics | The new science of the spatial study of language use and distribution. |
| georeligion | A worldwide religion, or segment of a larger religion, that is global, universal, non-local, open to all as members. |
| geostatus | The overall situation and status of the globe’s whole population, in particular from the religious and Christian standpoints. |
| geotrend | A long-term or short-term change in the global situation, demographic or religious. |
| global religion | A universal religion with adherents from 10 million to 200 million. |
| global statistics | Numbers, series of figures, and other varieties of statistics describing any aspect of the entire world, the Earth, our globe, its populations, its problems, its past, its present, and its future. |
| globalist | A specialist in globalistics, one who consistently takes the global view and emphasizes the big-picture approach to researching and understanding world problems. |
| globalistics | The professional study of the world in its entirety, with all its peoples, groupings, problems, and possibilities; together with detailed statistical enumeration. |
| glossozone (zone) | One of 100 linguistic areas describing the whole world of 13,500 languages. |
| Gnosticism | The thought and practice of various cults of late pre-Christian and early Christian centuries, declared heretical by the church, characterized chiefly by pretension to mystic and esoteric religious insights, by emphasis on knowledge (gnosis) rather than faith, and by the conviction that matter is evil. |
| Gnostics | Followers of a complex Jewish-Christian syncretistic movement in the 2nd century AD. The only surviving Gnostics today are the 39,000 Mandaeans (qv) of Iraq and Iran. |
| Greater Vehicle | The Mahayana school of Buddhists. |
| hadith | In Islam, the collected traditions of Mohammed. |
| hajj | (hadj, haj). The pilgrimage to Mecca prescribed as a religious duty for Muslim. |
| hajj pilgrims to Mecca | Annual totals: (1912) 300,000, (1929) 90,000, (1941) 23,000, (1968) 692,784, (1975) 1,557,867, peaking at 2.5 million (1989); controlled thereafter at 2 million. Sou |
| hajji | (hadji, haji). AMuslim who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, who may then add the term to his name as a title. |
| Hanafites | Followers of Hanafiya, the most liberal of the 4 schools or rites of Sunni Muslim law, and by far the most widespread. |
| Hanbalites | Followers of Hanabila, the most rigid of the 4 schools or rites of Sunni Muslim law; mainly in Central Arabia. |
| high spiritism | Mediumistic cults or religions emphasizing a synthesis of science, philosophy and religion, as contrasted with low spiritism. |
| Hinayana | A school of Buddhists, Theravada (qv). |
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.