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churchless

American  
[church-lis] / ˈtʃɜrtʃ lɪs /

adjective

  1. without a church.

  2. not belonging to or attending any church.

  3. without church approval or ceremony.


Etymology

Origin of churchless

First recorded in 1635–45; church + -less

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

This is most easily tracked in the rise of churchless Christians.

From Salon • Mar. 28, 2024

And what about the “kind-ofs,” the churchless Protestants, the “raised Catholics,” and the cultural Jews who don’t attend services and for whom religion is more of an inherited abstraction than a lived experience?

From Slate • Oct. 18, 2021

“I am so sad that a place of prayer and solace has become a place of fear,” said Kim Jeong-ja, 58, a churchless churchgoer in Seoul.

From New York Times • Mar. 22, 2020

That, apparently, is the special gift of Simone Weil, a Frenchwoman who died in 1943 at 34 and who has since been informally canonized as a "saint of the churchless," a "patron of the undecided."

From Time Magazine Archive

In the cities we see stately churches, once thronged, now well-nigh desolate, while their walls echo to the tread upon the sidewalk of a churchless multitude.

From Organizing and Building Up the Sunday School Modern Sunday School Manuals by Hurlbut, Jesse Lyman