When should we write the word "church" with a capital C, Church, and when should we only write it as church?
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1Part of the answer is given here (if it is part of a proper noun like "the Church of England", it should be capitalized): Should words be capitalized for being religious terms? – herisson Dec 20 '16 at 07:45
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2The Church as a body is capitalised as shown in this British Library article. I'd extend this to local bodies as well as the Church Universal. This is the same usage as say 'Parliament' for the body. However, the non-specific building (turn left at the church with the crooked spire) and less specific non-concrete usages (He attends church) use the common noun. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 20 '16 at 12:15
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It is a question of proper nouns vs common nouns:
- According to Lord Davies, The Church in London is not actually a church but a public house.
(The Church is a proper noun. The word church is a common noun.)
(Grammar-Monster)
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Sorry to leave this as an answer, but my rep isn't high enough yet to comment.
Piggybacking off of @sumelic's comment in the original post, I would say any time you want to highlight the organization of a certain church (and the full weight that its name carries), I would capitalize it.
For example, in this article here.
To give my own example sentence, I would say, "The Catholic Church has been known to blah blah blah, but the Church as it stands nowadays blah blah blah."
Does this help?
Teacher KSHuang
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yes thank you it did! but i think the second one" but the Church as it stands nowadays blah blah blah", should be in small c? – Nona Dec 20 '16 at 12:19
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@Nona No, because it's still referring to the organization of the Catholic Church as a whole, such as in the article I had cited in my answer. Think of "Church" as the last name of the "Catholic Church" and you'll understand better what I mean. – Teacher KSHuang Dec 22 '16 at 10:10