Data source: Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| Kingdom of God | The central theme of Christ’s teaching and of the New Testament, and of Christian theology subsequently. |
| Kirchentag | (German: church congress). A series of annual mass Whitsun rallies or festivals of the German Churches (Protestant and Catholic), held approximately every 2 years since 1945; they last 4-7 days, with meetings, workshops, et alia. |
| knowledge base | A collection of data, rules, inferences, and procedures in a specific field of interest, organized to form the basis for an intelligent computer expert system. |
| koinonia | (NT Greek). Fellowship; the witness of fellowship. |
| Koran | See Quran. |
| Korean | An Asian ethnolinguistic family and people. |
| Korean indigenous churches | Denominations indigenous to, and started by, Koreans. |
| Krio | A Eurafrican or Colored person, in Sierra Leone. |
| labor force | In ILO usage, the economically-active population, both employed and unemployed, excluding students, women at home, retired persons, wholly-dependent persons, et alii. |
| labor-intensive | Methods of industrial or manufacturing organization which employ as many persons as possible, in developing countries. |
| laicization | The process or act of removing or nullifying priests’ orders and returning clergy to the status of laity again, mainly among Catholics. |
| laity | The great body of the people of a religious faith as distinguished from its clergy; in Christianity, laity number over 99.7% of the entire membership of the churches. |
| lama | (Tibetan: one who is superior). Apriest or monk of Tibetan Buddhism (Lamaism). |
| Lamaists | Tantrayana, or the Tantrism school of Buddhism (qv). |
| Lambeth Conference | A conference of the bishops of the worldwide Anglican Communion called every 10 years or so by the archbishop of Canterbury; consultative only, not legislative. |
| Landeskirche | (German: territorial or state church). In West Germany, the Protestant state or established church of one of the 10 Lander (states). |
| land-line relay | In large evangelistic campaigns, a campaign meeting or service which is transmitted from the host city to another city by land cable, to be heard there by another audience. |
| language | The principal means of communicating culture (the entire way of life of a people); tongue, speech, idiom, dialect. |
| language | A grouping of idioms or dialects whose speech communities share 85% or more common vocabulary. |
| language cluster | Also termed outer language, a grouping of languages which shares 80% or more lexical similarity (shared words, the basic vocabulary of human experience). |
| language net | A grouping of languages sharing 70% or more common vocabulary. |
| language set | A grouping of languages sharing 30% common vocabulary. |
| language user | Speakers of a specific language who can understand or use other languages within a cluster through sharing 80% common vocabulary. |
| language, inner | Technical name for the popularly used simplification ‘language’. |
| language, official state | See official state languages. |
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.