[Freeciv-Dev] (PR#2591) Re: (PR#2597) Re: Nondenominational calendar patch

["Cameron Morland via RT" <rt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2002 at 09:37:32AM -0800, esr@xxxxxxxxxxx via RT wrote:
> Cameron Morland <cameron@xxxxxxxxxx>:
> > Although it's hardly relevent, "nondenominational" is a type of
> > Christian, and someone billed as an antropologist should probably
> > know that. :P <http://www.called.org/ntchrist.htm>
> 
> That is a *weird* secondary use that I've never seen before.  Primary use is
> "mot discriminating between religions".

Um, No. Not in EN_UK, not in EN_CA, and personally, I don't give a damn 
about EN_US, but I'd expect it to agree.

OED => "non-denominational, adj. not restricted as regards religious
        denomination"
       "denomination, n. 1 a Church or religious sect" (the other defs
        relate to currency or weights.)
       "sect, n. 1 a body of people subscribing to religious doctrines
        different from those of others within the same religion; a
        group deviating from orthodox tradition, often regarded as
        heretical."

So "denomination" refers, by these definitions, to various Christian
splinter groups, ie Churches or bodies subscribing to different doctine,
but within the same religion.

Besidess, that link I sent was the 4th found by Google. The 3rd showed
a similar idea, calling themselves the Church of Christ, and asserting
their nondenominationality. The top 2 links are Yahoo stuff, and I
can't extract any meaning.

The rest of the results, except perhaps the e-zine listing, are
consistent with the Christian-only definition of nondenominational.

Since Google ranks, to a certain extent, by popularity, this definition
is clearly the most popular.

Actually I used to think as you do, but I used the word in a wrong
context and was corrected, so I looked it up.

(Hey, searching Google for "non-denominational" gives a different set 
of results. They're still consistent though.)