The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (550 page)

Church Army
.

Anglican evangelizing organization of lay workers founded in 1882 by Wilson Carlile on the model of the
Salvation
Army.

 
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Church Commissioners
.

Body which manages the endowments of the
Church of England
.

 
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Churches of Christ
.

Christian denomination, also known as ‘Disciples’ and ‘Campbellites’ after its founder A.
Campbell
. Organized in the USA, the earliest ‘Disciples’ came to adopt
baptism
by immersion and the weekly observance of the Lord's Supper for baptized believers; each local church practised a
Congregational
form of church government. The Churches of Christ participated in ecumenical discussion in the present century, and in 1981 the majority of the Churches of Christ in Great Britain became part of the
United Reformed Church
.

 
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Church Fathers
.

Christian writers of the first eight centuries CE. The study of these writers is known as Patristics or Patrology.

 
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Church Missionary Society
(Anglican missionary society)
:

see
CMS
.

 
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Church of England
.

The Christian Church which is ‘by law established’ in England. The Church of England is a consequence of the Reformation, as this was mediated under the 16th-cent. Tudor sovereigns. As the expression of
Anglicanism
, it is the continuity of Christianity from the earliest times (see e.g.
CELTIC CHURCH
), as that changes through time.

 
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Church of the East
.

The
Syrian Church
, more popularly known as
Nestorian
, or
Assyrian
, which descends from the ancient church in the Persian Empire. Its foundation is traditionally associated with Mari, a disciple of
Addai
, or with St
Thomas
himself. It adopted a strongly dyophysite (
Antiochene
) christology which by the 7th cent. hardened into Nestorianism.
The church undertook very extensive missionary work, and even had outposts in China from 635 until ‘foreign’ religions were expelled in 845 (see
HSI-AN FU
). At present, the Nestorians form a very small community in Iraq (the patriarchate was restored to Baghd
d in 1976 with the election of Mar Den
a IV), together with other small populations in the Middle E., N. and S. America, and S. India (this being a dissident body from the Syro-Malabar Church).