christlichen

Christlich is a German adjective meaning "Christian" or "relating to Christ or Christianity." It describes people, beliefs, institutions, and cultural phenomena associated with Christianity. In everyday use it appears in phrases such as der christliche Glaube (the Christian faith), die christliche Kirche (the Christian church), and christliche Werte (Christian values). Beyond religious contexts, it can refer to historical or cultural strands tied to Christian traditions, for example christliche Kunst (Christian art) or christliche Geschichte (Christian history).

The term derives from Late Latin Christianus, via the development of German and its ecclesiastical vocabulary. In modern German, christlich is an inflected adjective; its endings vary with gender, number, and case. The form christlichen occurs in contexts such as den christlichen Mann (accusative masculine singular) or dem christlichen Mann (dative masculine singular), as well as der christlichen Frau (genitive or dative feminine depending on construction) and der christlichen Kirche (dative plural or genitive feminine, depending on sentence structure).

When used as a noun, forms like das Christliche can denote the Christian faith or Christian culture, and such nominalized uses are capitalized. In practice, christlich is common across religious, academic, and cultural discourse to distinguish Christian-oriented phenomena from secular or other religious contexts. It contrasts with broader terms like religiös (religious in a general sense) or with denomination-specific terms such as katholisch (Catholic) or evangelisch (evangelical). The word's applicability spans theology, ethics, art history, education, and everyday language.