NS,
I don't think it makes sense to say church/religious are synonymous. Is Rhiannon's paganism - church?
Is it religious? C’mon now, for the purpose of Vlad’s latest ludicrousness (“You will notice that Hillside has no apparent problem with equating church with the religious”) of course there’s no problem with equating the two. If “synonymous” is insufficiently precise to deal with exceptions, “equated” with is unarguable I’d have thought.
Here’s the first online definition of “church” I found:
noun
1.a building for public Christian worship.
2.public worship of God or a religious service in such a building: to attend church regularly.
3. (sometimes initial capital letter) the whole body of Christian believers; Christendom.
4.(sometimes initial capital letter) any division of this body professing the same creed and acknowledging the same ecclesiastical authority; a Christian denomination:
the Methodist Church.
5.that part of the whole Christian body, or of a particular denomination, belonging to the same city, country, nation, etc.
6.a body of Christians worshipping in a particular building or constituting one congregation: She is a member of this church.
7.ecclesiastical organization, power, and affairs, as distinguished from the state:separation of church and state; The missionary went wherever the church sent him.