The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (555 page)

City of Refuge
.

A place to which, in Judaism, those who have accidentally killed may flee. According to Numbers 35. 13, there were six cities of refuge in biblical times.

 
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C
vara
(part of Buddhist dress)
:

see
HABIT, RELIGIOUS
.

 
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Civil religion
.

The term used by R. N. Bellah to describe the complex of symbolic meanings shared by many Americans and uniting them in a moral community. Beyond the specific use of Bellah, ‘civil religion’ has come to refer more loosely to the evident necessity of all communities to find symbols and rituals which will take the place of the religious rituals and symbols which no longer command adherence: see further
SECULARIZATION
.

 
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Classics, Confucian
:

see
CONFUCIAN CLASSICS
.

 
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(
c.
150–
c.
215).
Christian
father
(patristic theologian). He was head of the catechetical school of
Alexandria
from 190. His chief works are the
Protrepticus
, or ‘Exhortation to the Greeks’, the
Paedagogus
on Christian life and manners, and the
Stromateis
, or ‘Miscellanies’. He shared the emphasis of the
desert fathers
on the unknowability of God (see
APOPHATIC THEOLOGY
). His name occurs in the early martyrologies, but it was excised by Pope Clement VIII on the grounds of his doubtful orthodoxy.

 
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Clement of Rome, St
.

Traditional third
bishop
of Rome, perhaps to be connected with the fellow worker of
Paul
(Philippians 4. 3). A letter from the Roman church to that of Corinth is ascribed to him and is known as
1 Clement
.
A mass of other early Christian literature circulated under Clement's name. The most important are the
Clementine Homilies
and
Recognitions
(3rd–4th cents.).

 
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