The English word “Church” for the Greek ekklesia in many Bible translations today is sometimes also translated “assembly,” as in the modern American Literary Version (aka Bibliotheca) translation of 2016 (an adaptation of the American Standard Version variant of the Revised Standard Version). Early English translations influenced by the Reformation and favored by Puritans used “congregation” or “assembly” as a translation for ekklesia. However, King James and his translators favored “church” for reasons of ecclesiological polity (the Church of England being based on the authority of bishops under the king), versus the Puritan emphasis on congregationalism (seen in how Puritan entities in the U.S. provided the source for the later Congregational denomination).

Ekklesia in Greek meant “called-out assembly” or congregation, and was used in the New Testament for the community of Christian believers. In Old Testament Greek, it had the meaning of those in Israel who were practicing believers deemed worthy to assemble for worship in the tabernacle, and had associations with the “remant” of Israel. That it became the term used for the Church is appropriate to Orthodox Christian Tradition, in which the Church is Israel, fully realized in the New Testament era.

In Old English, cirice or circe designated both a place of Christian worship and the community of believers at large, and related to the Scots kirk and Germanic kirche. Ultimately the term derived from the Greek kyriakon, meaning “of the Lord,” for “the Lord’s house,” referring to Jesus Christ in Byzantine Greek Orthodox Christian contexts. Church ultimately became the favored English term, and given that it more fully implies the mystical “one holy Catholic and Apostolic” sense of Church in the Nicene-Constantinipolitan Creed, including hierarchy as well as conciliarity in the Body of Christ, it is the favored English term in American Orthodox Christianity today.