confessionalization

confessionalization (countable and uncountable, plural confessionalizations)

(religion, chiefly historical) The fixing of religious beliefs into set categories of denomination or dogma.
- 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 639:
  Confessionalization represents the defeat of efforts to rebuild the unified Latin Church.
- 2016, Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, Penguin, published 2017, page 121:
  Regardless of belief, all secular and ecclesiastical authorities pursued similar policies of ‘confessionalization’ intended to impose the official faith of their territory through education, improved clerical supervision and more intensive ‘visitations’ to probe individual belief and monitor religious practices.

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