Denominations

208 entries. Click any to see everything it connects to.

The branches, schools and movements within religious traditions: the churches of Christianity, the schools of Buddhism and of Islamic jurisprudence, the movements of Judaism and Hinduism. Each entry records the parent tradition, what distinguishes the branch, and roughly when and why it formed or separated. Divisions are often as much about authority, practice and geography as about doctrine.

Facts

Overview

Entries in the Atlas: 208
What Defines This Grouping: Branches, schools and movements within a parent tradition and grouped under it: churches and confessions, schools of law and of philosophy, ordination lineages and reform movements. What counts as a branch is a distinction the parent tradition makes, not one cross-religious rule. 1

Origins

Origin of the Name: From Latin denominatio, a naming. The word entered religious use among English-speaking Protestants for bodies that recognise one another as legitimately named parts of one church; its export to other religions is an analogy. 2

Status

Standing as a Comparative Category: Contested: denomination is a term of art from English-speaking Protestantism. It maps poorly onto a Hindu sampradaya, an Islamic madhhab, a Buddhist vehicle or a Taoist ordination lineage, none of which is a separate church. 2

Sources

The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions John Bowker (ed.), 1997, s.v. denomination
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), 2005, s.v. Denominationalism

Learn More

Branches within a tradition

A denomination is a distinct branch, school or movement within a larger religious tradition: the churches and confessions of Christianity, the schools of Buddhism, the schools of law and theology in Islam, the movements of Judaism, and the sampradayas and movements of Hinduism. The category also holds the divisions of smaller and newer traditions.

Each entry records the parent tradition, what distinguishes the branch in belief, practice or authority, and, where known, when and how it emerged: often through reform, schism, revival or the following of a particular teacher.

Reading the Divisions

Divisions within a religion arise for many reasons (disputes over doctrine, authority, ritual, or the interpretation of scripture, and sometimes ethnic, political or regional difference as much as theology), and the entries describe the grounds of each without taking a side in it. What one tradition calls a school, another calls a sect or a movement, and the terminology itself can carry judgement; the atlas uses neutral description.

The denominations group under their parent religion, so a browser can move from a tradition to its internal branches (the denominations of Christianity, of Buddhism, of Islam), in a single step.