Home›Christianity›Parent DenominationBrowse ByParent DenominationThis page groups denominations by the older denomination they split off from. Wikipedia describes the Druze faith as having "developed out of Isma'ilism" before separating entirely, a pattern that also plays out at the smaller scale of one denomination splitting from another. Browsing by parent denomination lets a visitor trace a denomination back to the body it broke away from.FactsLearn MoreParent DenominationSourcesComments (0)Reader Challenges (0)FactsOverviewWhat Defines This GroupingWell-attestedThe branches of Christianity, divided chiefly over authority - who may define doctrine - and over the sacraments, the ordering of ministry and the reading of scripture. The main fault lines are the Christological divisions of the fifth century, the East-West schism conventionally dated 1054, and the sixteenth-century Reformation. 2StatusStanding as a Comparative CategoryWell-attestedContested: denomination arose in English-speaking Protestantism for bodies that recognise one another as legitimately named parts of one church. The Catholic and Orthodox churches do not accept it as a description of themselves. 2DirectoryCategoryWell-attestedDenominations 1AttestationEra of AttestationWell-attestedThe first enduring divisions date from the Christological controversies of the fifth century, at Ephesus in 431 and Chalcedon in 451, and not from the Reformation. 2Learn MoreThe Branches of Christianity This group gathers the denominations of Christianity, the world's largest religion, whose two-thousand-year history has produced a wide family of churches divided by doctrine, authority, liturgy and history. The major fault lines are the split between the Eastern and Western churches (traditionally dated 1054) and the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The browser will find the great communions, Roman Catholicism, the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, and the many Protestant families (Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal and more), together with older and smaller bodies. The entries describe each branch's distinctive teachings and origins without treating any one as the standard against which the others are measured.Unity and division Christian denominations share the core confession of Jesus Christ while differing over questions such as church authority, the sacraments, the role of scripture and tradition, and the path of salvation. Some divisions are ancient and doctrinal; others are national, cultural or the result of later revival and reform. The atlas presents each denomination in its own terms, noting where it stands on the questions that separate it from others and how it understands its relation to the wider Christian body, from claims of unique continuity to the ecumenical movement that seeks reunion.Parent DenominationFilter Results13 entriesAdherents TodayAllIndependent estimates put the combined worldwide membership of the six Oriental Orthodox churches, Coptic, Ethiopian Tewahedo, Eritrean Tewahedo, Armenian Apostolic, Syriac Orthodox and Malankara Orthodox Syrian, at about 72 million as of 2020, up from a 2018 estimate of more than 50 million; the six churches' own combined claimed total runs considerably higher, at approximately 87 million, though that figure carries no fixed reference year. (1)Pew Research Center's 2017 study of global Orthodox Christianity estimates the worldwide Orthodox population at nearly 260 million as of 2010, roughly double the 124 million recorded in 1910, even as Orthodoxy's share of the world's Christians fell from 20 percent to 12 percent over the century as other Christian traditions grew faster. (1)The Holy See's own count, compiled from diocesan returns of baptisms; it is not a survey of self-identification and exceeds census self-identification in several countries (1)The Pew Research Center's December 2011 Global Christianity report estimated 800 million Protestants worldwide in 2010 (37 percent of the 2.18 billion people identifying as Christian), compiled from a country-by-country analysis of roughly 2,400 censuses, demographic surveys and population registers. (1)The World Christian Database put worldwide Anglican Communion membership at about 90.8 million in 2015, nearly double its 1970 total of 47.4 million, with growth concentrated in Africa even as the Episcopal Church in the United States and other North American provinces declined over the same period. (1)Adherents Today MaximumAll100,000,000 (1)260,000,000 (1)1,406,000,000 (1)Adherents Today MinimumAll53,871,526 (1)220,000,000 (1)1,406,000,000 (1)Also Known AsAllEastern Orthodox Church (1)Evangelical (1)Pentecostals (1)Roman Catholic (1)Roman Catholic Church (1)The Black Church (1)The Seven Sisters of American Protestantism (1)Bankruptcy FilingsAll28 (1)Basis of the Education Facility CountAllThe Body's Own Published Statistics (1)Basis of the Health Facility CountAllThe Body's Own Published Statistics (1)Basis of the Membership FigureAllChurch-Reported Rolls (4)Independent Survey (5)Scholarly or Demographic Estimate (6)Basis of the Wealth FigureAllAudited Annual Report (2)Church FamilyAllAnabaptist (1)Anglican (1)Baptist (1)Congregationalist (1)Eastern Orthodox (1)Evangelical (1)Oriental Orthodox (1)Pentecostal (1)Reformed (1)Roman Catholic (1)Confessional StandardAllThe Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, adopted at Lambeth in 1888, which is a basis for reunion rather than a confession and binds no province to more than its four articles (1)Contested or Appropriated Modern UseAllDisagreements over the ordination of women and over gay clergy and same sex unions have led some provinces to declare impaired or broken communion with others (1)Date of Separation End YearAll451 (1)1204 (2)1527 (1)1555 (1)1560 (1)1612 (1)1914 (1)Date of Separation Start YearAll451 (1)1054 (2)1517 (1)1525 (1)1560 (1)1609 (1)1906 (1)Defining Doctrinal PositionAllAffirms the Filioque: the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (1)Chalcedonian: two natures in the one person of Christ (Chalcedon, 451) (2)Chalcedonian: two natures in the one person of Christ (Chalcedon, 451) (1)Miaphysite: one incarnate nature of the Word, divine and human united (1)Rejects the Filioque: the Spirit proceeds from the Father (1)Trinitarian: one God in three persons (9)Trinitarian: one God in three persons (4)Doctrinal Position DetailAllHolds no single binding confession; historic Congregationalism looked to the Cambridge Platform of 1648 and the Savoy Declaration for guidance without treating either as creedal, leaving doctrine to the conscience of the gathered congregation. (1)Documented Accused CountAll5 (1)19 (1)21 (1)237 (1)800 (1)1670 (1)1880 (1)2900 (1)4392 (1)Education Facility Count As OfAll2023-12-31 (1)Financial Disclosure RegimeAllBaptists hold the local autonomy of the individual congregation as a defining principle of their tradition: each Baptist church governs itself, calls its own ministers and manages its own property and finances independently, with no bishop, council or central body holding authority over another congregation's affairs. Baptist conventions and unions, the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Convention USA among them, are voluntary associations of self-governing churches rather than a single denominational treasury for Baptists as a whole. There is no consolidated financial statement, budget or wealth figure for the Baptist tradition as a whole to disclose. (1)Eastern Orthodoxy is a communion of autocephalous and autonomous national churches, each fully self-governing in its own internal affairs including its own finances. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople holds a position of honorary primacy, first among equals, rather than central executive or financial authority over the others. There is no consolidated financial statement, budget or wealth figure for Eastern Orthodoxy as a whole to disclose; a figure exists, if at all, only at the level of an individual autocephalous church. (1)Evangelicalism is a transdenominational movement within Protestantism, not a church or organization in its own right, spanning countless independent congregations, parachurch ministries and denominations that share a common emphasis on conversion, the Bible's authority and active evangelism rather than any shared central governance. It has no worldwide governing body and no denominational treasury; each evangelical body discloses its own finances, where it discloses them at all, separately. There is no consolidated financial statement, budget or wealth figure for Evangelicalism as a whole to disclose. (1)Oriental Orthodoxy is a communion of independent, self-governing national and regional churches, the Coptic, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Armenian Apostolic, Syriac and Malankara traditions among them, each with its own leadership, canon law and finances, joined by shared Christology and mutual recognition rather than by any single administrative or financial authority over the whole communion. There is no consolidated financial statement, budget or wealth figure for Oriental Orthodoxy as a whole to disclose. (1)Protestantism is not a single church but the broad family, numbering many thousands of independent denominations worldwide, that trace their origin to the sixteenth century Reformation's rejection of a single central ecclesiastical authority. It has no worldwide governing body, no central clergy and no denominational treasury; each Protestant denomination, and often each individual congregation, holds and discloses its own finances separately. There is no consolidated financial statement, budget or wealth figure for Protestantism as a whole to disclose. (1)The Church Commissioners for England publish an audited annual report and accounts each year under UK charity law. The wider Anglican Communion is an association of 42 self governing national and regional member churches with no single global treasury or consolidated financial disclosure of its own. (1)The Roman Catholic Church in the United States publishes no single consolidated balance sheet; each diocese and eparchy reports separately, and the aggregate figure recorded here comes from the USCCB's annual Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People compliance reports, compiled with CARA survey research and StoneBridge Business Partners audit procedures, plus individually reported 2024 settlements. It tracks abuse settlement payouts specifically, not the church's total wealth, property or investment holdings. (1)FounderAllA monarchical episcopate at Rome is not documented before the second century (1)Apostolic foundation is claimed for each of the ancient patriarchates (1)Apostolic foundation is claimed for each of the constituent churches (1)Attributed by the church to the apostle Peter as first bishop of Rome (1)Charles Fox Parham (1873-1929) and William J. Seymour (1870-1922) (1)Conrad Grebel (c. 1498-1526), Felix Manz (c. 1498-1527) and George Blaurock (c. 1491-1529). (1)John Knox (c. 1514-1572). (1)John Smyth (c. 1570-1612) and Thomas Helwys (c. 1575-c. 1616). (1)No single founder (2)No single founder. (2)No single founder. A scholarly classification family grouping denominations founded independently by different leaders: Richard Allen (African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1816), James Varick (African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, 1821) and Charles Harrison Mason (Church of God in Christ, 1897), among others. (1)No single founder. A scholarly classification family grouping denominations that trace to separate, unrelated origins: the Reformation era for Lutheran and Reformed bodies, the Church of England's establishment for the Episcopal Church, and later American mergers for the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). (1)No single founder. Formed as a communion from 1867 at the first Lambeth Conference, gathering churches descended from the Church of England. (1)No single founder. Formed by English Separatist and non-separating Puritan congregations who settled New England from 1620. (1)Seymour's Azusa Street mission is the movement's decisive centre (1)GovernanceAllA federation of autonomous member organisations (1)Congregational: each congregation self-governing (4)Episcopal: governed by bishops (3)No central authority (5)Presbyterian: governed by elders in graded courts (1)Self-governing churches under patriarchs, deciding in synod (2)Universal primacy of a single bishop (1)Health Facility Count As OfAll2023-12-31 (1)Hospitals and Health Facilities OperatedAllAccording to the Fides News Agency's Catholic Church Statistics 2025 dossier, drawn from the Church's own Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae ("Church's Book of Statistics"), the Catholic Church runs 103,951 charity and healthcare centres worldwide as of 31 December 2023. These include 5,377 hospitals and 13,895 dispensaries, chiefly in Africa and the Americas, plus 504 care homes for people with leprosy, 15,566 homes for the elderly, chronically ill or disabled, and 8,593 orphanages. (1)How the Expectation Is EnforcedAllCustomary Norm (4)Obligation to Support, No Set Rate (1)Preached Expectation, Not Enforced (3)Institutional Wealth or FinancesAllThe Church Commissioners for England, the historic endowment fund that supports the Church of England's ministry (the Anglican Communion's mother church, though not a treasury for the wider Communion), was valued at GBP 11.1 billion at the end of 2024, after a 10.3 percent investment return during the year. (1)The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' annual Charter compliance reports, compiled with survey research from Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate and audit procedures from StoneBridge Business Partners, track diocesan and eparchial payouts settling clergy sexual abuse claims since the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People took effect in 2002. Charter-era settlement totals reported through 2023 reached about 4.384 billion dollars; two further settlements in 2024, an 880 million dollar agreement by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles announced 16 October and a 323 million dollar agreement by the Diocese of Rockville Centre announced in September, brought the twenty-year running total for United States dioceses to roughly 5.59 billion dollars, with some tallies that also count a 2007 Los Angeles settlement placing the figure above 6.24 billion dollars. This is a national aggregate covering many separate dioceses and eparchies, counting settlement payouts rather than the church's total assets or income, and it is distinct from the finances of the Holy See itself, recorded separately on this atlas. (1)Key TextAllThe Cambridge Platform (1648) and the Savoy Declaration (1658). (1)Liturgical LanguageAllChurch Slavonic (1)Classical Armenian (Grabar) (1)Classical Syriac (1)Coptic (1)Geez (1)Greek (liturgical) (1)Latin (1)The vernacular (12)Marriage Position DetailAllEpiscopal News Service reported 26 July 2022 that the revised Lambeth Call on Human Dignity acknowledges there is no consensus across all forty-two of the Anglican Communion's provinces on the legitimacy of blessings and marriage rites for same-sex couples, a majority of provinces continuing to hold that same-gender marriage is not permissible while other provinces have blessed or welcomed a same-sex union or marriage after their own careful theological reflection and process of reception. (1)The Catechism describes marriage as "the matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life," a covenant between the baptized that Christ raised to the dignity of a sacrament. Canon 1141 of the Code of Canon Law states plainly that a marriage of this kind, once consummated, "can be dissolved by no human power and by no cause, except death." What looks from outside like the Church ending a marriage, an annulment, is not that: a decree of nullity holds that no valid marriage existed in the first place, most often for a defect in consent or capacity at the time of the wedding, and it is a declaration about the past rather than a dissolution of a real marriage in the present. (1)The Orthodox Church in America's own teaching states the Church "in its concern for the salvation of its people" permits a divorced person to remarry a second and even a third time, "an act of oikonomia (economy or dispensation) and of philanthropia (loving kindness)." Subsequent marriages follow a different, penitential liturgical order than a first marriage. Orthodox practice traces this limit to the Tome of Union of the Council of Constantinople in 920, which forbids a fourth marriage outright and permits a third, with heavy penance, generally only to those under forty with no children from a preceding marriage. This is one jurisdiction's own statement, not a pan-Orthodox synodal declaration, but the underlying position is held broadly across Orthodox jurisdictions. (1)Membership Figure As OfAll1910-01-01 (1)1957-06-25 (1)1970-01-01 (1)2007-01-01 (4)2010-01-01 (4)2014-01-01 (2)2015-01-01 (1)2018-01-01 (1)2020-01-01 (3)2021-12-31 (1)2022-12-31 (1)2023-01-01 (3)2024-01-01 (1)2025-01-01 (1)2026-08-14 (2)Membership Over TimeAllA 2013 demographic projection by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary put the combined Pentecostal, Charismatic and Neo-charismatic Renewalist movement at 709.8 million by 2020, up from 62.7 million in 1970, a more than elevenfold rise over five decades, and considerably above the 2010 Pew figure taken alone. (1)A 2018 estimate put the worldwide membership of the six Oriental Orthodox churches (Coptic, Ethiopian Tewahedo, Eritrean Tewahedo, Armenian Apostolic, Syriac Orthodox and Malankara Orthodox Syrian) at more than 50 million. (1)At the 1957 merger forming the United Church of Christ, the Congregational Christian Churches, the main twentieth century American descendant of the tradition, brought in approximately 1.4 million members, about 60 percent of the new denomination's total. (1)By 2010, the same study found the worldwide Orthodox population had roughly doubled to nearly 260 million, 4 percent of world population and 12 percent of the world's Christians, even as Russia's Orthodox population alone surged past 100 million after the fall of the Soviet Union; Orthodoxy grew more slowly than Christianity as a whole over the century, which is why its share of world Christianity fell even as its raw numbers rose. (1)By 2015, the same World Christian Database put worldwide Anglican Communion membership at 90.771 million, nearly double the 1970 total, even as the Episcopal Church in the United States roughly halved over the same period. The Communion's center of gravity shifted decisively toward Africa, which grew from 7.718 million in 1970 to 56.947 million in 2015, while combined North American Anglican membership (the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada) fell from 4.373 million to 2.537 million. (1)By 2020, an independent estimate put the combined total higher, at 72 million. (1)By 2022 the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s reported active membership had fallen to 1,140,665, a loss of 53,105 members in a single year. (1)By the 2014 wave of the same Religious Landscape Study, the Catholic share of US adults had fallen to 21 percent. (1)By the study's third wave, fielded in 2023 and 2024, the Historically Black Protestant share had eased to 5 percent of all US adults, a smaller decline than the Mainline or Evangelical traditions the study tracks over the same period. (1)By the study's third wave, fielded in 2023 and 2024, the Mainline Protestant share had fallen to 11 percent of all US adults, the sharpest drop of the three Protestant traditions the study tracks. (1)In 2010, an estimated 800 million people worldwide were Protestant Christians, 37 percent of 2.18 billion Christians, per the Pew Research Center's country-by-country demographic analysis of censuses and surveys. (1)In the 2023-24 wave of the same study, the Catholic share of US adults stood at 19 percent, continuing a gradual decline from 24 percent in 2007, an independent self-identification measure recorded here separately from any church-reported baptized-member count. (1)In the Pew Research Center's 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Study, 24 percent of US adults identified as Catholic. This is a national self-identification survey, a different measure from the Church's own count of baptized or registered Catholics, which the Vatican and individual dioceses record separately. (1)no single combined figure exists (1)Pew Research Center's 2017 study of global Orthodox Christianity estimates the worldwide Orthodox population at about 124 million in 1910, 7 percent of the world's population at the time and 20 percent of the world's Christians. (1)Pew Research Center's December 2011 analysis of Center for the Study of Global Christianity data estimated about 279 million Pentecostal Christians and about 305 million Charismatic Christians worldwide as of 2010, together more than a quarter of the world's roughly two billion Christians. (1)Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study found respondents in the Historically Black Protestant tradition made up 7 percent of all US adults in 2007, the first wave of the study. (1)Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study found self-identified Evangelical Protestants made up 26 percent of all US adults in 2007, the first wave of the study. (1)Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study found self-identified Mainline Protestants made up 18 percent of all US adults in 2007, the first wave of the study. (1)The Baptist World Alliance's own 2025 census counts 283 member Baptist fellowships in 138 countries and territories, 178,000 churches and 53,000,000 baptized members; the figure explicitly excludes the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest single Baptist body in the United States, which withdrew from the Alliance in 2004. (1)The Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, the other continuing independent fellowship, reported 42,296 members as of 2010. (1)The National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, one of the small fellowships that continued outside the United Church of Christ merger, reported 35,000 members as of 2020. (1)The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the tradition's largest American body, reported active membership of 1,193,770 in 2021. (1)The same article characterizes BWA affiliated bodies as accounting for about half the Baptists in the world, implying a total worldwide Baptist population on the order of 100 million once non-BWA bodies such as the Southern Baptist Convention are folded back in, a much rougher, unofficial figure than the Alliance's own detailed member count. (1)The six churches' own combined claimed total runs higher still, approximately 87 million, a self-reported figure carrying no fixed reference year of its own and considerably above either independent estimate. (1)The study's second wave found the Evangelical Protestant share had eased slightly to 25 percent of all US adults in 2014. (1)The study's third wave, fielded in 2023 and 2024, found the Evangelical Protestant share at 23 percent of all US adults, continuing a slow decline across all three waves. (1)The World Christian Database, compiled by Gina Zurlo and Todd Johnson of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, puts worldwide Anglican Communion membership at 47.394 million in 1970, as reported in David Goodhew's 2022 analysis for Covenant. The Anglican Communion Office's own website states an aggregate current figure (variously 80 to 110 million across different pages) but names no reference year or counting method for it, so it does not itself provide a dated series; the academic World Christian Database data is used here instead. (1)Observance NoteAllThe Westminster standards recognise no holy day under the gospel but the Lord's Day, and Presbyterian churches suppressed the feast days at the Reformation. Christmas, Easter and Advent are widely kept today, so the present practice reverses the confessional position rather than following it. (1)OrdinationAllCelibacy required of the ordained (2)Married clergy permitted (3)Open to women and men (1)Restricted to men (5)Varies between provinces or member bodies (9)Ordination Practice DetailAllAntoinette Brown was ordained by the First Congregational Church of South Butler, New York, on 15 September 1853, generally cited as the first ordination of a woman to the Christian ministry by a mainstream denomination in the United States; the Congregational clergy present were reluctant, and the ordaining minister, Luther Lee, was himself a Methodist. (1)The Orthodox Church in America's own teaching page states plainly that "the Orthodox Church precludes the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopacy" as "a matter of Holy Tradition," and, honestly, that organized public controversy over the question is itself recent, "with roots outside the Orthodox Church," rather than the position itself carrying a datable point of adoption. This is one jurisdiction's own statement, not a pan-Orthodox synodal declaration, but the position it states is held broadly across Orthodox jurisdictions. (1)This restriction has never had a datable point of adoption within the tradition's own account of itself. Pope John Paul II's apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, issued 22 May 1994, is a reaffirmation of that continuous teaching rather than its origin: the letter itself states that priestly ordination "has in the Catholic Church from the beginning always been reserved to men alone" and that the teaching "has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church," declaring only that the Church has no authority to change it. (1)Origin of the NameAllAnglican from Anglicana ecclesia, the Church of England; Communion for the fellowship of autonomous member churches (1)Origin PeriodAllA distinct communion after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (1)Distinct from Rome after the mutual excommunications of 1054 and the sack of Constantinople in 1204 (1)Origin Period End YearAll451 (1)1100 (1)1204 (1)1527 (1)1555 (1)1592 (1)1612 (1)1648 (1)1745 (1)1867 (1)1897 (1)1906 (1)1908 (1)Origin Period Start YearAll30 (3)1517 (1)1525 (1)1534 (1)1560 (1)1609 (1)1620 (1)1734 (1)1787 (1)1901 (1)1908 (1)Place of OriginAllAmsterdam, among English exiles, and then England (1)Britain and British North America (1)Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean (1)Egypt, Syria, Armenia and Ethiopia (1)England, spread worldwide through colonial and missionary expansion (1)Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Richard Allen and Absalom Jones's 1787 withdrawal from St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church began the independent Black church movement; its later member denominations organized separately across New York, Georgia and Mississippi through the nineteenth century. (1)Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America's founding meeting. (1)Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies, New England. (1)Rome (1)Scotland (1)The German and Swiss lands (1)Topeka, Kansas, and Los Angeles, California (1)Zurich, and the Swiss and south German lands (1)Position on JustificationAllNo Communion Wide Standard (1)Position on MarriageAllMarriage is held to be a lifelong, monogamous, indissoluble union; remarriage after divorce is not sanctioned while a spouse lives (1)Marriage is held to be monogamous, with remarriage after divorce sanctioned under specified conditions (1)No single uniform teaching on marriage's terms holds across the body (1)Position on PredestinationAllUnsettled (1)Position on SexualityAllSame-sex sexual relationships are held contrary to teaching; LGBT individuals are welcomed as members but not ordained, and same-sex unions are not blessed (3)The body holds no single settled position; the question is actively and openly contested within it (4)Position on the EucharistAllNo Communion Wide Definition (1)Position on UsuryAllInterest is permitted but bound by ethical constraints against exploiting the poor (1)Practice StatusAllBaptist congregations are typically independent, and their doctrine and worship are published openly with no closed initiatory core; believer's baptism itself is a public rite rather than a secret one. (1)Catholic doctrine, liturgy and canon law are published in full and freely available, including the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the Church actively welcomes outside study. Reception of the Eucharist by non-Catholics is restricted under canon law, a specific and openly stated rule rather than a hidden one. (1)Eastern Orthodox doctrine and liturgy are published and studied openly, and Orthodox churches generally welcome visitors to attend services. As in Catholicism, reception of Communion is restricted to Orthodox Christians in good standing, an openly stated rule rather than a closed core. (1)Pentecostal worship and doctrine, including practices such as speaking in tongues, are openly practised in public services and extensively documented by outside scholars, with no closed initiatory core restricting outside description. (1)The Oriental Orthodox communion's doctrine, liturgy and history are documented and published openly, and its churches, including the Coptic, Armenian, Syriac and Ethiopian traditions, are studied extensively by outside scholars. No closed initiatory core is documented for the family of churches as a whole. (1)Principle of WorshipAllNormative (1)Relation to the StateAllDisestablished (1)No Establishment (1)Varies by Province (9)Response Policy AdoptedAllDallas Charter (2002, United States) and Vos Estis Lux Mundi (2019, worldwide) (1)German Bishops' Conference post-MHG reforms: revised prevention and abuse-handling order (2019/2020) and the reformed recognition payment procedure through the independent UKA commission (2020/2021), up to 50,000 euros per case (1)Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Sexual Misconduct Policy (2000, revised 2022): zero tolerance standard, independent confidential hotline (1)Sacraments RecognisedAllTwo (1)Schools and Universities OperatedAllThe same Fides dossier reports that the Catholic Church runs 74,550 kindergartens with 7,639,051 pupils, 102,455 primary schools with 36,199,844 pupils, and 52,085 secondary schools with 20,724,361 pupils worldwide, as of 31 December 2023. A further 4,468,875 students attend university institutes affiliated with the Catholic Church, and 2,688,615 pupils attend Catholic-affiliated senior secondary institutes counted separately from the main secondary-school total. (1)Separation or DivergenceAll"Protestantism" is a collective term for the bodies that resulted and not itself an organised church (1)A transdenominational movement rather than a body that left another (1)American Presbyterians divided over slavery and the federal union in 1861, when southern presbyteries, unwilling to accept the Gardiner Spring Resolutions' requirement of loyalty to the United States government, seceded to form what became the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS). The PCUS reunited with the northern United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA) on 10 June 1983, forming the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). This is a distinct rupture from the 1837/38 Old School-New School division, which was substantially theological and revivalist rather than a division over slavery, and from that division's own 1869 northern reunion. (1)Chalcedonian bodies long called them "Monophysite", a name they reject (1)Constantinople and the eastern churches: the mutual excommunications of 1054 and the estrangement completed by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 (1)Each holds that it kept the faith of the undivided church (2)Formed by English Separatists and non-separating Puritans who left the Church of England's episcopal governance for New England beginning in 1620, holding that Christ governs each congregation directly and no bishop or presbytery may stand between them. (1)Its member denominations trace to several distinct and unrelated separations: the sixteenth century Reformation for Lutheran and Reformed bodies, the Church of England's establishment for the Episcopal Church, and, for the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), no separation at all but a later twentieth century merger of existing bodies. (1)Joint declarations from 1971 onward have found the christological difference to be one of formula rather than of faith (1)Later separations from the established Church of Scotland, in 1733 and 1843, divided Presbyterians among themselves (1)Mainline Protestantism is a scholarly classification of denominations rather than an organized body that separated from another; it is not itself a church and has no single founding schism. (1)Neither communion accepts a description of itself as having separated (2)No separation (1)Richard Allen and Absalom Jones's 1787 withdrawal from St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, after being pulled from their knees during prayer in a section reserved for white congregants, is the founding event most consistently cited as the origin of the independent Black church movement in America. (1)Rome: the mutual excommunications of 1054 and the estrangement completed by the sack of Constantinople in 1204 (1)Separate bodies formed between 1906 and 1914 (1)The Church of England's sixteenth century separation from Rome during the English Reformation; the Communion itself was formally organised as a fellowship of the resulting churches from 1867. (1)The Church of England, by way of English Separatism: Smyth's exile congregation at Amsterdam adopted believers' baptism in 1609. (1)The excommunications were lifted by both sides in 1965 (2)The historically Black Protestant tradition is a scholarly classification family, not a single body that separated from another; its member denominations organized independently, driven by exclusion and segregation in white controlled churches rather than by any single doctrinal split. (1)The Holiness movement within Methodism, over the doctrine that speaking in tongues is the evidence of Spirit baptism (1)The imperial church: the Council of Chalcedon in 451, whose definition of two natures these churches did not receive (1)The Roman church, in the Scottish Reformation of 1560 (1)The Roman church, in the sixteenth-century Reformation (1)The Southern Baptist Convention formed in 1845 in an explicit split from northern Baptists after the American Baptist Home Mission Society refused to commission a missionary who owned slaves; the new convention was founded to defend the right of slaveholders to serve as missionaries. It formally apologized for that origin in a resolution adopted 20 to 22 June 1995, on its 150th anniversary. (1)The Zurich reformation under Zwingli: the first believers' baptisms of January 1525 followed the city council's refusal to abolish infant baptism. (1)Settlement TotalAll500,000 (1)1,500,000,000 (1)5,590,000,000 (1)Sexuality Position DetailAllBaptist church government is congregational, and no national body speaks with binding authority for the whole family, yet its three largest American conventions read the same way rather than spreading across the range. The Southern Baptist Convention's confessional statement, the Baptist Faith and Message, names homosexuality among the forms of sexual immorality Christians should oppose, alongside adultery and pornography, but neither the confession nor the Convention's 2015 marriage resolution sets out a formal bar on an LGBT individual's ordinary church membership, and practice on that question varies by autonomous local congregation. American Baptist Churches USA's General Board amended its own statement of identity, We Are American Baptists, in November 2005 to hold that Scripture places sexual intimacy within marriage between one man and one woman and that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with biblical teaching, while the denomination's own published caveat states that no national resolution or policy statement obligates any congregation or region to a particular position. The National Baptist Convention, USA, Incorporated's president stated in 2012 that the Convention affirms marriage as a sacred biblical covenant between a man and a woman while explicitly disclaiming any power to dictate that position to its autonomous constituent churches, and in January 2014 the Convention directed its own endorsed military chaplains not to participate in any activity implying or condoning a same-sex marriage or union, an officiant-level restriction distinct from a membership bar. No source read across any of the three states that an LGBT individual is denied ordinary church membership at the national level. (1)Eastern Orthodoxy teaches marriage as a sacrament reserved to one man and one woman, and holds that same-sex sexual relationships fall outside the bounds of chaste conduct; the Church does not perform or bless same-sex unions and does not ordain a member living openly in a same-sex relationship. This is continuous doctrine with no single adoption date, expressed consistently across at least four decades of documented statements from separate Orthodox jurisdictions and publications, most recently the Orthodox Church in America Holy Synod's 2022 statement, which also affirms pastoral care and love for those who experience same-sex attraction. LGBT individuals are not excluded from membership or participation in the life of the Church on that basis alone. (1)Mainline Protestantism, as the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study classifies it, names a family resemblance among historically dominant American Protestant denominations rather than a governed body: a less exclusive reading of salvation than evangelicalism's, early acceptance of historical critical Biblical scholarship, and a public emphasis on social reform, carried by autonomous denominations whose own polities range from the Episcopal Church's dioceses to the United Church of Christ's fully self-governing congregations. Six of its historically named Seven Sisters, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ and the United Methodist Church, perform same-sex marriage and ordain LGBT clergy without restriction. The seventh, American Baptist Churches USA, amended its own statement of identity in 2005 to hold the practice of homosexuality incompatible with biblical teaching, while its published caveat states no national resolution obligates any congregation to a particular practice on its own members. The divergence of one of the family's own most prominent members from the other six is the reason no flat single value honestly represents the family. (1)Presbyterianism is governed by no single worldwide body, and its largest American bodies read at nearly every point on this question today. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) removed the "fidelity and chastity" ordination standard that had barred partnered gay and lesbian officers from 1996 through Amendment 10-A's effective date of 10 July 2011, and in 2015 amended its Book of Order to permit, though not require, its pastors to officiate at same-sex weddings. The Presbyterian Church in America moved the opposite direction: its 51st General Assembly in 2024 gave final approval to Overture 23, already ratified 76 to 2 by its own 88 presbyteries in the 2023-2024 interim, adding a Book of Church Order criterion that bars from ordained office any man who describes himself with identity language such as "gay Christian," "same-sex attracted Christian" or "homosexual Christian," regardless of celibacy. The Evangelical Presbyterian Church sits between the two: its General Assembly adopted a Position Paper on Human Sexuality in 2017 confining sexual expression to celibacy outside marriage or to marriage between a man and a woman, and its 2024 General Assembly, described by one denominational historian as the most contentious he had witnessed, opened a two-year study running through 2026 on whether a celibate man who identifies as gay may hold pastoral office, a question its own commissioners left unresolved. No single statement speaks for Presbyterianism as a whole. (1)The Catechism states that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law" (2357), while it also states of the inclination itself that persons "must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity" and that "every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided" (2358). Homosexual persons are called to chastity like every unmarried Catholic (2359). The Church does not ordain on the basis of the inclination and does not celebrate a same-sex union as a marriage; the teaching's own framing distinguishes the inclination and the person, who is owed welcome, from the act, which is held contrary to teaching. (1)The historically Black Protestant tradition, as the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study classifies it, has no central governing authority; it names a shared history of denominations founded by and for Black Christians excluded from or segregated within white-controlled churches, spanning Methodist, Baptist and Pentecostal polities rather than one confession. Its core member denominations read across the vocabulary's non-affirming range. The Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal holiness body, treats same-sex orientation or practice as a bar to full participation. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and the National Baptist Convention, USA, Incorporated all hold that same-sex practice is contrary to teaching while welcoming LGBT individuals as ordinary members, without ordaining partnered clergy or blessing same-sex unions. The Progressive National Baptist Convention, which separated from the National Baptist Convention in 1961, holds no single settled position, the question remaining actively and openly contested within it. Two other core member denominations named in scholarship on this tradition, the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church and the National Baptist Convention of America, carry no checkable, dated statement of their own on this question. (1)The revised Lambeth Call on Human Dignity, reported 26 July 2022, moved away from seeking a reaffirmation of the 1998 Lambeth Resolution I.10, which had declared homosexual practice incompatible with Scripture, toward language stating there is no consensus across all forty-two of the Anglican Communion's provinces on the legitimacy of blessings and marriage rites for same-sex couples. The Call states all baptized, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ, while the bishops stated they remain committed to listening and walking together to the maximum possible degree, despite their deep disagreement on these issues. (1)Standard Rate ExpectedAllTen percent. (2)Standing Giving ExpectationAllBaptist polity sets no single Baptist-wide giving rule, because local church autonomy is the tradition's own defining principle rather than an incidental feature. Baptist denominational bodies, associations, state and national conventions, hold no authority over a local Baptist church; a Baptist congregation itself selects its own leadership, decides its own financial matters and directs its own affairs without outside control. The Southern Baptist Convention's own 1992 resolution on the subject states that general Baptist bodies, the Convention itself included, are "fully autonomous, each 'independent in its own sphere,' and thus beyond the coercion of any other body or local church." The range this leaves is real rather than a description in the abstract: the American Baptist Churches USA and the Southern Baptist Convention both merely preach a voluntary tithe with no consequence, while the Progressive National Baptist Convention operates a genuinely different, codified due, a member congregation must pay at least one percent of its operating receipts to the Convention to keep its own voting rights. No Baptist-wide body could set a single member-giving rule even if it wished to; none holds the authority to. (1)Canon 222 of the Code of Canon Law, restated as the fifth of the Precepts of the Church ("you shall help to provide for the needs of the Church"), obliges Catholics to support the material needs of the Church according to their own ability. It names no fixed percentage: the Church rarely exercises its right to require a specific amount, leaving each Catholic to judge how and when to give through Sunday collections, annual appeals and other ordinary means. The widely known figure of ten percent is a homiletic tradition borrowed from tithing, not a requirement of canon law itself. (1)Eastern Orthodoxy asks its members to give as an expression of stewardship and thanksgiving, but no Orthodox jurisdiction has issued a decree fixing a tithe or any other percentage. The Orthodox Church in America's own guidance states plainly that it has never mandated a tithe, and that stewardship materials mentioning the traditional ten percent figure hold it up only as an ideal benchmark, teaching that the percentage itself matters less than giving one's first and best out of thanksgiving. Parishes are in practice supported through stewardship pledges, festival fundraisers and free-will offerings rather than a billed rate, so this is deliberately not recorded as an explicit absence like the Jehovah's Witnesses' entry: a real giving expectation exists, it simply carries no fixed rate. (1)Most evangelical Protestant teaching preaches tithing, giving ten percent of income, most often anchored to Malachi 3:10 ("bring the whole tithe into the storehouse"). Unlike Latter-day Saint tithing, evangelical congregations generally attach no membership consequence, interview or gate to whether a member actually tithes; it is taught as a scriptural expectation and left to the individual conscience and the local congregation's own culture. (1)Presbyterianism's shared confessional touchstone is the Westminster Larger Catechism, completed in 1647 and adopted by the Church of Scotland the following year, still subscribed across much of the tradition including the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Presbyterian Church in America and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Its own section on the eighth commandment states the duty of giving in proportional rather than percentage terms: believers must practice "giving and lending freely, according to our abilities, and the necessities of others," naming no fixed rate and no tithe. This is the confessional teaching behind Presbyterian giving generally, distinct from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s own narrower per capita apportionment, which is a specific denominational due paid by congregations to their presbytery, synod and General Assembly rather than the wider confessional teaching on a member's own personal giving. (1)Protestantism spans traditions too different in structure and teaching to share one honest member-giving norm, and nothing above the denominational level has the standing to set one for the whole. The range across Protestantism's own major families spans a real spectrum rather than a family resemblance: Lutheranism's own split between the Church of Sweden's tax-withheld kyrkoavgift and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's fully voluntary practice; the Anglican Communion's own documented absence of any binding member rule; Pentecostal bodies' formally doctrinal ten-percent tithe; the Progressive National Baptist Convention's codified congregation-to-convention due against the Southern Baptist Convention's purely preached tithe; and Methodism's own founding rejection of any fixed proportion at all, in favor of giving without a stated limit. No Protestantism-wide governing body exists to set a shared rule, and the traditions gathered under the label disagree with each other too fundamentally, state-linked taxation against purely voluntary custom, formal doctrine against explicit rejection of any fixed rate, for one sentence to describe them honestly. (1)The Anglican Communion itself sets no single member-giving rule: it "has no official legal existence nor any governing structure that might exercise authority over the member churches," and even its own Lambeth Conference resolutions "have no legal effect on the autonomous provinces of the communion." Each of the Communion's 42 autonomous provinces sets its own teaching on member giving under its own canon law and its own local primate; there is no Communion-wide tithe, percentage or due binding an ordinary member anywhere in the Communion, distinct from the tithe-as-aspiration teaching already recorded on the Church of England-led Anglicanism fact on this axis. What the Communion's own history carries instead is a call to mutual giving between churches rather than a rule for individual members: the 1963 Toronto Anglican Congress's "Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ," drafted with delegates from nearly every diocese in the Communion, asked member churches to commit to sharing resources with one another, explicitly declining to create "a new central fund" and leaving "each church to determine its own need to share in the life of other churches." This is a documented structural absence rather than an unresearched gap: the Communion's own governing description of itself, not merely a lack of evidence, is why no single member rate exists at this level. (1)Tithing, ten percent of income, is taught as a formal doctrinal expectation across multiple major Pentecostal bodies, not merely a customary habit. The Assemblies of God's own governing Bylaws name it a recognized duty. The Foursquare Church's Declaration of Faith, one of its own twenty-two formal articles of belief, states as its own doctrine that "the method ordained of God to sustain His ministry and the spread of the gospel after His command is 'Tithing'" and that this is "generally accepted throughout all Foursquare churches," citing Malachi 3:10's command to "bring all the tithes into the storehouse." Neither body's own materials name a consequence for an ordinary member who gives less; the doctrine is affirmed at the level of formal belief rather than enforced against an individual's standing in the church. (1)Standing of Holy OrdersAllHistoric Episcopate Locally Adapted (1)Status TodayAllLiving tradition, practised today (13)Usury Position DetailAllRoman Catholic teaching bars taking a return from a loan contract by itself: Vix Pervenit states plainly that "any gain which exceeds the amount he gave is illicit and usurious." What the same encyclical does not bar is a return owed for a reason genuinely separate from the loan, an "extrinsic title" such as compensation for real risk of loss or for an opportunity the lender gave up to make the loan, reasons the text describes as "not at all intrinsic to the contract" itself. This distinction, not a simple ceiling on the interest rate, is what lets ordinary lending operate today without the charge counting as usury in the sense the Church has condemned since antiquity. (1)Wealth Figure As Of YearAll2024 (2)BrowseCompareAnabaptismParent Denomination2 entriesAnglican CommunionParent Denomination2 entriesBaptistParent Denomination5 entriesCongregationalistsParent Denomination1 entryEastern OrthodoxyParent Denomination1 entryEvangelicalismParent Denomination1 entryHistorically Black Protestant TraditionParent Denomination7 entriesMainline ProtestantismParent Denomination7 entriesOriental OrthodoxyParent Denomination1 entryPentecostalismParent Denomination2 entriesPresbyterianismParent Denomination1 entryProtestantismParent Denomination17 entriesRoman CatholicismParent Denomination1 entrySources1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Treetier 12. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editiontier 1F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the SourceDivinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptionstier 1Comments (0)No comments yet. 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