Data source: Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| perpetual curate | A vicar, or minister of a new church or district. |
| persecuted Christians | Christians in nations where the churches experience severe persecution, obstruction, harassment, and repression. |
| persecution | Persecution of believers specifically on religious grounds, though this is often denied. |
| persecution, religious | See religious persecution. |
| personal evangelism, personal work | Evangelistic witnessing and sharing by a Christian with other individuals. |
| personnel | Officially-recognized, officially-accredited and officially- enumerated active full-time Christian workers of all varieties, salaried or tent-making, men and women, ordained and lay, national and foreign. |
| persuasion | (1) A group, faction, sect or party adhering to a particular system of religious beliefs. 2) In evangelization, the act of persuading or influencing people to accept Christ by argument or reasoning. |
| Phanar | World headquarters (in Istanbul, Turkey) of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople; the ecumenical patriarch and his curia. |
| philosophy of religion | The search for the underlying causes and principles of reality in religion through logical reasoning rather than revelation. |
| phylum, phyla | See language phyla. |
| pidgin | A contact language used for communication between groups having different native languages; when a pidgin becomes the native language of a community, it is customarily called a creole (qv). |
| Pietism | A 17th-century religious movement originating in Germany emphasizing the need for a revitalized evangelical Christianity over against an excessive formalism and intellectualism. |
| Pietists | (Continental). Moravians (qv). |
| pijin, pidgin | A hybrid contact language used for communication between groups having different native languages; when a pidgin becomes the mother tongue of a community it is customarily called a creole. |
| pilgrim | One who travels to visit a shrine or holy place as a devotee. |
| pilgrimage centers and shrines | In addition, there are annually over 30 million Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and other non-Christian pilgrims. |
| pilgrims | Some 7.5% of all Christians (150 millions), of all traditions, are on the move as pilgrims every year, in most countries, visiting large numbers of local, national and international |
| pioneer publishers | In Jehovah’s Witnesses’ terminology, unpaid part-time members who engage in pioneer preaching and house-to-house visiting, averaging 100 hours’ work each per month. |
| placements | Copies of the Bible or New Testament placed free of charge in a home, institution or in a recipient’s hand, by free distribution agencies. Statistics of placements published by Gideons International give not annual totals but cumulative totals since the year 1908. |
| planning | The act or process of making or carrying out plans, especially the establishment of goals, policies and procedures for a social or economic unit. |
| plantatio ecclesiae | (Latin). The planting of the church; Catholic term for the aim of missions. |
| pluridenominational | A country’s situation where denominations number over 1,000. |
| pluriform church | The contemporary church in which differences of doctrinal emphasis are accepted as inevitable but provide no basis for breaches in fellowship. |
| Plymouth Brethren | Exclusive Brethren (qv). |
| pneumatography | Spirit writing (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.