How different are the denominations?

[kiki1690]

Talked with someone a while ago and mentioned how Christians have so many denominations that conflict with each other.(Catholicism,Protestant,Seventh-Day Adventist,Jehovah's Witness,etc)

They said "They all share a common theme so they really are not different."

What do you all think? how different are the denominations?

[Hydra009]

Talked with someone a while ago and mentioned how Christians have so many denominations that conflict with each other.(Catholicism,Protestant,Seventh-Day Adventist,Jehovah's Witness,etc)

They said "They all share a common theme so they really are not different."

What do you all think? how different are the denominations?

I suppose one could argue that they all believe in the divinity of Jesus and the truth of the Bible.  Though they differ in how they view Jesus, which books their Bible consists of, the nature of heaven, the nature of hell, who gets saved, how they get saved, who's in charge of the church, etc.  That's a pretty big gulf of opinion that can't just be ignored.

[Baruch]

There are the Imperial churches of the 4th century ...

Orthodox Church, Catholic Church, Armenian Church, Ethiopian Church and Nestorian Church.  All of those were state religions except for the Nestorian Church.  The Orthodox Church divided into several branches, according to what ethnicity it represents ... Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox etc.  There are much smaller related off-shoots of the Catholic Church.

There are the Reformation churches of the 1500s that are nearly Catholic ...

Lutheran Church, Anglican Church etc that are state religions, again divided into several related branches, according to ethnicity ... Swedish Lutheran, German Lutheran, British Anglican, American Episcopalian, Scottish Presbyterian etc.

There are the Enlightenment churches of the 1600s and 1700s that are Congregational ...

Baptist Church, Methodist Church etc that are not state religions, again divided into several related branches, according to ethnicity.

There are off-shoots that don't have much relationship to historical Christianity ... Shakers, Mennonites, Holiness, Mormons etc that were started at various times.

So what distinguishes a denomination?  How "high church" is it?  Is it a "state church"?  Is it congregational rather than episcopal?  How close is its relationship with historical Christianity?  What ethnicity characterizes it?

Since 1900, there have been Pentecostal and Charismatic churches that emphasize ecstatic behavior during worship, not seen since the pre-Catholic days.  These were inspired by African colonial Christianity.  And the Quakers are the opposite, wanting to just sit quietly (this emerged from the Quietism movement).  So you can also add ecstatic vs formal vs passive to the spectrum of Christian practice.

One could say that variety isn't a weakness, but a strength ;-)

[SGOS]

When I was a Christian, the differences between denominations seemed huge, at times cancelling each other out.  The one commonality which did stand out was that they all believed in something that was logically unsupported.

[AllRight]

The different denominations always confused me. Studying with the JW made it worse because they do believe they are the only "true" religion and the rest are part of the world of false religion.  A very "us vs. them" doctrine.

[aitm]

Hell, there are over 50 different versions of the babble….original high brow, lutheran, methodist, baptist still cling to the KJV, but there are hundreds of new protestant that follow cartoon varieties of "New Life Babble".

[Hydra009]

When I was a Christian, the differences between denominations seemed huge, at times cancelling each other out.

Yeah.  They seem much more similar from the outside.  I was raised Methodist but when visiting relatives, we went to their baptist church.  I was not happy with their total immersion baptism for infants.  Methodists just sprinkle water on the baby, which at the time, seemed a little bit more sane.

I went to a black church once - very long and energetic.  Very different than my church's typically fairly solemn and serious services.  And part of the family is Catholic, so they dragged me to a Catholic mass once, which was a big culture shock.  Lots of shiny stuff and the latin prayers seemed very odd.  And don't even get me started on megachurches.


Here's what I was used to:


Here's where I was:

[aitm]

But lets not forget that catlics have the very best wedding receptions and parties and catlic girls at weddings are indeed the easier fucks….er…..okay that sound sexist and chauvinistic and yada yada yada…doesn't change the fun….

[Shiranu]

My family were German Lutherans, and more or less we were Catholics with out the gold and fancy outfits in terms of the service and without the cool mythology of all the saints. Basically a poor, less fun Catholic.


Edit: On the bright side, we welcomed gays (the church I went to now has a lesbian pastor) and did alot of humanitarian work, so that's nice.

[mauricio]

Talked with someone a while ago and mentioned how Christians have so many denominations that conflict with each other.(Catholicism,Protestant,Seventh-Day Adventist,Jehovah's Witness,etc)

They said "They all share a common theme so they really are not different."

What do you all think? how different are the denominations?

The common theme thing is partially bullshit in the sense that they all may believe in "god" and that jesus christ is his son and other statements. So they may all agree on a superficial level, but when you get into the details and into what does god actually means and what do those statements they all supposedly agree with actually entail. You will find a lot of disagreement even on the same denomination. This happens with all large ideologies from communism to feminism.

[ApostateLois]

If they were all in agreement about God and Jesus, there wouldn't be thousands ofv denominations, the would be only one. The fact that Christians are so divided about every aspect of their holy book surely is evidence that Christianity is just as manmade as every other religion.

[Mr.Obvious]

You know, there is this children's book, for toddlers really, that my mom once read to me. And that i in return read to my godchild a few months back.

It starts with a tiny mole waking from his slumber, only to find someone pooped on his moleheap, and thus his head. He travels the land far and wide to exact his revenge. But every animal he meets shows him their poo, and it's never the same as on his head. Either it's too big or too small, too firm or too goo-ey, ... It's not the goat's, not the horse's, not the cow's, ...
Spoiler alert: Eventually, with the help of some flies he finds the culprit and takes a dump on his head.

The book shows how turds can differ in size, consistency, look, appeal even, ... There are many variations, making each poop unique.
But in the end, i feel, one can not escape the fact that they are all still shit.

[Blackleaf]

Talked with someone a while ago and mentioned how Christians have so many denominations that conflict with each other.(Catholicism,Protestant,Seventh-Day Adventist,Jehovah's Witness,etc)

They said "They all share a common theme so they really are not different."

What do you all think? how different are the denominations?

Catholics and Protestants used to kill each other over their differences. That should be enough to answer your question. Rivalries still exist over the various denominations. Each one celebrates when they take a believer from a different denomination.

Some believe in free will, some believe in predestination. Some believe that saved is saved, some believe that you have to be continually forgiven. Some believe that everyone gets into heaven if they're good people, others believe that only members of their specific group will get to go to heaven. Some believe that the Bible is 100% true, some believe that only parts of it are true. Mormons argue that they are Christians, but other denominations often consider them a religious cult of their own. There's a world of difference between the countless varieties of Christian denominations out there, and their mere presence is evidence to the fact that they're all wrong. If there were one true church, and if their beliefs were as obviously true as they claim, then there wouldn't be so much disagreement.

[josephpalazzo]

The Facts and Stats on "33,000 Denominations"

Now for a few facts and stats from the actual source: World Christian Encyclopedia by Barrett, Kurian, Johnson (Oxford Univ Press, 2nd edition, 2001).

The source does refer to 33000+ total "Christian" denominations, but it defines the word "denomination" as an organized Christian group within a specific country:

“Denominations. A denomination is defined in this Encyclopedia as an organized aggregate of worship centers or congregations of similar ecclesiastical tradition within a specific country; i.e. as an organized Christian church or tradition or religious group or community of believers, within a specific country, whose component congregations and members are called by the same denominational name in different areas, regarding themselves as one autonomous Christian church distinct from other denominations, churches and traditions. As defined here, world Christianity consists of 6 major ecclesiastico-cultural blocs, divided into 300 major ecclesiastical traditions, composed of over 33,000 distinct denominations in 238 countries, these denominations themselves being composed of over 3,400,000 worship centers, churches or congregations.” (Barrett et al, volume 1, page 16, Table 1-5, emphasis added)

So we have, according to Barrett's Encyclopedia:

a denomination is defined as existing within a specific country
there are 33,000+ total of these "Christian denominations" in 238 total countries
These 33,000 are subdivided into "6 major ecclesiastico-cultural mega-blocs", and ordering them by denomination size we have (I am rounding up or down slightly for convenience, using year 2000 figures) :

Independents (about 22000)
Protestants (about 9000)
"Marginals" (about 1600)
Orthodox (781)
Roman Catholics (242)
Anglicans (168)
So the 33,000 number is from the total of these 6 mega-blocs:

22000 + 9000 + 1600 + 781 + 242 + 168 = 33,000+

That's where the 33,000 figure comes from. If you count the "mega-bloc" of "Protestants" only it is 9000 / 33000 or 27% of the total. However, if you combine Protestants with Independents and Anglicans ( [22000 + 9000 + 168] / 33000) it is 94% of the total or 31,000+ . We will see below that most (about 97%) of the "Independent" churches are indeed Protestants. Now that we have that settled, I will examine what the source says about each of these "mega-blocs." All of the information below is found on pages 16-18 (volume 1) of the World Christian Encyclopedia (2001, 2nd edition).

And this from a 2001 study... and each one of them is the true version of Christianity...

[widdershins]

They are VERY different.  Catholics are pretty inclusive, generally believing that people in the wrong religion, so long as it's a Christian religion, still go to Heaven.  Then there are religions like the Jehovah's Witnesses, who believe that other Christians are actually worshiping a different god than them.  And there's the Pentecostals, who believe Catholics aren't really Christian and pretty much very single person of every other religion is destined for Hell for doing it wrong.

Your friend must be talking from the perspective of one of the more inclusive religions.  He IS NOT talking from the perspective of "all" Christians, many of whom believe that, literally, only 144,000 people will make it to heaven.  With billions of Christians alive today, if you hold that belief you have to have some way of thinning out the ranks in your head.  I would say there are a great many Christians out there who would not only disagree, but get visibly angry that he would compare his wishy-washy feel-good beliefs to their hard line "God's will" beliefs.

So, this person was either completely right or very, very wrong, depending on how you approach it.  If this person was saying it was their BELIEF that all of Christianity is essentially the same from the perspective of who goes to Heaven, then he was right.  This is this person's "belief".  Think of it like this, if we were to argue the exact weight of Santa Claus, we would both be idiots and neither of us would be wrong.  Because the character is imagined we can imagine him any weight we like and that imagined weight cannot be wrong because we're discussing a "belief", not a "fact".  But it sounds like this person not only made no effort to distinguish this as a belief, but didn't realize they were describing a belief instead of fact, which makes them "Not wrong, but stupid".

Now if this person was arguing on the merits of reality and fact, then this person was very, very wrong.  There are many significant differences in the different Christian denominations.  Some are young earth creationists who cannot imagine a world greater than 10,000 years old, many of whom have calculations at hand for the earth's specific age based on scripture (Harold Camping).  Others fully accept evolution as a reality.  For still others, their church accepts evolution as a reality, but they, personally do not.  Many Catholics fall into this category.  Some are the feel-good, personal God type who imagine their deity wanting nothing more from them than for them to help others and be happy.  Others are more doom and gloom, insisting that we are living in the "end times" right now.  Some religious beliefs make people happy and inclusive.  Other religious beliefs make people angry and combative.

Assuming this person is some sort of Christian there's a simple test you might do that could be fun.  It sounds like this person is in one of the more laid-back, inclusive, "happy" Christian religions.  Ask this person if there really is no difference between them and members of the Westboro Baptist Church and see if the still think they're all the same.