30,000+ Protestant Denominations: Fact or Fiction?

[justinthemartyr]

well if he believes he is in this so -called “church”, and defines every doctrine, and it meets the exact definition of what the Catholic Church teaches, the only Church built by God and not man, then yes, I agree with him.

 

[Steadfast]

well if he believes he is in this so -called “church”, and defines every doctrine, and it meets the exact definition of what the Catholic Church teaches, the only Church built by God and not man, then yes, I agree with him.

This is exactly what the pharisees expected of our Lord.

Is your righteousness greater than theirs?

The question is rhetorical, we both know that it is not.

This being the case you are in no position to require these things and neither is your church.

Regards.

 

[bpbasilphx]

Of that, is it possible 10% are nondenominational?

There’s no such thing as a “non-denominational church”. It might be a denomination of just one congregation, but more likely it will be found to be exactly the same as an already established denomination.

 

[jmcrae]

Of that, is it possible 10% are nondenominational?

There’s no such thing as a “non-denominational church”. It might be a denomination of just one congregation, but more likely it will be found to be exactly the same as an already established denomination.

I would categorize “non-denominational churches” as a single denomination that encompasses all non-denominational churches. They function like Congregationalists, by placing the source of temporal authority in the congregation itself, rather than in an outside body, and they have several “essentials” in common - for example they all seem to have the same theology around baptism, and similar theology around Holy Communion, and they all do “altar calls” of one sort or another.

 

[Syele]

No offense but did you actually read my posts? It looks more like you saw a few words and assumed you knew what I was getting at. I myself said that the country separation applied to Protestants as well. I used the SBC as an example since they have a respectable international representation and yet have a central organization. taking the numbers of the census and removing redundancy of separate national organizations probably leaves a few thousand.

As to the asking me if I think Orthodox are Protestant I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about or why you would even ask that. Gnosticism predates Protestantism by a thousand years, and as for Koresh I really have no idea. If his group sprang from a Protestant denomination then technically yeah I’d say yes. Not really I don’t know enough about them to say one way or the other.

I was simply stating that Barrett includes Gnostics, Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, cults etc ALL in the 33,000 number even though that would NOT be a reasonable definition of “denomination.” You appeared to be saying you AGREE with Barrett’s definition.

 

[Hidajunshin]

I can only attest to what I see around me. I looked in my phone book and counted the number of churches listed. I stopped counting when I reached 150 with still another page to go. The phone book I used services an area of approximately 200,000 people. Some of these churches are mega churches, some of them are affiliated together, but most of them are not.
Additionally, in the 5 years that I have known my next door neighbor, she and her family have attended at least 6 different churches, some of them the larger churches, some of them just down the street in the local community center. She told me one day about the most recent change because the pastor was having some trouble with another pastor (maybe some elders?)…not sure, sorry, but that he decided to break off and form his own non-denominational church. My neighbor told me that since her family agreed with this pastor, she also left with him (along with 8 other families). So they have been attending services somewhere else.
That is just one example. I also know that this new church isn’t listed in the phone book. I think it’s believable that the example with my neighbor happens in many places, too.
I think it stands to reason that there are thousands of different protestant groups. Are there over 30,000? I don’t know. But considering my little slice of the US and the dynamic and diversity here, I can believe that it is a 5-digit number.

 

[paarsurrey]

I’ve heard on other forums the tens-of-thousands figure for Protestant denominations is a myth. Others agree with it.

What do you think?

Resources encouraged!

Hi

They have not accepted the PromisedMessiah 1835-1908 so they would keep on dividing, in my opinion.

Thanks

 

[Byzcat]

I am also curious as to how the figure was arrived at.

I’m thinking, well, you could count the Seventh-Day Adventists as two, well, actually three because though David Koresh has gone to his eternal reward, the Branch Davidians are still around, and the BD is a splinter from the Adventists. But there are two major branches of Adventists, one of which is relatively orthodox (I said “relatively”) the other verges on being a cult.

Then there are “house churches” with congregations of 10-20 or so people- we had quite a few of them in my hometown of South Bend, IN. They tend to be Pentecostal in flavor, but if a few of them are in any way affiliated with one another, they could constitute a denomination.

Nearly all of the denominations have had splits within the denomination, and then splits within the splits. So while one person might think of “Baptist” as a denomination, another would see Northern Baptist, Southern Baptist, backwoods snake-handling Baptist, etc., and consider each group a separate denomination.

Penecostals? Plenty of independent mega-churches large enough to be a denomination unto themselves. Then there’s the Vinyard Movement and the Toronto Airport movement (actually both part of the same movement) so you’ve got a new denomination there… Protestant congregations are also notorious for breaking up into smaller congregations, often over doctrinal issues. So if a splinter congregation gets large enough that a second church that agrees with it doctrinally is started, bing, new denomination.

Conceiveably, you could define a group that consists of maybe a hundred or so people as a denomination, see house churches above.