Data source: Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| district superintendent | In Methodism, a minister with oversight of churches and workers in a district. |
| divine | A priest, clergyman, theologian, one skilled in divinity. |
| divine healing | Healing attributed to the direct agency of God, usually in response to faith. |
| 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. |
| division | The act, process, or an instance of dividing into parts or portions; schism, breakoff, secession. |
| documentation center | A center for the collecting, assembling, coding and disseminating of recorded knowledge comprehensively treated, and for the processing of all kinds of documentation. |
| dogma | A doctrine or body of doctrines of theology and religion formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed by a church. |
| dogmatic constitution | The most solemn form of conciliar utterance emanating from a Catholic ecumenical council. The most imposing achievement of Vatican II was ‘Constitutio Dogmatica de Ecclesia’, also called ‘Lumen Gentium’. |
| domestic church | A term used in Catholic circles for the family, or believers in a family. |
| dormant Christians | See non-practicing Christians. |
| double affiliation | See doubly-affiliated Christians. |
| doubling | The practice, in Africa and India, of having 2 preachers for a sermon: the first preaching a sentence at a time, the second repeating the sentence for emphasis and often (in the open air) louder or in a different direction. |
| doubly-affiliated Christians | Persons affiliated to or claimed by 2 denominations at once (especially by Evangelical and Catholic churches in Latin America and Latin Europe, and by state churches and free churches in Scandinavia). |
| doubly-affiliated Christians | Persons who are baptized members of 2 or more denominations at the same time. |
| doubly-counted Catholics | Catholics counted as members of an older diocese or jurisdiction who also get counted again as members of a newer diocese when it is divided off from its parent diocese. |
| doubly-counted religionists | Persons counted as belonging to 2 or more religions, hence counted twice in censuses. |
| doubter | An unbeliever, agnostic, skeptic. |
| drama, religious | See religious drama. |
| Dravidian | An Indo-Iranian ethnolinguistic family. |
| Druzes | Members of an 11th-century Muslim Shia Ismaili schism with Christian and Jewish elements; strongest in Syria and Lebanon. |
| dual citizenship | Dual nationality, multiple nationality; the status of an individual who is a citizen of 2 or more states. |
| dual membership | Overlapping membership (qv). |
| Dunkers | Dippers; German Baptists practicing trine immersion, love feasts and simplicity of life. |
| Dupka | Karma-pa or Red Hat (Unreformed) Lamaism (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.