I had to hunt down what an Islamic sermon is called (a khutbah, btw), and that sparked a discussion about whether writers should use original terms for accuracy or Christian terms for clarity when they write about other religions. That’s an IMHO topic, though. So just to fight some GQ ignorance, what would be the analogues to these terms in other religions, Abrahamic or otherwise?
Church/Mosque/Temple
Cleric
Priest
Altar
Preach/Witness
Sermon
Congregation
The Church (people)/Ummah
Bible/Torah/Koran
Heaven and Hell
Pew
Sacrament
Cross/Crescent Moon/Star of David
Pulpit
Eucharist
Mission
Missionary
Feel free to add anything I omitted. I realize there are a bajillion religions and these don’t all have counterparts, but that’s to be expected. So let’s just get as far as we can, eh?
I have no answer! However, I do have a similar question, that I’ll piggyback on yours.
What is the difference between these various positions within Christian churches:
Priest
Pastor
Vicar
Deacon
Rector
Minister
Preacher
I know that “priest” is used pretty much only in the Catholic/Episcopalian/Eastern Orthodox branches, but beyond that…I have no clue what the difference is between a pastor and a minister, and where vicars and deacons come into the picture is beyond me.
Pundit - I don’t know that there’s a difference between the two.
Altar
mandav - only it’s not usually a table. the Gods are usually statues, and there is a clear place in front of them to put flowers, gifts, plus an offering box right in front of them. usually in front of the Goddess lakshmi but prudent temples will put as many as they can so you can pray to the god you want. Each household has their own gods, and forget the differences between North and South Indians gods - I usually prayed to Krishna, for example, when I prayed, and even in the same household it’s considered acceptable to have your “own” God you prefer to pray to. I think my mom was a devotee of Brahma, anyway.
*Even mandav doesn’t fit. Maybe agnihotri (place of fire)?
Preach/Witness
it’s not written in our scriptures to do so so we don’t do it. see below.
Sermon
pooja means prayer. we don’t really have one dude up there lecturing at us. IME it’s one of two things: in the more orthodox temples, it’s someone droning on in Sanskrit while everyone else gossips in whispers because no one can understand the words, and besides he says it in a rhythm or a chant anyway. in the temple I went to, we had a havan, which is a sacrificial fire. there is a pundit but each week a different family would coordinate the havan for something in their family (a graduation, or a party, or an illness) and do the ‘work’ of putting things in the fire. Sometimes we’d have Gita study. Then, bhajans (religious songs), and we go out of our way to learn the prayers in Hindi as well as Sanskrit so everyone can participate. I was part of a very liberal, modern temple, which I appreciate. Be very aware this is MY temple and they are all different.
Congregation
don’t know - janta means the public, it could pass for this
The Church (people)/Ummah
What, like a word for the entire religious establishment? In Hinduism? HAHAHAHA sooner you’ll see cats get herded
Bible/Torah/Koran
Gita - only it’s really included in there for the sake of completion. A better equivalant would be the Vedas. We had more to say than just one book! But I don’t know many people who have read the Vedas.
Heaven and Hell
jahunnam is in Urdu, i think. but Hindi it would be lok for heaven and yamlok for hell. however, the christian equivalant of heaven and hell do not translate directly as we believe in moksha (think nirvana) = eternal oneness with God, who is also the Universe. You go through a cycle of rebirth until you have washed yourself of all sin.
Pew
Eh? We sit on the floor, except for the old or infirm who can’t get down there, and we usually bring in folding chairs for them.
Sacrament
reet is the equivalant to rite or sacrament. sometimes we say “reeti-rivage” to indicate “rites and rituals”
Cross/Crescent Moon/Star of David
Om. Om is supposedly the first sound that the universe ever uttered, and it’s considered divine and sacred and mystical. It’s supposed to be embedded in our very souls and in every bit of fabric of the universe. As such, it’s a little hard to explain quickly, but basically it’s a spiritual symbol that shows the connection between all living things. Note you don’t necessarily need God to explain it, though it has been said it is the manifestation of God in an audible form. The word Om is also supposed to be the name of God.
Pulpit
Again, no one is lecturing us from the front of the room, so we have no pulpit. The pundit is often either on the floor with us, or doing what he needs to do with the statues of the Gods.
Eucharist
We don’t have something exactly akin, but “prasad” is food that has been offered to the gods first and is blessed by the priest. you are not supposed to throw it away or waste it, but it’s not as though you are taking a bit of your God’s body in with it.
Mission
Missionary
We don’t really prosletyize - it’s not part of our religion. Most Hindus I know think it’s kind of silly and pointless anyway. Hinduism says all good and true paths lead to God, so why try to get people to change? Your Christ is just our Issai; another avatar of our God. He just had to show up in a different form for the white folk.
A priest is in charge of a church. He’ll conduct mass and perform sacraments. A deacon is a cleric that’s subordinate to a priest, usually. He performs certain liturgical functions like reading the Gospel at a mass and can also perform sacraments like baptism. He’s like a priest-lite. A rector is a person in charge of a building or institution like a University, church, or cathedral. That person can also be a priest or a bishop or whatever. A pastor is a generic term mostly used in Protestant churches, but I’ve heard it used in Catholicism, too.
I’ve never actually met a vicar, but I get the impression you’d find them acting as bishops of territories that don’t have churches, such as the fringes of Catholicism like Chad or Thailand (I’m guessing). Other than those people, I think it’s basically a sub-title, like Prince William is the Baron of Whateverville.
But some of those aren’t a matter of religion, they’re a matter of language. And some of the definitions you give, such as “a priest is in charge of a church”, are incorrect; a Christian priest may or may not be in charge of a church (by which what do you mean, a parish?) and a priest in any religion is in charge of sacrifices - including Christian ones.
Without condemning this effort at being helpful, I have to note that there is some false information loaded into it.
Bishops, priests, and deacons can be looked on as equivalent to military ranks, while the other terms describe billets. While most of a deacon’s work is pastoral care in nature, he can lead public worship, officiate at a marriage, conduct a communion service using preconsecrated elements, baptize, and pronounce the church’s blessing. A priest may do these things and also celebrate the Eucharist (Mass/Divine Liturgy/Holy Communion/Lord’s Supper), chrismate, anoint for healing, and pronounce absolution. Because of pre=Reformation attitudes about the priesthood, most protestant churches prefer the tr4anslated term elder or the transliteration presbyter, but the three terms are equivalent in referent nd meaning. In churches which have them, bishops add to the above faculties the rights to confirm and to ordain, and to teach authoritatively for the whole church.
For churches other than the Lutheran and Anglican traditions, pastor is the office held by the clergyman who runs the individual local church, nearly always a priest or elder. Lutherans use the term pastor where everyone else uses priest or elder, asw the intermediate rank of clergy.
Anglicans use the term rector to mean the priest who leads a church that pays his salary; it also has the specialized meanings which Chessic Sense noted. Vicar is a clergyman serving in lieu of someone else, e.g., the man sent out to head a mission church, or in England the man named by the patron of a parish church. In addition an apostolic vicar is the senior Catholic priest administering a vacant diocese until the Pope names a new bishop.
A clergyman is anybody ordained with laqying on of hands or licensed by his denomination to lead a local church. A minister is anybody doing ministry, which can include laymen, but usually is used as a synonym for clergyman.
I came into this thread quite willing to offer the Jewish counterparts to your list, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that all I’d be giving is the Hebrew translations of the words. I don’t mind doing that, but I have this feeling that it isn’t what the OP is really interested in.
I think what the OP might be more interested in is a breakdown between the concepts the do have analogues in Judaism (or other religions) and the ones that are simply too foreign to even have an analogue. For example, “witnessing” – in the sense of going out to attract newcomers – is simply unknown in Judaism. Converts are welcome to Judaism, but we attract them by trying to set an example and perhaps spark an interest, rather than run a public-relations campaign of whatever sort.
Priest - Catholic minister, also Anglican. Listens to confessions and leads mass. Celibate in the Catholic church.
Pastor - Common Protestant term for spiritual leader. In charge of nearly all aspects of “pastoral” kind of duties, including sermons, funerals, weddings, visiting the sick, giving advice, etc. Not celibate.
Vicar - Church representatives. I believe they travel around.
Deacon - In protestent churches, these can be made up out of the congregation and frequently handle financial and spiritual decisions(including hiring new pastors).
Rector - Not so sure on this one.
Minister - Nearly identical to pastor, if not totally identical.
Preacher - Someone who travels and gives sermons where needed.
A pastor in Catholic terms is the head priest of a particular parish. The other priests are usually denoted as “associate pastors”. In all cases, the idea is that of a shepherd (i.e., pastoral) guiding a flock.
I don’t know about other denominations, but vicar in Lutheranism almost always refers to a pastor completing their training. The vicarage* is like an internship before a pastor receives an assignment to a congregation (usually of their own; vicars would hardly ever be on their own). But the term itself does mean ‘substitute’ or ‘representative’. The Roman Catholic pope is known as the “vicar of Christ”.
*This term is used for the term of service, not necessarily in the older sense of payment or housing.
The most likely symbol for Buddhism would be the “Wheel of Dharma”.
Church/Mosque/Temple
*definitions are complex, specially mixed like that and specially since Christian definitions vary. A Mosque is not a temple in the sense that Muslims, IIUC, do not offer sacrifices to God there, but then, neither are some Christian places of worship.
For a Christian, the term “Church” means the community of believers; how broadly one defines that community varies. There’s people who define it as their denomination, those who define it to include several denominations but not all, and those who include all Christians.
Note that in Judaism Sinagogues are not temples in the sacrificial sense, the Temple is the house of the Ark of the Alliance and the only location where sacrifices can be offered. They are houses of worship, but not temples in this sacrificial sense.
Cleric
a person who is ordained.
Altar
table upon which sacrifices are offered. Again, it’s lost its original meaning in those churches which do not offer a sacrifice.
Preach/Witness
two different animals. To witness, in a religious sense as in a legal one, is to give testimony and generally involves a conversation; you can’t witness to a mountain. Preaching involves expounding on an idea, with no intent to converse; getting hallellujahs back from a congregation which gives them is not the same as having people ask, for example, “so what about the trinity? That doesn’t make any fucking sense!”
Sermon
in a religious context, speech given by a preacher, generally during a religious meeting
Congregation
a group of believers which meet at a given place
The Church (people)/Ummah
explained above
Bible/Torah/Koran
these are names of Holy Books or compilations thereof (the only one that’s a single book being the Koran, of the three named); different religions may or may not have Holy Writ
Heaven and Hell
put like that, they refer, respectively, to a place or state of reward achieved post mortem, or to a place or state of punishment, also entered post mortem. Some religions only have one, some have neither.
Pew
a carpentry term, which for some reason has become christian-church exclusive in English while its equivalents in other languages remain carpentry terms.
Originally it referred to a long seat holding several people; in English, it has come to mean “any seating found in a christian church, excluding the pastor’s chair”
Sacrament
from Latin, it would come to mean “act which makes holy”. Normally used only within Christianity to refer to up to seven specific holy-making actions.
Cross/Crescent Moon/Star of David
in a religious context, these are symbols associated respectively with Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
Pulpit
an elevated spot used for preaching
Eucharist
one of the seven sacraments of Christianity; the sacrifice to which the usage of the term priest makes reference in a Christian context. It reproduces a scene from the life of the man Christians believe to be the Saviour of humanity and the Messiah of the Jews (the Jews disagree with this belief) and symbolically reproduces the death of that man a few days later. Those Christian denominations which do not perform Eucharist do not call their clerics priests.
Mission
lit. duty, appointed task. On a Christian context it refers to the act of going to distant and/or hostile lands in order to witness to nonbelievers, or to the location where those actors set up shop.
Missionary
actors of the previously-defined act
Priest
person who offers sacrifices to the god or gods of their religion in a temple
Vicar
from Latin; lit. deputy, representative.
Pastor
from Latin, “herder”, shepherd.
Both of these are among the names given to clerics within Christianity and, as panamajack and jayjay mentioned, the specific meaning varies by specific denomination.
Note that, while the cross is the major symbol of Christianity, the crescent and Mogen David are only symbols associated with Islam/Judaism, as my understanding is that both religions forbid the use of such symbols for actual religious use.
Some more, perhaps less technical, and more core ideas.
Ordination. Is there a class of person that has a special relationship or capabilities associated with the deity? How do they acquire these? Is it hereditary? What are the names of these people?
Rites of passage? Birth, marriage, death, coming age - be they confirmation, bar mitzvah, gom jabbar.
Integration with the political management of the populace. Does the religion have a special constitutional place in law? Or the converse? Is there an equivalent of Pope or Monarch as Head of the Church or England? What are they called? Is it hereditary?
Does the religion include punitive powers? What are the people that wield that power called?
Ask 12 neopagans anything, and you’ll get 13 answers, but I’ll give it a shot from my own experiences:
Church/Mosque/Temple: Circle. As in, “Will you be at Circle for Samhain?” Circle may refer to the group of people (congregation), the literal arrangement we stand in during religious rites, or the room/building where we meet (church)
Cleric
Priest: Priest/Priestess. Some traditions have female Priests, but it’s pretty rare.
Altar: Altar And we have tons of 'em. We build altars to the elements (Air, Earth, Fire, Water), to generic God and/or Goddess, to specific gods and/or goddesses, Altars for specific festival days, temporary altars, permanent altars, portable altars… My smallest Altar, complete with elemental representations and tools, fits into a Sucrets tin. My (personal) largest takes up the top of my dresser.
Preach/Witness: We don’t. Or rather, we try not to. There is a phenomenon we like to call “Fluffy Bunnies,” but it’s kind of a mean term/idea. Fluffy Bunnies are generally new converts who are so EXCITED that there’s A PATH JUST FOR THEM even though they NEVER LIKED HANGING OUT WITH WOMEN BEFORE but now there’s NOT JUST A GOD, there’s a GODDESS and SEX IS SACRED AND GOOD!!! They can get a little witnessey, but we usually just wait for them to grow out of it.
Sermon: Hmm…we don’t really have a word for it. We generally try to minimize talky talky from the Priest/ess, preferring ritual drama or active participation from the Circle.
Congregation
The Church (people)/Ummah: Circle
Bible/Torah/Koran: Bible/Torah/Koran. We don’t have a single authoritative source which collects our lore like the Bible/Torah/Koran are. Our own books are sometimes called “A Book of Shadows”, and are collections of esoteric lore, myths, spells, rituals, etc. that each practitioner maintains for him/herself. Many of us now have Document Folders of Shadows, instead of actual books.
Heaven: The Other Side, The Summerlands, The Void, The In-Between. Many of us don’t visualize it as a final destination, but rather a pause and reflect time (with no actual place in space) between lifetimes where you take stock of what you learned and choose your lessons (and sometime, the people who will help you learn them) for your next incarnation.
and Hell: Don’t have one. If you’ve been an asshole in life, you realize it between lives and get to decide if/how you want to learn a different lesson next life. For example, I have one friend who believes she spent many lifetimes abusing women, and that this time she chose to be born as a woman to learn a different point of view about that. The only punishment in The In-Between is your own remorse and guilt.
Pew: Don’t have 'em. We generally stand in Circle, or sit on the floor. As we get older, we’ve started dragging more and more chairs into Circle, though!
Sacrament: Oh, this is a hard one. Erm…Blessing? When we do rites of passage, we often bestow blessings on one another, either from ourselves or from god/desses, spoken through us. So I might offer my body to Hestia and speak words she sends through me to a new homeowner during a House Blessing, and other people might offer their own blessings for safety and prosperity. Is that kinda sorta like a Sacrament?
Cross/Crescent Moon/Star of David: We call those thing by their names. Do you mean do we have any sacred symbols? Tons. We sell lots of jewelery to each other with many of these symbols. The most common is probably the pentacle (a five pointed star inside a circle) which represents the five elements, protection, shielding or Human as Divine, depending on the context.
Pulpit: Don’t generally have one. The person leading the ritual will often stand within the perimeter of the Circle with everyone else, or they may walk around inside the Circle.
Eucharist: Eucharist. Or some groups call it Cakes and Ale (even if it’s not actually cakes or ale). We do share a Eucharist at just about every ritual opportunity. It symbolizes our community, our caring for one another (it’s very common for people to feed one another the Eucharist), and our thanks for the bounty of the Earth.
Mission
Missionary: N/A. See “Witnesing”
This is where we get into the 13 answers. But generally speaking, Ordination isn’t about a person having a special relationship with god/dess, but rather a special relationship with the community. Everyone can talk to god/dess. Everyone is divine. But Priest/esses have dedicated their service to the community. Need a ritual whipped up at a moment’s notice? Call me. But you don’t have to be ordained to plan or run a ritual - in fact, most of us plan and run rituals for a long time before we decide to go through Ordination.
There are hereditary groups - people who think that you can only be a Priest/ess if your father/mother was. Generally speaking, these people are full of shit, historically speaking. I’ve never yet met a “hereditary” anyone who could actually document that their Path had been passed down, unchanged, through a long lineage. The general excuse is that great-great-great grandmother had to hide during The Burning Times (also largely b.s.).
Some groups train their own people and offer official Ordination. There are some schools which teach people who may be unaffiliated. But the vast majority of people who are Priest/esses feel a Call and either do a solitary ritual or ask their Circle to help them with this rite of passage.
So not everyone who is a Priest/ess is a legally ordained or formally educated Clergyperson.
Baby Blessings: like a baptism. We ask God/dess to Bless the Baby and recognize him/her as a new spirit returned to earth. We often have Spirit Parents (sometimes called God Parents, sometimes called Goddess Parents) who, like Catholic godparents, promise to help raise and guide this child and help them on their Spiritual Path. Unlike Catholics, we don’t usually promise to raise the child in our own faith, but rather to support them in their own inquiry and honor their Path. Sometimes the placenta is buried and/or a tree is planted in honor of the birth. (Trees grow real well with placenta for fertilizer!)
Seven-Year Rite: It’s recognized that, around the age of 7, a person goes through a shift. Where a younger child is pretty much an extension of his parents, around 7 they really start to individualize. They become dramatically more mature, and we want to mark that. Often this rite looks a lot like a Baby Blessing, except that the child is now aware enough to witness it. Kids are often given their very own altars and/or altar tools at the SYR. They are often told about their importance within the community, and how we value them as contributing members. They will sometimes be given a new privilege and a new responsibility by their parents. For my daughter’s (in just two months!), for example, I’m going to tell her she can now stay home by herself for up to an hour if I have to go out and she doesn’t want to come along. But as an older, more contributing member of the family, she’s also going to get an added responsibility: sweeping the kitchen floor every night. For the community, she’s going to be put in charge of watching the two younger kids at Circle.
First Moon Rite: Only done at the request of the young lady, we do a women’s only Circle welcoming, advising and commiserating the joys and pitfalls of budding sexuality and reproduction. This is when I pass out copies of Taking Charge of Your Fertility and extoll the virtues of the Diva Cup!
Manhood Rite/Coming of Age/lots of other names: I dunno. It’s a male thing, so I’ve never been invited. At some point, the menfolk drag the teenaged boys away and then bring them back later. I expect alcohol and firearms are often involved.
Initiation: a rite of passage formally acknowledging one joining a group. Some groups are “closed”, meaning you have to Initiate to attend Circle. Some groups are “open”, meaning anyone can come to Circle. Most groups are both; some Circles are for Initiates only, while some are open to the public. Vocabulary: Closed Circle = Initiates only, Open Circle = all are welcome.
Initiations can also be to a new “level” of the group, where additional teachings are taught, or the term can be used instead of Ordination - especially if those who Initiate into a certain level are now considered Ordained. For example, in one group I was a member of, you’d Initiate into Earth Degree, then Water, then Fire, then Air, each with its own focus and teaching. If you Initiated into Fire, you’d be considered Clergy at that point.
Weddings/Handfasting: About like mainstream ones, but the clothes and tools look different. Handfastings are non-legal, spiritual unions which traditionally last a year and a day, but sometimes people Handfast for life, or “for as long as our Love shall last” or other limits of their own devising.
Handparting/Cutting the Cord: Pagan divorce. I actually really love doing these. If the couple is functioning well enough to request and go through with a handparting, they have my respect.
Croning: When a woman reaches menopause, she may ask us to do a rite of passage commemorating that. Sometimes women only, sometimes mixed.
Funerals: It’s a funeral. Pretty much like a mainstream wake, except we’ll probably stand in the ever present Circle. Usually people talk about the deceased, we Bless him/her and wish him/her a peaceful journey between lives. Ashes may be scattered and/or a tree planted. If they have small children, we often make a time capsule with notes, memories or mementos of the deceased. The capsule is buried and a map made and given to the other parent to give to the child when it seems right to them.
Some of our groups are legally recognized churches, and are subject to the same restriction/privledges as your local Christian church. Most are not. Some groups have a Spiritual Head, some don’t.
Woo-boy, ask the hard ones, why don’t you?
Again, it varies. Some groups have elaborate lists of do’s and don’ts, and will bar you from membership if you violate them. Some are more casual, and try to work things out through social pressure, arbitration or therapy.
Very generally speaking, most neopagan Circles are collaborative, not hierarchical, in nature - or at least strive to be. So the power to ban lies either with a piece of paper (part of the group’s Charter or Book of Shadows) or with the group as a whole. We don’t like even our Spiritual Head to have the power to punish for a personal vendetta.
As a former Wiccan (solitary), I’d like to add that the Wiccan/pagan idea of “sin” and punishment for same is a lot different from the Christian POV. The overriding moral tenets of Wicca are “Harm none” and “Whatever you put out will come back to you threefold”. There’s really no punishment for “sin” in the afterlife…“karma” is a more immediate concept in Wicca. Your next incarnation is what YOU choose it to be, not what you “deserve”. So blowback for bad acts happen in the life in which the bad acts happened. This makes it advisable to think very carefully before you do anything that might bite you in the butt, because Wiccans believe that it WILL bite you in the butt, and HARD. This counts toward both mundane actions and ritual actions…if you work a ritual to bring justice to someone who’s hurt you or your family, you’d better have a clean slate yourself or accept that you’re likely to get blowback.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard an “official” explanation for Wiccan-type karma, but when I was practicing I’d developed a theory that it wasn’t so much some deity weighing things on a set of cosmic scales as it was some reflective nature of the universe…the emotions and deeds that you set in motion hit their target then reflect back to you.
And we have tons of 'em. We build altars to the elements (Air, Earth, Fire, Water), to generic God and/or Goddess, to specific gods and/or goddesses, Altars for specific festival days, temporary altars, permanent altars, portable altars… My smallest Altar, complete with elemental representations and tools, fits into a Sucrets tin. My (personal) largest takes up the top of my dresser.
