IS THE ENGLISH WORD “CHURCH” A PAGAN TERM?
Revised June 25, 2007

There is an unfortunate but growing opinion among some that institutional or traditional Christianity is a pagan religion.  Added to the claims of sun-worship and idolatry is the belief that even the English word “church” is of pagan origin.  One leading proponent of this view is David Hargis* of Messianic Bureau International, whose article "The Translation Conspiracy" is required reading in his "Yeshiva." A quick search with any internet search engine will reveal others holding to this view as well. The question is: Is the English word church really a reference to a Greek mythological goddess? 

A highly authoritative resource for English etymology is the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), a multi-volume non-sectarian set detailing the linguistic history of English vocabulary.  It is available at any university library and nearly any large public or college library.  Yet this source is not even referenced or consulted by most who make these types of claims, though it contains over four pages of highly detailed history regarding the word church.  In his article “The Translation Conspiracy” David Hargis writes:

"The word church is not in the original Bible. The word church comes from the old English and Germanic word kirke, (pronounced "keer - kay"), and which itself came from the Babylonian for the goddess Circe (pronounced "seer-say"). This is the word from which we get circle, circumference, circumstance, circumvent, etc. The goddess Circe was thought to be connected with the power of the sun, which is round, and thus the connection to Circe, a circle. In anglo-saxon history, the pagans worshipped the sun standing in a kirke, a circle. These pagan worshippers became known as the circle, or the kirke, then ultimately the church. Yes, pagans were called the church before Christians were called the church. Therefore, church means, at the least, a pagan circle for worship, and at the worst, the worship of the goddess Circe, or the worship of the sun."

I'd like to briefly address these claims: The word church is modern English, and naturally is not in the original language of the New Testament (Greek), but this is irrelevant.  The etymology of church that he propagates is simply not true and his statement is full of historical and morphological errors.  For one thing, kirke was not Old English but Middle English, and a West German form at that.  Furthermore, it does not derive from Babylonian, but from the Old Saxon form kirika or kerika.   This word was the Germanic form of the Greek term kuriaka or kuriakon  and means “belonging to the Lord.”  The Goths were using the term before Christianity reached them, but it was not because the term was one of their deities.  There were Germanic mercenaries who worked for the Roman Empire before its fall in the 5^th century as well as Gothic raiders in subsequent days, and these people would attack churches and pillage them, stealing sacred vessels and various objects.  They learned this word because the sacred objects and the buildings themselves were called kuriaka (“belong to the Lord” or “of the Lord”—in this article I use the plural rather than the root form kuriakon/kuriakos).  The use of this term goes as far back as the 3^rd century.

The word Circe he refers to is not Babylonian but Greek, and its modern pronunciation varies.  This Greek name is written as Kirkh (Kirke) and usually pronounced as “keer-kay.”  The connection with the Babylonian Ishtar is debated among scholars and is not so obvious as Hargis claims.  But the Babylonian relationship is still irrelevant because there’s no proof that the Goths worshipped Circe anyway.  At best they seemed to borrow Greek terms.  The burden of proof rests on Hargis and his camp to prove that the term church in its Old English form really was used of pagan centers of worship.    

On the contrary, there is vast literary evidence (as the OED illustrates) that the Greek term kuriaka was used of sacred objects and church buildings since the 3^rd century and that the Germanic peoples adopted the term into their vocabulary as kirika prior to even the 5^th century.  This influenced the Old English spellings as cirice, cyrice, and circe (remember that the “c” is hard like “k”).  The spelling of circe being same as the Greek mythology figure is coincidental, for although they appear the same in Old English they do not match at all in Greek (kirkh vs. kuriaka).  The figure below shows the evolution of the word church from its original Greek form kyriaka (kuriaka).  Remember that the English “c” in the 11^th and early 12^th century are pronounced like a “k”. 

In fairness, there are some dictionaries and some scholars who disagree with this “standard” position.  This should not be surprising though, since every field of study has its fringe movements with adherents who reject the established party line.  For example, Ebenezer Brewer in his Dictionary of Phrase and Fable under the entry “church” rejects the Greek origin of the word:

…this is most improbable, as the word existed in all the Celtic dialects long before the introduction of Greek. No doubt the word means ‘a circle.’ The places of worship among the German and Celtic nations were always circular (Welsh, cyrch; French, cirque; Scotch, kirk; Greek, kirkos, etc.). Compare Anglo-Saxon circe, a church, with ‘circol,’ a circle.

By arguing against the Greek influence on the term, Brewer discounts the possibility that the Circe of Greek mythology is even an equation in this issue.  The real issue, he believes, is that church developed from the word which we now call circle, which was the method of assembly for these pagan rites. One problem with this is that churches were not circular, but rectangular.  Why would pagans call a building “circle” when it clearly wasn’t.  This is like the proverbial “square peg/round hole” saying.  The fact that the words have similar or sometimes identical roots does not mean that the meaning of one should be read into the meaning of the other.  In his book Exegetical Fallacies D.A. Carson calls this a “root fallacy”:

The search for hidden meanings bound up with etymologies becomes even more ludicrous when two words with entirely different meanings share the same etymology.

In his book, Carson then compares two Hebrew words with quite different meanings.  Lechem (bread) and Milchamah (war) both have the same etymological root lacham .  Conjectures may abound on why the words are related, but it is irrelevent.  Language evolves, and part of that process is the change of a word's meaning. For example, the English word "nice" comes from the Latin nescius, which means “arrogant” and "gentleman", which used to refer to a man from a certain social class regardless of manners, now refers to a man who behaves honorably toward women (though even now the term is changing to mean something less).  Words cannot be defined strictly by etymology, but by usage.  When the Israelites called their deity El they were not worshipping the Canaanite god from whom they borrowed the term.  When Arab Christians refer to God as Allah, they are not worshipping the Muslim god of Muhammad, nor are they worshipping the moon god from whom Muhammad took the term.  So even if it could be proven that the word church really came from a pagan term, what would that mean?  Can language not be redeemed and used for God’s glory? 

There is also a logical fallacy here.  If its improper to call the building a church because that word once had a pagan connotation, then it should follow suite that it is wrong for Christians to hold hands in a circle for prayer or draw circles or live in a round house, etc. since circles honor the Sun and reflect the customs of pagans.  The days of the week would need to be renamed, since Sunday is the day of the Sun god, Monday honors the Moon god, Thursday honors the god Thor, and Saturday is Saturn’s day.  Believers would have to select carefully what car they drive, since many names are derived from Greek mythology.  This list would be endless.  Does this sound ridiculous?  Yet this is the natural conclusion to this worldview.  Once again, Hargis:

(Exo 23:13 KJV) "And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth."  We are commanded not to even mention the names of other gods! What does that portend for the ubiquitous use of the word church, which is the name of a pagan god? And to add insult to injury, notice how the King James says, "be circumspect" which is a form of the root Circe! Actually the word in Hebrew is shamar, which means to guard against. The L-RD has commanded us to guard against the mention of any other god, not to make a circle against it. See how far we have been from the truth! G-d help us.

Hargis errs again by reading into circumspect what he believes is the root meaning of the word. Webster’s 21^st Century Dictionary lists the meaning of circumspect as “cautious”, which is consistent with the Jewish Publication Society's translation of the above passage as "be on guard."  The translators of the King James Bible understood this, which is why they chose this word. They knew that circumspect comes from the Latin circumspectus, the past participle of circumspicere, which means “to look around.”  The word then carries the meaning of being on the lookout or on guard, which is consistent with the Hebrew meaning.  Yet once again, Hargis didn't research his claim before publishing it and has villified a classic translation unjustly. It is evident where this doctrine leads-- that God does not want His people to even use terms like circumspect, circle, circumference, circumstance, circumvent, etc.   It is unimaginable how far this can go.  Yet it could all be avoided by more carefully researching the issue.

Although this article has dealt with the etymology of the English word church, it has not addressed the issue of how to translate the Greek word ekklesia, normally translated as church, nor has it dealt with the distinction between ekklesia and kyriaka.  The purpose here has been to show that the English word church does not have a pagan origin, but a sacred one.  It should be noted that the Biblical term ekklesia refers to God’s people as a community or assembly, whereas the later term kyriaka refers to objects or buildings set aside for the ekklesia to use.  It was a post-Biblical practice to use the terms synonymously.  Nevertheless, modern usage follows this practice so that today the word church may be used to designate either a building or an assembly.    

Sources:

Church or Ekklesia, http://members.tripod.com/jbrooks2/CHURCH_OR_EKKLESIA.html

Circe (Church)--Daughter of the Sun by Gary Amirault

Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, by Ebenezer Brewer

Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 ed.

Exegetical Fallacies, by D.A. Carson

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary

Webster’s Dictionary, 1828

Webster’s 21^st Century Dictionary

*David Hargis has since passed away since the writing of this article