Church and religious vocabulary as a specialized terminology represents a single corpus of denominational terms servicing Orthodoxy as an important area of social life and human activity, since its linguistic units function in a niche sphere-in church use and religious practice. Nowadays, with interest in Orthodoxy growing in China and the Russian Orthodox Church launching international educational activities, study and standardization of the Orthodox vocabulary as a sui generis stratum within the Chinese language system has become a pressing need. Despite the seeming fixity of lexical units within this field, their comprehensive lexicographic and semantic analysis shows that both meaning and denotation of certain concepts do not always pay due regard to denominational context and existing speech practices, which results in translation errors and distorted understanding of theological terms and religious doctrines.