Language of the Reborn

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We lay folk tend to use the various terms for religious houses of worship interchangeably. But in actuality each refers to distinct types of buildings & denominations of worship.​

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CHURCH🔍  is the most common, most encompassing term. It's any gathering place for communal worship & preaching.  But it's not just a building, it also implies a Pastor or Priest and refers to a permanent congregation, (people who habitually gather to worship.)

         The church can mean both the local group of worshippers associated with the specific building and the larger body of worshipers, worldwide, as a whole. (Either all members of a particular denomination or all members of the Christian Faith Universal, however one might define that.)

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A CHAPEL🔍 , like a church, is used by many denominations, but it refers only to the physical building, (either a stand alone, or often as a special side room attached to a larger house of worship or public building.)  Many churches & cathedrals have chapels in their wings and traditionally castles would also have their own chapels attached or on their grounds. 

         Chapels do not have a specific associated pastor, priest or congregation. Sometimes, like when attached to public buildings like hospitals, they don't even have a specific denomination, though it may be dedicated to a specific use or saint. In all cases the space is smaller than a traditionally sized church, and rarely used for group gatherings or are sermons. They are spaces for more private and individual communing with God.

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CATHEDRALS🔍 as authority seats of Bishops in the hierarchy of Christian Faith, on the other hand, are usually much larger, grander church buildings. They're most commonly Catholic, but Anglicans & Lutherans, for example, also use a liturgical structure that includes Bishops.

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A BASILICA🔍 is not a specific kind of church, but an honorary title given to an existing church bestowing status, jurisdiction & privileges. It's often of a similar scale in grandness to Cathedrals, but it doesn't have to be. They are dedicated to either a specific Bishop or Saint but aren't an authority seat of jurisdiction per-se. (In the Catholic tradition there are Basilica Majors and Basilica Minors - with only 4 majors, reserved for the 4 churches of the Pope, but any number of minors.)​

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PARISH🔍 the noun, can mean several different things. It's a synonym for congregation and it also refers to an area/ realm or boundary of religious authority. Eventually this boundary also came to define a civil or governmental district/ area of authority, as civil zones evolved out of the original church divisions of land areas.

        When used to describe a house of worship it's not  it's own category of building, merely a shortening of the descriptor 'Parish Church,' which simply denotes the church that was at one time the central location of worship for a particular parish or district.

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Outside of Christian tradition there are Judaic SYNAGOGUES & TEMPLES, Muslim MOSQUES,

BUDIST & HINDU SHRINES & TEMPLES 

as well as Temples of many Pagan Polytheistic Traditions

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