How many Protestant Denominations are there???

[LaSalle]

Before we can do that, I guess we need to clarify what Denomination means. (I thought that was simple enough; any Christian who is neither Catholic nor EO; is by default a Protestant. But I gather that that isn't so ... )

Let's just limit this to the United States, if that in itself is possible.

1 State Definition

2 State number and source

[Zski01]

I'm not sure, but it seems like every time someone "states" the number, it gets bigger. I think we're up to 34,000 now on this site...

I have no doubt there are many, but I think that may be an exaggeration...

I read one Protestant claiming somewhere in the ballpark of 9,000, but I can't remember where I read that so don't take that number to the bank.

[Dan Blake]

Originally Posted by LaSalle

Before we can do that, I guess we need to clarify what Denomination means. (I thought that was simple enough; any Christian who is neither Catholic nor EO; is by default a Protestant. But I gather that that isn't so ... )

Let's just limit this to the United States, if that in itself is possible.

1 State Definition

2 State number and source

1. Denomination, n., a particular religious body, with a specific name, organization, etc. (Source: Webster's New World Dictionary, 2nd ed)

2. There are eighty-seven Christian denominations. (Source: Pacific Bell SMART Yellow Pages, Sacramento, CA)

[Church Militant]

According to the 2001 World Christian Encyclopedia published bt Oxford University Press counts 33,830 denominations within Christianity. See page 7 of Apologetics #1 by the San Juan Catholic Seminars. (www.catholicapologetics.com)

[Dan Blake]

Originally Posted by Church Militant

According to the 2001 World Christian Encyclopedia published bt Oxford University Press counts 33,830 denominations within Christianity.

Michael,

You jumped over question #1, which is to define denomination. Without a definition, a count is meaningless.

Cheers,
Dan

[RobedWithLight]

Originally Posted by Dan Blake

Michael,

You jumped over question #1, which is to define denomination. Without a definition, a count is meaningless.

Cheers,
Dan

You already gave one in any case. With Church militant's figures, the question I believe has been adequately answered by both of you.

Gerry

[Contarini]

The problem with defining "denominations" as any specific religious body with its own name and organization (which would definitely lead to a greater number than 87!) is that by that standard the Catholic Church is a federation of 22 (or is it 21?) denominations--i.e., "sui juris churches," which is basically the definition of denomination given from Webster's. I suggest therefore that we bypass the term "denomination" altogether and speak instead of "church bodies" (we can say "ecclesiastical bodies" if you prefer--I'm not making any argument here about the claim of Protestant bodies to the title "church"). A church body can be defined, I'd argue, in one of three ways

1. A group of Christian congregations with a unified, centralized organization which owns property in its own name (the Webster's definition).

2. A group of Christian congregations capable of making decisions as a body and holding the members of the group accountable, such that if people or congregations violate the norm of the group they can be expelled from it.

3. A group of Christian congregations who recognize one another's sacraments, so that any person baptized in one congregation is recognized as baptized in another and any person who receives the Eucharist in one congregation is eligible to receive in another. (Another way of saying this is that all members of the group recognize one another as fully members of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.)

I've already suggested that the first meaning is less than helpful. Not only does it define the Catholic Church (and the Orthodox Church) as made up of several church bodies, but it also cannot describe as unified church bodies any congregational "denomination" such as the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ, or maybe even the Southern Baptist Convention.

The third definition is an attractive one, but it is difficult to apply to the reality of modern Protestantism. Since a large number, probably a majority, of Protestants practice open communion and are not deeply concerned with defining the limits of the visible Church, the definition becomes almost meaningless. There's also a problem of transitivity: if Episcopalians are in communion with Lutherans, and Lutherans are in communion with Presbyterians, but Episcopalians are not in communion with Presbyterians, then where do we draw the boundaries of the church body? (That is presently the case with regard to formal "full communion," although since both Episcopalians and mainline Presbyterians recognize one another's baptism and give communion to all baptized Christians, one could argue that all these groups are in communion.)

I'd therefore argue that my second definition is the best one. A church body is a group of Christian congregations who can make decisions as a group and hold all members accountable to those decisions, even if that simply means that local congregations who don't "fall in line" are declared no longer to be in communion (i.e., questions of who owns the property are not at issue as in definition 1).

In Christ,

Edwin

[kmktexas]

Edwin,

I like your definitions but what do we do with all the independant or non-denominational churches? Also, the mega-churches which may only have one congregation but that congregation numbers in the thousands? Does a church body need at least two congregations to be a denomination?

[Shibboleth]

It is difficult to tell and it really depends on what kind of criterion one employs. Certain Catholics like to point out the number to discredit Protestantism and state - how can it be so with so many differing interpretations.

In truth many of the denominations have the same belief structures but simply choose to carry another name because of location, ethnicity, and the like. C.S. Lewis stated that it wasn’t so much that denominations disagreed on the important matters but that they disagreed with what was most important.

Even though we are of many denominations we do hold that we are of one Church, the Church catholic.

Lutherans like to state,
We are not Catholic therefore we are catholic,
We are not Orthodox therefore we are orthodox,
We are not Reformed so much as we are constantly reforming,
We are not at all Evangelical in so much as we are evangelical.

and when asked...

"Do you think that yours is the only true religion?" we say:

"Yes, but we are not the only ones who have it."

[John of Woking]

Originally Posted by LaSalle

Before we can do that, I guess we need to clarify what Denomination means. (I thought that was simple enough; any Christian who is neither Catholic nor EO; is by default a Protestant. But I gather that that isn't so ... )

Let's just limit this to the United States, if that in itself is possible.

1 State Definition

2 State number and source

Too many.

[RobedWithLight]

In the final analysis, an exact figure is not really that important. Ultimately there are only two: The Catholic Church, and chaos.

Gerry

[Katholikos]

Originally Posted by RobedWithLight

In the final analysis, an exact figure is not really that important. Ultimately there are only two: The Catholic Church, and chaos.

Gerry

de = from, away from, out of

nom = name

denominate = to give a name to

The Catholic Church is not a denomination. She is the Mother Church of all Christendom, the nomination from which all other ecclesial bodies have denominated.

They all broke away from her at some level and took a new name to identify themselves as a different entity, signifying that they had one or more differences in doctrine or practice from every other denomination.

The original Lutherans were a first-level split: Catholic > Lutheran. However, Luther's original church does not exist and Lutheranism has continued to split at many levels into the shattered group we see today -- and will no doubt split again sometime.

The Baptists were a third generation split - Catholic > Mennonite > Baptist. Though Baptists have continued to split (denominate) into hundreds of groups, ultimately all denominations derive from the Mother Church.

You're absolutely right about the chaos, Gerry. Every denomination competes and conflicts with all other denominations, yet all are based on the same 66-book cut version of the Bible. There are thousands of them, and they all claim to teach the truth.

JMJ Jay

[Shibboleth]

This is from a very old post of mine

The suffix “de-” at the beginning of the word which means that the root is to be considered verb not noun. [I will “name” him. - not - I will give him a “name.”]

So the root “nomin” or “nomen” should be interpreted to give a name to..

The suffix “-ate” means - [indicating an office of authority]
Latin (-atus)

So now you have “nominatus” or - to give a name by an office of authority.

The prefix “de-” in this word is using the Latin meaning [from]

“-tion” an action or process - makes it a noun

So in the end the word more or less reads…

From that which was named by an office of authority.

[Contarini]

Kristine,

Yes, I realized at the end of my post that I hadn't really answered the question, but I had already written quite a long post by that time so decided to let it rest. I think that it's important to get our terms straight first and foremost, because I really don't think the question "how many denominations" is a meaningful one. Just as Catholicism can't accurately be described as a denomination, so various Protestant groups are "denominations" (or in my terminology "church bodies") in different senses. The basic problem with the question from the start is that it sets Protestantism over against Catholicism and Orthodoxy. But in some respects Anglicans and Lutherans may have more in common with Catholics than with fundamentalist Baptists. Most of the splitting is at the extreme conservative end of the Protestant spectrum, and much of it affects Baptists, Pentecostals, and other "free church" groups.

Also, one of the problems with the large figures often given is that such figures often count different national bodies as separate "denominations," even though they cooperate fully with each other. In other words, you need to find a way of distinguishing between genuine disunity among Protestants (of which there is plenty) and a lesser degree of centralization, which in fact is no different from the condition of the early Church, the probable structure of the reunited Catholic/Orthodox Church should such a thing ever come about, or even for that matter the present relationships among the various sui juris churches that make up the Catholic Church.

Katholikos, two notes in response to you. I don't know what you mean by Luther's "original church" not existing any more. It's true that Lutherans are divided--however, they are essentially divided into two groups--the state churches of Germany and Scandinavia and corresponding denominations such as ELCA in other parts of the world, on the one hand; and "confessional" Lutheran churches such as the Missouri Synod on the other. There are other Lutheran groups but they are tiny. So it's true that the state churches and the confessional churches can each claim Luther's legacy in different ways. But that's not the same thing as saying that Luther's original church "doesn't exist." You can go to Wittenberg and see Lutheranism still being taught and practiced. Your assertion doesn't make any sense.

Also, most historians would not say that the Baptists derive from the Anabaptists, but rather from the Puritan movement in England. There was some Anabaptist influence, but it's debated just how much. Probably not a lot when all is said and done. The Baptists are essentially radical Puritans.

In Christ,

Edwin

[Malachi4U]

How many sects are there? Well what time of day is it? When should we stop counting and start adding? That number changes by the day. Set a time as of 7:29 am on 11-19-04?

Without a stop time the number will go up daily (perhaps down too at times).