The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (861 page)

 
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God, names of in Islam
:

see
NINETY-NINE BEAUTIFUL NAMES OF GOD
.

 
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Goddess
.

The source of life and being, once prevalent in religious imagination, but much suppressed during the millennia of male control of religions. The same observations about the provisionality of language and symbol apply here as in the case of God: they are compounded in the case of feminine imagery of the divine by the insistence on their inadequacies in the major monotheistic religions: see
FEMININE SYMBOLS
.

 
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Godianism
.

A Nigerian remodelling of African religions as a new modern faith, formed by amalgamation in 1963 between the Cult of Aruosa (‘holy place’ or ‘altar’) or Edo National Church and the National Church of Nigeria. Despite borrowing many external Christian forms, the movement repudiates Christianity as a foreign religion. It represents pride in Africa, rather than a dynamic religious development.

 
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(Jap., ‘back hall’). Part of the meditation hall in a Zen monastery, and thus also the senior monk who has charge of the god
.

 
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Godparents
.

The sponsors of a child to be
baptized
. They undertake responsibility for the child's Christian upbringing.

 
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