Data source: Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| foreign missions | The enterprise of taking a religion to foreign countries and planting it there through organized, fulltime workers. |
| foreign missions | Christian outreach carried out in any other countries than where a sending church or mission is based. |
| foreign personnel | Full-time long-term Christian workers serving in a foreign country, sent abroad on behalf of their churches, but who are not described as and do not use the term missionaries. |
| foreigner | An alien, stranger, expatriate; a person belonging to or owing allegiance to a foreign country. |
| formal correspondence translation | An exact or literal or word-for-word translation of Scripture preserving the form of the original from its original languages into contemporary languages (e.g. in English the AV (KJV), ASV, RV, NASB, RSV), in contrast to UBS policy of dynamic equivalence. |
| fortnightly attenders | Affiliated Christians (church members) who attend church services of public worship on average twice a month. |
| fraternal worker | A term in use in ecumenical Protestant circles, intended in the 1960s as a replacement for ‘foreign missionary’. |
| Free Christians | Unitarians (qv). |
| Free churches | Minority churches not established or under state control, specially in countries with majority state churches. |
| free distribution of scriptures | Annual statistics of placements of scriptures, donated without cost to recipients. |
| Free Methodists | Holiness Christians (qv). |
| Free Pentecostals | Perfectionist-Pentecostals (qv). |
| Freemasons | Members of the secret fraternal order of Free and Accepted Masons, the largest worldwide secret society, spread by the advance of the British empire; 7,500,000 members worldwide (5 million in USA, 1.5 million in British Isles, 15,000 in France, 5,000 in Kenya also strong in Italy, Germany, Liberia, et alia. Strong hostility to the churches especially Catholic Church) in France, Italy, Latin countries; banned in USSR, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Portugal, China, Indonesia, Egypt, et alia. |
| freethinkers | Agnostics, skeptics, unbelievers. |
| Friends | (quakers). A Protestant tradition dating from 1652. |
| Friends World Committee for Consultation | (FWCC). The major Quaker world communion. |
| fringe members | Persons who are church members on the rolls, but only in a marginal sense, being irregular or occasional or casual church attenders or rarely seen, or adherents only partly committed to church law and discipline or only partially accepting Christian faith and practice. |
| frontier | From a missionary point of view, the barrier or demarcation that exists between 2 distinct cultures or languages or types of religions, and which must be crossed before missionary contact and communication can be established. |
| frontier missionary | A full-time foreign or cross-cultural missionary who works among an unreached people, an unevangelized population segment or in World A. |
| frontier missions | Missionary work among the unreached or unevangelized peoples of the world, i.e. World A. |
| frontier people | An alternate term for an unreached minipeople. |
| fulfillment | Accomplishment, consummation, completion, e.g. of the Great Commission. |
| full communion | In Anglican usage, complete sacramental fellowship and mutual acceptance of ministries between 2 or more confessions or churches. |
| full member | An adult church member who is a baptized communicant in good standing within his church. |
| full-time ministry | Ordained persons whose primary occupation is in some form of ministry. |
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.