The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1530 page)

BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
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Mendicant friars
(literally, ‘begging’ brothers).
Religious orders
which renounced the right to own income-producing properties. The term is now largely meaningless, since most if not all of the originally mendicant orders have been given the right to own capital.
Meng Tzu
:
Mengzi
:
Mennonites
.
Christian denomination. It derives from followers of the 16th-cent.
radical Reformer
Menno Simons (1496–1561), a Dutch
Roman Catholic
priest who joined the
Anabaptists
in 1536. Simons's leadership was an inspiration to them. His teaching about believers'
baptism
, Church discipline, pacificism, and the non-participation of Christians in the magistracy gained wide support in many congregations, amongst whom he exercised an itinerant leadership ministry for twenty-five years. Today there are about 700,000 Mennonites in various parts of the world, mostly in America where their ranks have been occasionally fragmented by division.
Menorah
(Heb., ‘candelabrum’). Jewish seven-branch candlestick, which from early times became a symbol of Jewish identity. According to the Hebrew scriptures, the menorah was an important furnishing of the
tabernacle
in the wilderness and of the
Temple
in
Jerusalem
. In 1948 it became the official symbol of the State of
Israel
. See also
MAGEN DAVID
.
Menpeki
or Mempeki
(Jap., ‘facing the wall’). Zen description of the nine years which
Bodhidharma
spent ‘facing the wall’, i.e. in profound meditation at Shao-lin. It became a virtual synonym for
zazen
.

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