Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Zion, city, United States

(Encyclopedia)Zion zīˈən [key], city (1990 pop. 19,775), Lake co., extreme NE Ill., on Lake Michigan; inc. 1902. Largely residential, the city has some light industry. Zion was founded in 1901 by John Alexander ...

Niebuhr, Reinhold

(Encyclopedia)Niebuhr, Reinhold rīnˈhōld nēˈbo͝or [key], 1892–1971, American religious and social thinker, b. Wright City, Mo. A graduate of Yale Divinity School, he served (1915–28) as pastor of Bethel E...

Burgis, William

(Encyclopedia)Burgis, William bûrˈjĭs [key], fl. 1717–31, American engraver and publisher of maps and views, b. London. His name appears as publisher on the views South Prospect of ye Flourishing City of New Y...

excommunication

(Encyclopedia)excommunication, formal expulsion from a religious body, the most grave of all ecclesiastical censures. Where religious and social communities are nearly identical it is attended by social ostracism, ...

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

(Encyclopedia)Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), sometimes called Campbellites, a Protestant religious body founded early in the 19th cent. in the United States. Its primary thesis is that the Bible alone shou...

church, aggregation of Christian believers

(Encyclopedia)church [probably Gr.,=divine], aggregation of Christian believers. The traditional belief has the church the community of believers, living and dead, headed by Jesus, who founded it in the apostles. T...

church, building for Christian worship

(Encyclopedia)church [Gr. kuriakon=belonging to the Lord], in architecture, a building for Christian worship. The earliest churches date from the late 3d cent.; before then Christians, because of persecutions, wors...

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

(Encyclopedia)African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Methodist denomination. It was founded in 1796 by black members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in New York City and was organized as a national body in 1821...

Murray, John

(Encyclopedia)Murray, John, 1741–1815, founder of the Universalist denomination in America, b. England. He was excommunicated by the Methodists after he had openly accepted Universalism as taught by James Relly (...

Browse by Subject