Esperanto and the religions: the words of faith

Esperanto has no religion, and has said so since 1905. Yet more faiths have taken it up than any other constructed language: a Catholic union recognised in canon law, a Protestant league, Quakers, Buddhists, Bahá'ís and even atheists. This page tells the Christian story and gives you the words; Oomoto and the Bahá'ís have their own page.

kristano, kristanismo: the words of faith

The words come from the international stock, and the affixes do the sorting. -an- makes a member, -ism- a doctrine, -ej- a place:

• Ŝi estas kristano. - She is a Christian.
• Ni iras al la preĝejo. - We are going to church.

Where the root starts decides the pattern:

pastro or pastoro?

Two roots, one letter apart, and not a spelling slip. Pastro is the general word; pastoro is a Protestant one only:

The glosses: the priest celebrated Mass; the pastor preached; the bishop visited us; the Mass was in Esperanto. The building is a preĝejo; the Church as an institution is the eklezio.

Neutral by design: Zamenhof's starting point

Zamenhof was a Jew from Białystok, and the religious question was never abstract for him. He wrote his own universalist creed, homaranismo, and kept it apart from the language on purpose.

The movement made him choose. At Boulogne in 1905 the interfaith stanza of his Preĝo sub la verda standardo (Christians, Hebrews or mahometanoj, all children of God) was left out of the recitation; at Kraków in 1912 he gave up every official role, as the interna ideo page tells in full.

So the pattern was set before any faith group existed. The movement stays neutral; believers take up the language because it is neutral, and none of them speaks for it.

Mistakes English speakers make