Making up vocabulary words?
September 18, 2014 5:26 AM   Subscribe

Is there a word that means "discriminating on the basis of religion"? The closest thing I can think of is "creedist", which isn't an actual word. Is there a word that means what "creedist" would mean if it were a word that existed? Thanks!
posted by Enchanting Grasshopper to Writing & Language (16 answers total)
 
Best answer: Not a single word, but the term religious bigot means exactly this.
posted by drlith at 5:28 AM on September 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


Sectarian usually means "relating to a sect or sects" but you also sometimes see it used to describe someone who is incapable of seeing beyond their own narrow (religious) world-view.
posted by firechicago at 5:33 AM on September 18, 2014 [6 favorites]


"Intolerant"?
posted by SemiSalt at 5:40 AM on September 18, 2014


Seconding sectarian.

Not all religions need creeds, y'know …
posted by scruss at 5:44 AM on September 18, 2014


Best answer: Not sure of a single word that gets the religious aspect, but religious intolerance and religious discrimination both work.

Related but not quite right: antitheism, antireligion
posted by carrioncomfort at 5:50 AM on September 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


Scrupulosity.

It is used in the vernacular to mean someone who adheres closely to religious scruples, but it is also used to describe a particular manifestation of obsessive compulsive disorder.
posted by fontophilic at 5:54 AM on September 18, 2014


Do you mean "I discriminate against you as a result of my religion" or "I discriminate against you because I don't like your religion"?
posted by themanwho at 6:16 AM on September 18, 2014 [2 favorites]


Zealot?
posted by cjorgensen at 6:37 AM on September 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: @themanwho: The latter.
posted by Enchanting Grasshopper at 6:43 AM on September 18, 2014


Paradoxact/Parapraxact... going after "incorrect belief/practice, motivated by".
posted by mr. digits at 7:01 AM on September 18, 2014


Then individually: antisemitic, islamophobic or antimuslim, antichristian, etc...
posted by arcticwoman at 7:02 AM on September 18, 2014 [2 favorites]


religious xenophobia?
posted by poffin boffin at 7:44 AM on September 18, 2014


Best answer: Religism has been proposed, but hasn't caught on to any significant degree.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:57 AM on September 18, 2014


Following up on the "sectarian" suggestion, "sectarianism" is defined by OED as "adherence or excessive attachment to a particular sect or party, esp. in religion; hence often, adherence or excessive attachment to, or undue favouring of, a particular ‘denomination’." It seems to be pretty close.
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:58 AM on September 18, 2014


"Religious intolerance".
posted by bimbam at 10:11 AM on September 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


I've taken a law-school course on religion and the Constitution which naturally involved reading a lot about religion-based discrimination, and I don't remember a single word for "discriminating against someone based on their religion" ever coming up. That tells me there is no such word.

The problem with "sectarian" is: to the extent it even refers to discrimination, it would seem to refer to a religious person discriminating against everyone outside their religion. So it wouldn't include someone who's only anti-Catholic, or only anti-Muslim. (A similar but less common word is "religionism.")

A term like "religious intolerance" is also ambiguous about whether it means prejudiced against everyone outside your own religion, or prejudiced against a specific religion.

I suspect that this ambiguity has led to a situation where there's no one word that refers to all religious bigotry — you can use a phrase like "religious bigotry," "religious discrimination" (there's a Wikipedia entry on that phrase), "religious persecution," etc. Or you can specify "anti-Semitic," etc.
posted by John Cohen at 3:49 PM on September 18, 2014


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