History of Christianity (Christian Denominations Family Tree Chart)

hi this is Matt Baker earlier this year I did an eight-part series on the family tree of Christian denominations well today I'm releasing the entire series again but this time as a single video I've titled it history of Christianity because although I go through things in a family tree format it does end up being a rather systematic study of church history you'll note that the chart changes and grows as I go through it this is because I originally worked on the chart between each episode however the whole thing is now done so let me point out that if you want to buy a copy of it as a poster you can do so by heading to usefulcharts.com or by using the link in the description or pinned comment okay let's get started [Music] okay let's start at the very top of this chart with ancient Israelite religion many centuries before the birth of Christianity this represents the religion of the people who lived in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah during the Iron Age so basically about 1000 BCE to 600 BCE now there are several competing ideas about what exactly the ancient Israelite religion looked like and how it came to exist so rather than present you with only one view let me give you at least two the first is the view given in the Bible according to a literal reading God revealed himself first to a man named Abraham but then Abraham's descendants ended up in Egypt as slaves where they became known as the Israelites God then revealed himself to Moses who helped lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into the land of Canaan where they conquered the local population there and eventually established a kingdom which was then later split into two so according to this view the Israelites knew about the one true God from the start but then after that they started disobeying that God and worshiping other gods instead which led to the destruction of Their Kingdoms the Northern Kingdom of Israel falling first to the Assyrians and the southern Kingdom of Judah falling second to the Babylonians so that's one view the other view is based on a more literary reading of the Bible combined with what we have come to learn from secular history and Archeology according to this view the Israelites were probably just a subset of Canaanites who survived the Bronze Age collapse in the Hill Country and who then combined with other nearby people groups to form a tribal Confederation this confederation then evolved into the Kingdom of Israel which would have originally been polytheistic however within the Kingdom of Israel there were some priests who advocated for hinotheism which is the worship of only one God without denying the existence of other gods and the one God they advocated for is the one represented by these four letters as a Jew I'm not supposed to pronounce the name so I will say Hashem instead which simply means the name anyway the Kingdom of Israel was eventually conquered by Assyria however the nearby Kingdom of Judah and in particular its capital city of Jerusalem managed to hold out therefore the Temple of Hashem at Jerusalem also known as the first temple became the new center of the Israelite religion which became increasingly more monotheistic eventually however Judah was also conquered This Time by the Babylonians the first temple was destroyed and judah's Elites were carried off to Babylon where they experienced the Babylonian exile from approximately 586 to 516 BCE which brings us to second temple Judaism by this point the Israelites were now known as Jews named after the kingdom of Judah however when the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians the Persians allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple to Hashem which became known as the second temple so in many ways second temple Judaism was the direct descendant of ancient Israelite religion however it was almost certainly influenced by the interactions that the Jewish people were now having with their new foreign rulers for example the Persians followed a religion known as Zoroastrianism and Zoroastrianism likely had a major impact on second temple Judaism for example the figure of Satan and the idea of there being an end of the world where good triumphs over evil likely came from Zoroastrianism likewise when the Greeks conquered the Persians and Hellenism began to spread throughout the Middle East many ideas from the Greeks found their way into second temple Judaism as well but the most important thing you need to know about second temple Judaism is that by the Roman period it was not a single highly unified religion but rather a religion that had many different sects operating within it the four main sects were the Pharisees Sadducees ascenes and the zealots let's quickly look at each one the Sadducees represented the elites of Jewish society and included the priests who ran the temple they were the group that were the most open to Hellenism in contrast the Pharisees were associated more with the everyday people and included the scribes and Scholars who studied the Hebrew scriptures next there were the essenes who were the most mystical of the four groups often living apart from mainstream society and having a keen interest in things like angels and the idea of a spiritual Messiah they were probably the group that produced The Dead Sea Scrolls finally there were the zealots who were the opposite of the essenes in that they wanted real world change in other words they wanted to overthrow the Roman government and re-establish political Independence for the Jews now here's the thing out of these four groups only one survived the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE this was the Pharisees you see after Jerusalem was destroyed the Pharisees moved their headquarters to a nearby city called yavne where they then became known as rabbis the religion of Judaism as it exists today traces its roots back to these early rabbis and therefore directly to the Pharisees in contrast the Sadducees essenes and zealots all became extinct however very late in the second temple period a fifth Jewish sect had started to form that of the early earliest Christians and this fifth sect survived the destruction as well now it doesn't actually matter whether you believe that Jesus was God or that he was just a man or that he never existed at all what is absolutely certain is that Christians existed by the end of the first century and that these earliest Christians were Jews in fact many of the earliest Christians were likely former Pharisees such as Paul but it's also likely that there were some zealots as well after all one of the 12 disciples was named Simon the Zealot there also seems to have been a heavy essene influence on early Christianity considering that both groups were apocalyptic meaning that they believed in a hidden spirit world that was about to be revealed the only Jewish group that Christianity didn't seem to draw heavily from was the Sadducees however in addition to Jews early Christianity also attracted people people from a group known as the God fearers God fearers were basically Gentiles in other words non-jews who were nonetheless very sympathetic towards Judaism and often like to participate in Jewish Customs without actually converting now I cannot stress enough how important the destruction of the temple in 70 CE was to both the development of Christianity as well as the development of rabbinic Judaism prior to 70 CE Judaism was very much a temple-based religion but once the temple was gone both early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism were forced to adapt and change Christianity adapted by focusing more and more on Jesus as the new spiritual high priest and on his sacrifice as a replacement for the earlier Temple sacrifices in contrast rabbinic Judaism adapted by emphasizing the study of the Torah and meeting together in synagogues for prayer as the new ways to commune with God however this series is about the various branches of Christianity not Judaism so from this point forward I'm going to shift towards focusing exclusively on how Christianity continued to develop although at some point in the future I might return to rabbinic Judaism and talk about its modern branches as well okay so following the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE Christianity went in three very different directions first there were the Jewish Christians who kept following all the various Jewish practices in the same manner that the earliest Christians had done so they continued to practice things like circumcision and not eating pork in addition to revering Jesus as an important spiritual leader two groups that are representative of this Branch are the nazarenes and the ebionites over time though Jewish Christian groups like this went extinct however it is thought that they may have had some influence on the development of Islam like the nazarenes Muslims see Jesus as being an important human prophet and even the Messiah born of a virgin but they do not see Jesus as being Divine so if you want to know what Jewish Christians in the first few centuries see were like well they were a lot like Muslims are today just without the Quran and Muhammad in contrast to the Jewish Christians were the Pauline Christians who primarily consisted of Gentiles again Gentiles are simply non-jews the word Pauline refers to the Apostle Paul who died shortly before the destruction of the temple Paul wrote much of the New Testament and is credited with introducing Christianity to the Gentiles in his writings he argues that Gentile Christians should not be required to follow Jewish Customs such as circumcision and not eating pork in fact Paul's main message was that Jesus's death and Resurrection introduced a New Covenant that superseded Jewish law will come back to Pauline Christianity in a moment but first let's look at the third major branch of early Christianity gnosticism now the first thing I want to make clear is that gnosticism wasn't a single unified sect and in fact the word gnosticism is actually a modern term used to lump a bunch of different early Christians together such as the valentinians and the sethians however these groups did differ from both Pauline Christianity and Jewish Christianity in several key ways so I think from a general point of view putting them together as a third major branch is in fact fair so what the various Gnostic groups shared in common was the idea that the physical world was altogether bad and that the spiritual world was all that really mattered they thus emphasized Jesus's Divinity and downplayed his Humanity narcissism is based on the Greek word gnosis which means knowledge and basically gnostics believed that they had access to secret knowledge about the spirit world but like Jewish Christianity Gnostic Christianity eventually died out however there is a minor religion that still exists today known as mandeism that may Trace its roots back to the early Gnostic Christians okay so let's go back to Pauline Christianity from the perspective of Christians today Pauline Christianity represents the original true Christianity and the Gnostic and Jewish Christians were simply early Heretics however from a secular point of view these three branches were initially all on a Level Playing Field and it just so happened that Pauline Christianity emerged as the quote-unquote winner whichever view you take it's clear that things started to coalesce During the period between 180 and 313 CE the Christian church at this time is often referred to as the great church because it was during this period that the church started to become more and more unified emerging as a distinct religion with a large number of adherents the Year 313 CE is an important date in Christian history because this was the year that the Roman emperor Constantine the Great together with his co-emperer lycinius issued the edict of Milan which gave Christianity legal status throughout the Roman Empire thus protecting it from persecution shortly thereafter in the year 325 CE Constantine convened the Council of nicaea which got all the various Christian Bishops together to clarify what the official doctrines of Christianity were and what they produced was a document known as the Nicene Creed virtually every Christian denomination today agrees with the various position statements made in the Nicene Creed and therefore to this day the Nicene Creed serves as a way to distinguish mainstream Christianity from Christian Fringe groups but initially Nicene Christianity had a competitor Aryan Christianity note that this is Aryan with an i not Aryan with a Y Aryan Christians disagreed with the Nicene Creed and followed the teachings of a man named Arius instead basically the difference is this according to Aryan Christianity Jesus did not always exist instead Jesus was made by God and is thus subordinate to God likewise Aryan Christians believe that the holy spirit is also distinct from God the Father and Jesus the son in contrast Nicene Christians believe that God the father Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit are all co-eternal meaning that they all have no beginning in other words all three have just always existed Nicene Christians also believe that God is one Essence but three persons so for a while both Aryan Christianity and Nicene Christianity existed side by side with Aryan Christianity being found mostly among the newly converted Germanic tribes such as the Goths vandals and Lombards and Nicene Christianity being found in the Roman Empire but over time arianism faded away so that basically Nicene Christianity became the only Christianity in fact in the year 380 CE Nicene Christianity was made the state religion of the Roman Empire by Emperor theodosius the first via the Edict of thessalonica a lot of people get these two edicts confused thinking that it was Constantine who made Christianity the state religion but keep in mind that he simply made Christianity legal it was actually theodosius who made it the official religion of the Roman Empire around the same time as the Edict of thessalonica a second major Council was held the Council of Constantinople it is not shown on this chart though because it didn't lead to any major schisms however I do want to mention it because it resulted in a few minor revisions to the Nicene Creed the third ecumenical council was the Council of Ephesus in 431 CE and this one did result in the first major split within Nicene Christianity breaking away at this point was the Church of the East which was the National Church of the sassanid empire in Persia so basically these were Christians who lived outside of the Roman Empire there Christians tended toward a theology known as nestorianism named after a man named nestorius according to the Council of Ephesus historians put too much of an emphasis on the distinction between Jesus's Divinity and his Humanity so the Church of the East went its own way at this point today there is only one major independent denomination that traces its roots all the way back to the Church of the East and that is the Assyrian Church of the East based primarily in Northern Iraq they are currently led by patriarch AWA III and number around 400 000. the fourth ecumenical council was the Council of calcedon in 451 CE and yet again this one led to another major division this time the Oriental Orthodox Churches split away from the mainstream so basically these churches together with the Assyrian Church of the East are known as non-calcedonian churches whereas everyone else is known as calcidonian the other term used for the Oriental Orthodox Churches is miaphysite Mia means one and physis means nature this sums up the difference between the Oriental Orthodox churches and the calcedonian churches the Oriental Orthodox Churches believe that Jesus had just one nature which was a mix of divinity and Humanity whereas the calcedonian churches believe that Jesus was one person with two natures now before I explain the Oriental Orthodox Churches I want to introduce the concept of the pentarkey penta meaning five over time there emerged five cities that were the most important centers of Christianity these were Rome Constantinople Alexandria Antioch and Jerusalem each one had a leader known as a patriarch and hence each Center was known as a patriarchy however following the Council of calcedon two of these patriarchies experienced major schisms these were Alexandria which is in Egypt and Antioch which is in Syria the Christians in Alexandria who supported Mia physicism broke away and became known as the Coptic Orthodox church and the Christians in Antioch who supported Mia physicism broke away and became known as the Syriac Orthodox Church shortly thereafter they were also joined by The Armenian Apostolic Church which also supported Mia physicism so to this day there are actually two competing Patriarchs of both Alexandria and Antioch currently the Eastern Orthodox patriarch of Alexandria is Theodore II whereas the Coptic Orthodox patriarch is tawadros II interestingly tawadras also uses the title of Pope so yeah if you thought this guy was the only pope now that Benedict has passed away you were wrong there's still Pope Tauros II as well when it comes to Antioch the Eastern Orthodox patriarch is currently John the 10th whereas the Syriac Orthodox patriarch is Ignatius Ephraim II up until the 20th century the Oriental Orthodox branch of Christianity consisted of only three autonomous Church urges however in 1959 the Ethiopian Church became independent from the Coptic church and then the Eritrean Church became independent from Ethiopia in 1991. note that both the Ethiopian and Eritrean churches used the word tawajedo in their names which is a gayes word meaning unified I also want to point out that the Ethiopian church is currently the largest of the Oriental Orthodox churches and has about 40 million members they are currently led by a patriarch named Matthias finally there's the malankara Orthodox Syrian church located in India it was originally under the jurisdiction of the Syriac Orthodox church but in 1912 became independent foreign foreign let me first address a few things that came up in the comment section on episode one first of all the word extinct so for example I indicated on the chart that the Aryan Christians went extinct while many people pointed out that the Jehovah Witnesses are very Aryan in their theology which is true I therefore want to clarify that whenever I show a group going extinct on this chart I'm always referring to the original group not to similar groups that may arise later this is especially important with regard to Jewish Christians I got a lot of comments from people pointing out that Messianic Jews still exist again this is correct however Messianic Jews do not trace a line all the way back to the original Jewish Christians from ancient times rather Messianic Jews are more recent converts so in order to make things more clear I decided to change the label Jewish Christians to ebionite Christians the ebenites being one of the early Jewish Christian sects similar to or the same as the nazarenes I also received several requests to include the Samaritans and the karaites so let's go ahead and add them to the Chart now some people including the Samaritans themselves think that the Samaritan religion is a direct continuation of the religion followed by the Northern Kingdom of Israel prior to the Babylonian exile however from an academic perspective it's more likely that the Samaritans emerged early on in the second temple period when around 450 BCE they built their own temple on Mount garazim now there's a lot more I could say about the Samaritans but since this series is focused on Christianity I'll perhaps have to make a separate video about them at some other point now what about the karaites if you haven't heard about them basically the karaites are Jews who do not accept the teachings of the early rabbis as recorded in the talmud According to some people they are the direct descendants of the Sadducees however these scholarly consensus is that this is not the case because the karaites did not actually emerge until the medieval period which means that it is better to see them as an early Breakaway group from rabbinic Judaism rather than being completely distinct from it another such Breakaway group is beta Israel aka the Ethiopian Jews again some people theorize that this group can trace their Origins to pre-rabbinic times however it is clear from their language and Customs that they did originally have connections to rabbinic juice but then this connection was severed for many centuries until they were once again reunited with the rest of Judaism in modern times okay let's now turn our attention back to early Christianity I mentioned last time something called the pentarkey the pentarkey emerged in some sort of official way around the time of the Council of calcedon basically by this point there were five major cities that were key centers of Christianity within the Roman Empire originally there had been just three Rome Alexandria and Antioch but when Constantinople became the new capital of the Roman Empire it became important as well and then there was of course Jerusalem where the whole thing began so by 451 the leaders of the church recognize five key cities each was called a patriarchate because each was governed by a special Bishop called a patriarch meaning father now I changed the chart a little bit to make what happened after the Council of calcendon a bit more clear basically the majority of Christians in Alexandria Egypt and in Antioch Syria did not agree with the calcedonian decisions they therefore broke away from the rest and eventually became known as Oriental Orthodoxy which is distinct from Eastern Orthodoxy these days the two largest churches within Oriental Orthodoxy are the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt and the Ethiopian Orthodox telehedo Church which became independent from the patriarch of Alexandria in 1959 however I should point out that the church in Ethiopia has its own very unique history that goes all the way back to ancient times and as I discussed in my series on who wrote the Bible Ethiopian Christians have a unique version of the Bible that includes several extra books that are not found in most other Bibles also since I miss mistakenly didn't show a photo of the Ethiopian patriarch last time I wanted to show him this time this is patriarch abun Mathias the spiritual leader of around 40 million Ethiopian Christians okay so let's now return to the pentarkey although most of the Christians in Alexandria and Antioch became Oriental Orthodox a minority did not that's why I also show dotted lines that stay within the Eastern Orthodox section which I've now decided to color red the Christians in these areas that sided with Eastern Orthodoxy were originally known as melkites meaning Imperial that term will pop up again later so I thought I'd point out its meaning now but here's the thing in the 600s CE Alexandria Antioch and Jerusalem came under the control of the new religion of Islam therefore these cities became less important in terms of Christian leadership leaving only Rome and Constantinople as the two main patriarchists therefore a bit of a power struggle eventually developed between Rome and Constantinople on one side there was the fact that Rome home as the original seat of Imperial power had been given back in the early days of the pentarkey a sort of precedence over the other four cities however on the other side there was the fact that Constantinople was now the seat of Imperial power and it was the Greek emperor in Constantinople that now appointed the Latin Pope over in Rome as the centuries went by Rome and Constantinople drifted further and further apart as Europe became divided between the Holy Roman Empire in the west and the Byzantine empire in the East this came to a head in 1054 with What's called the great schism the great schism can be blamed on many different things but I'd like to point out just too one was a disagreement over whether or not Rome and its Bishop the pope was the head over the entire Christian Church according to Constantinople the pope was just a first among Tools in other words he held a special place of honor but in Practical terms he held no more power than the patriarch of Constantinople however according to Rome the pope did have actual authority over the entire church the other major difference related to the Nicene Creed which I discussed in episode 1. in fact I created a bit of a stir because as an example I showed the version of the Creed used these days by Catholics and Protestants rather than the one used by Eastern Orthodox Christians the difference is this line here known as the filioque meaning and from the Sun so as you can see Catholics and Protestants say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the father and the son whereas the Eastern Orthodox Christians say that he proceeds from the father only because of these differences and many others east and west just parted ways in 1054 now I should make it clear that it would be incorrect to say that the Roman Catholic church and the Eastern Orthodox Church started only in 1054. instead it would be more accurate to say that they both started in the first century and that they were simply United up until 1054. so what about the popes then I mean the ones from Peter up until Pope Leo the ninth in 1054 well the difference is that Catholics claim that those popes were the leaders of the entire Christian Church whereas in the view of the Eastern Orthodox Church These popes were simply the Bishops of Rome who as I mentioned earlier were in their minds simply the first among equals okay so let's now look at how each of these churches are organized today starting with the Eastern Orthodox Church which sees itself as a single church but what can actually be divided into 15 equal churches called autocephalus churches basically being autocephalus means that the leader of that church does not have to answer to anyone higher up other than God of course however the patriarch of Constantinople is given special precedence and is considered first among equals this is why the patriarch of Constantinople is called The ecumenical patriarch ecumenical meaning representing more than one group currently that position is held by Bartholomew the first initially the Eastern Orthodox Church consisted of only five autosephalus churches these were the four out of the five patriarchates from the pentarkey as well as the Church of Cyprus which had always been seen as being independent all the way back to ancient times however over time more autoencephalist churches were added by Constantinople such as the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in 927 the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1219 and most importantly the Russian Orthodox Church in 1589. I say most importantly because nowadays the Russian Orthodox church is by far the largest of the various Eastern Orthodox Churches it is currently led by kiril who holds the title patriarch of Moscow the Church of Greece and the Romanian Orthodox Church were the next two Eastern Orthodox Churches to become autosephalus in 1850 and 1885 which is after each became independent from the Ottoman Empire the remaining five churches all became autosyphilis in the 20th century or in the case of the Macedonian Church just last year in 2022 which leaves two gray areas to discuss the first being the Orthodox Church in America which originated as a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church the patriarch of Moscow currently recognizes the American church as being autosyphilis but the patriarch of Constantinople does not when it comes to Ukraine we get the opposite situation there the patriarch of Constantinople recognizes the Orthodox Church of Ukraine but the patriarch of Moscow does not and it's even more complicated than that and that's because the history of Russia and Ukraine is well a bit complicated you see both countries Trace their Origins back to a medieval State called kievan ruse which was centered on the city of Kiev when Christianity first reached that area the church there was known as the ruthenian Orthodox Church however over time Kevin Roos disintegrate it and instead the city of Moscow became the dominant City in the region it was at this point that the Russian Orthodox Church was established replacing the ruthenian Orthodox Church eventually all Eastern Orthodox Christians in Ukraine ended up under the jurisdiction of Moscow however after the fall of the Russian Empire some Churches in Ukraine declared independence and started calling themselves the Ukrainian autocephalus Orthodox church or uaoc this church operated separately from the uoc which still came under the jurisdiction of Moscow this is why later the letters MP were added to the name to make it clear that it is part of the Moscow patriarchate to complicate matters further a third Ukrainian Church emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union this one called itself the uoc KP the KP standing for Kiev patriarchate now obviously having three different Eastern Orthodox churches in one country is not ideal so in 2018 there was an attempt to merge all three churches into a single Church which would become known as the Orthodox Church of Ukraine the merger was mostly successful and now around 80 percent of Eastern Orthodox Christians in Ukraine belong to the ocu however it wasn't entirely successful for one thing there are still some churches that are attached to Moscow although since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 these are becoming less and officially the uoc MP has now cut ties with the Russian Orthodox Church secondly there was also a disagreement between the newly appointed leader of the ocu epiphanius and the former leader of the uocp fillaret this disagreement led to fillaret attempting to revive the uocp although so far he's had only limited success so basically while there is still some disunity the new ocu is now the main Eastern Orthodox Church in Ukraine now before we move on I do want to point out the growing Rift between The ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople and the patriarch of Moscow for for over 500 years now Moscow has seen itself as being The Third Rome and since the Russian Orthodox Churches by far the largest of the various Eastern Orthodox Churches it has at times been seen as a sort of rival to the leadership of Constantinople in fact when The ecumenical patriarch recognized the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine Moscow decided to break communion with Constantinople which basically means that they're no longer on good speaking terms this was made even worse when patriarch akiral came out as a strong supporter of the war on Ukraine whereas patriarch Bartholomew strongly opposed it so it's yet to be seen whether or not the current Schism will turn out to be a landscape changing permanent one okay let's now talk about the Roman Catholic Church by far the largest church in all of Christianity with well over a billion members representing more than 50 percent of all Christians now when most people refer to the Roman Catholic Church what they're really referring to is the Latin church which is actually just one of 24 churches that make up the entire Roman Catholic Church the other 23 churches are Eastern Catholic churches which we'll be talking about shortly but since 99 of Catholics belong to the Latin church let me take a moment to explain how the church organizes those 1 billion plus members so unlike how the Eastern Orthodox churches are primarily based in single countries with perhaps some Churches overseas mainly for expats the Roman Catholic Church is spread all over the world so what they do is divide the world into a few hundred provinces like this so for example although I'm not a Catholic I live within the Catholic Catholic province of Vancouver which includes most of British Columbia within that ecclesiastical Province are five diocese and each one of those diocese is led by a bishop however one of those diocese is an archdiocese led by an Archbishop who in addition to being in charge of his diocese is also in charge of the entire Province now within each diocese are a bunch of parishes or local churches each run by a parish priest so the closest Catholic Church to me happens to be this one although I also happen to live fairly close to a cathedral growing up I always thought a cathedral was simply an extra big and fancy Church well that's not quite the case each diocese has just one Cathedral and it's called that because that's where you'll find the bishop or Archbishop for that diocese of course the most notable thing about the Catholic church is that above all the Bishops and archbishops in the hierarchy is the pope who is the leader of the entire church that person is currently Pope Francis who is also the bishop in charge of the Diocese of Rome so basically whoever is in charge of Rome is in charge of the entire church now like I mentioned earlier in addition to the main Latin church there are also 23 other smaller churches which are the Eastern Catholic churches these operate independently from the main church but are still under the jurisdiction of the pope of the 23 Eastern Catholic churches I am going to point out just the 10 largest let's start here at the bottom these three churches all Trace their Origins to the Church of the East which I mentioned earlier basically what happened is that in 1552 there was a Schism in the Church of the East that resulted in some congregations remaining in the Church of the East these are the ones that became the Assyrian Church of the East and the Breakaway ancient Church of the East but at the same time there were other congregations that decided to join the Catholic church instead these became known as the Chaldean Catholic Church then there are the Saint Thomas Christians from India these Christians Trace their Origins back to the Apostle Thomas who supposedly traveled all the way to India in the first century at some point though the Christians in India became associated with the Church of the East but then later some joined the Oriental Orthodox Churches becoming known as the Indian Orthodox Church While others joined the Catholic Church becoming known as the Siro Malabar Catholic Church the Siro malankara Catholic Church is also based in India and consists of congregations that broke away from the Indian Orthodox church so note that there are two different Eastern Catholic churches based in India the Siro Malabar one follows Eastern Syrian Traditions whereas the Siro malenkara one follows Western Syrian Traditions the largest Eastern Catholic Church is actually the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church with over 5 million members this church traces its roots back to the ruthenian Orthodox Church that I mentioned earlier so basically back in the 1500s there were some Christians in Ukraine that didn't want to join the Russian Orthodox church so they joined the Catholic church instead now there's also a ruthenian Greek Catholic church but it actually has nothing to do with the ruthenian Orthodox Church it actually formed when certain congregations broke away from the Serbian Orthodox Church then there's the Armenian Catholic Church which as you might have guessed is based on those who broke away from the main Armenian Church which is associated with Oriental Orthodoxy that leaves us with the Coptic Catholic Church which broke away from the Greek Orthodox patriarchate in Alexandria and these three which all broke away from the Greek Orthodox patriarchate of Antioch which means that when it comes to the original pentarkey we now have way more than five Patriarchs for five cities so as I mentioned last time there's an oriental Orthodox patriarch of Alexandria uses the title of Pope but there's also a Greek Orthodox one well now you know that there's a third patriarch of Alexandria 2 a Catholic one who is the leader of the Coptic Catholic Church in Antioch it's even more complicated there's the Oriental Orthodox patriarch and the Greek Orthodox patriarch but there's also three different Catholic Patriarchs representing the three different Catholic churches based in Syria now I should mention which I failed to do last time that the city of Antioch is now actually located in Turkey but for most of History it was associated with the region called Syria in Rome of course it's simple there's just one patriarch Pope Francis and in Constantinople it's mostly simple there's mainly just Bartholomew the first the spiritual leader of the Eastern Orthodox church although technically the Armenian Church has a patriarch there too finally in Jerusalem there are three Patriarchs there's the main patriarch who is Eastern Orthodox but there's also a Catholic patriarch who represents the Latin church as well as an Armenian patriarch so that takes care of the official branches of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches but before I go I want to point out a few unofficial or independent branches in 1870 the Roman Catholic Church held a council that is now known as Vatican one one of the things that the council decided was that the pope is infallible now this doesn't actually mean that the pope never makes mistakes or that he has the power to radically change church doctrine it actually only applies to special statements that are clearly made ex-cathedra meaning from the chair well there were some Catholics that disagreed with the idea of papal infallibility among other things and there happened to be an Archbishop in the Dutch city of Utrecht who had already gone independent so basically after Vatican 1 a bunch of other priests joined with that are Archbishop to form the old Catholic Church also known as the Church of Utrecht today they are led by this man here something similar happened in the 1960s following the council known as Vatican II one of the main things to come out of that Council was the decision to hold mass in local languages instead of Latin again there were some Catholics who disagreed with the various decisions made at the council this time those who separated and formed independent Catholic churches became known as set of a contests which is a word based on the Latin for empty chair basically these Catholics believe that the office of Pope has been vacant ever since Vatican II one of the main set of a contest churches is the congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen in Nebraska the east an Orthodox Church also has independent branches there the separatists are known as old calendarists or true Orthodox the main issue for them was the switch that the Eastern Orthodox Church made in the 1920s from using the old Julian calendar to the new Julian calendar today most old calendarists are found in Romania and Greece foreign so let me Begin by showing you a few changes that I made based on comments I received on episode 2. last time I incorrectly stated that the Maronite Catholics Coptic Catholics and Syriac Catholics all broke away from the Eastern Orthodox Church the maronites were actually independent and became affiliated with Rome during the 1100s after the first crusade and the Coptic and Syriac Catholics they broke away from the Oriental Orthodox patriarchates not the Eastern Orthodox patriarchates also I previously had the Georgian Orthodox Church stemming from the Russian Orthodox Church which is kind of true because eventually they did fall under their jurisdiction for a while however they also have very deep roots going all the way back to the year 1010 so I've changed their position to indicate that origin instead also note that I've added dates throughout the chart in order to make the timeline of each Church's Independence more clear finally I added the old believers who broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1666 because they did not like certain reforms that were made at that time okay let's now talk about the Protestant Reformation which is usually said to have started in the year 1517. this was the year that the German priest Martin Luther published his 95 Theses in which he challenged the Catholic Church on several issues however it can be argued that there were actually Protestants before this date or at least proto-protestants a good example are the waldensians named after Peter Waldo who lived in the 12th century the waldensians lived a life of poverty and believed that anyone could preach from the Bible not just priests there are actually still waldensian churches today mostly in Italy although nowadays they can be seen as being part of the reformed branch of protestantism another group of proto-protestants were the hasites named after Jan Huss who lived about 100 years before Luther he sparked the Bohemian Reformation in what is today the Czech Republic out of this movement grew the Moravian Church which operated underground for many decades in Moravia before moving to Germany and then spreading to the U.S it too still exists to this day and has since adopted certain features of Lutheran pietism but originally neither the waldensians nor the moravians were large enough to change the religious landscape of Europe that didn't happen until the 1500s when people like Luther and Calvin arrived on the scene now the first thing you need to know about the Protestant Reformation was that it was not a single United movement instead it was a bunch of movements occurring in different places and in different ways however overall we can say that the Reformation created three initial branches of protestantism Lutheran Anglican and reformed all three resulted in the creation of new state-level churches which shared Authority with secular rulers there was also a fourth Branch the anabaptists associated with what's been called The Radical Reformation they are quite different though so I'll be covering them separately in a later video so let's start with the lutherans who obviously get their name from Martin Luther four years after Luther published his 95 Theses the Catholic Church declared him to be a heretic and put a ban on sharing his ideas those ideas can be summed up with the phrases Sola fide and Sola scriptura Sola fide means by faith alone you see Luther was angry that certain Catholic priests were abusing something called indulgences basically if you or a relative had committed a bad Sin you could just pay money to the church and get a special certificate that said if you do such and such a good deed your punishment in the afterlife will be reduced Protestants argue that the only thing that makes a person right with God is having faith in Jesus not doing good works Sola scriptura means by scripture alone according to Protestants the Bible is the ultimate Authority not the pope or the church or anyone else so like I said Luther was made an outcast and at first it looked likely that the church would find some way to have him killed however one of the main German princes offered him protection and then several other German princes supported his ideas as well you see you have to realize that there was no such thing as a United Germany at the time instead the whole area consisted of a bunch of mostly independent states that formed a loose Union called the Holy Roman Empire so what happened was that some states adopted Luther's ideas and some did not starting around 1521. now one thing I want to make clear is that the new Protestant states did not shut down all the Catholic churches and open new Lutheran ones priests and churches that were previously Catholic simply became Lutheran and more and more reforms and changes were implemented over time two of the earliest German states to embrace Lutheranism were Saxony and Hess they eventually formed a military alliance called the schmuckaldic league to defend themselves against the Catholic emperor during the 1530s the three main Scandinavian countries Denmark Sweden and Norway aligned themselves with Lutheranism as well cutting ties with the papacy and creating State churches instead to this day these three churches are still the largest churches in their respective countries although the only one that is still an official state church is the Church of Denmark now if we Zoom forward about 300 years to the time just after Napoleon's defeat we get the formation of the Prussian Union of churches in 1817. at this point Prussia which was Lutheran was now the dominant German State and and it ended up annexing a bunch of smaller German states some of which had been calvinist which we'll be discussing in a bit so basically the Lutheran churches and the calvinist churches were merged together to form a single denomination now not everyone was happy about this especially on the Lutheran side because some felt that their beliefs were going to have to be watered down in order to accommodate the Calvinists so during the remainder of the 1800s there was a quite large migration of German lutherans to the American Midwest initially there were dozens of different Lutheran councils and synods in the U.S some Danish some Swedish some Norwegian and some German but over time the various Church groups merged so that by the 1960s there were just three major Lutheran denominations the American Lutheran Church the Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church Missouri synonym however during the 1970s a controversy arose within the Missouri Synod that involved their Seminary a seminary being a place that trains clergy basically the church felt that the school was becoming too liberal so the president of the church had the president of the school fired this led to the creation of semenix meaning seminary in Exile as well as a new denomination called the aelc standing for the association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches but then during the 1980s the aelc merged with the alc and LCA to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America so nowadays there are two main Lutheran denominations in the U.S there's the more conservative Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and the more liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America which to many people is a bit confusing because in the U.S the word Evangelical is generally associated with conservatives however in a Lutheran context it simply means Protestant so just keep that in mind now there is a third Lutheran denomination in the U.S known as the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod but it's quite a bit smaller than the other two generally speaking it's even more conservative than the Missouri Synod now back to the lutherans in Germany during World War II the majority of the Prussian churches supported the Nazis due in large part to a movement known simply as German Christians Martin Luther himself had been very anti Semitic so it wasn't hard for the German Christians to use his writings to support their cause however not all lutherans in Germany were pro-nazi the lutherans who opposed Hitler led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others eventually broke away and formed the confessing church although Bonhoeffer himself was eventually captured and sent to a concentration camp where he was later executed shortly before the end of the war after the war the Prussian church was reunited and purged of Nazi supporters in 1948 several other German State churches joined together to form the Evangelical Church in Germany or ekd initially the Prussian church now known as the Evangelical Church of the Union remained separate but in 2004 it joined the ekd as well today the ekd which consists of both lutherans and Calvinists is the largest Protestant denomination in Continental Europe the second largest Lutheran denomination worldwide is actually the makane Jesus church in Ethiopia which was founded by Swedish missionaries let's now look at the anglicans first of all I should mention that some people don't actually consider anglicans to be Protestants they actually see them as being a sort of middle position instead between a Catholicism and protestantism this is because on the surface their overall structure and traditions often look a lot like Catholicism and when it comes to their beliefs they don't really have a founding Theologian such as Luther or Calvin but considering that the anglicans split from Rome around the same time as the Lutheran and reformed branches I think it is fair to say that they are indeed a type of protestantism now the main Church in this Branch was and still is the Church of England you're probably familiar with the story of King Henry VII and his Six Wives and how he argued with the Pope over whether or not he could get out of his first marriage because it had not resulted in a son because the pope would not help him Henry decided to break ties with the Catholic church and have himself declared the head of the church in his country Instead This occurred in 1534 and hence that's the date that's usually given for the birth of the Church of England now again I want to point out that it's not as if all the Catholic churches in England were simply shut down in 1534 or that new Anglican ones were established not at all the same churches and the same priests actually just continued on as usual the only difference was that they no longer reported to the pope for a long time the most senior Catholic bishop in England had been the Archbishop of Canterbury therefore when the Church of England broke away from Rome the Archbishop of Canterbury became the new spiritual leader of the church currently that person is Justin Welby but please note the Archbishop of Canterbury is by no means the pope of the Anglican Church like The ecumenical patriarch of Constantine opal he's more of a first among equals the actual head of the Church of England is whoever the monarch of the United Kingdom is So currently that person is Charles III now at the time that the Church of England broke away the king of England was also the king of Ireland so around the same time the Church of Ireland came under the control of the English king as well but unlike in England most of the Irish remained loyal to the pope so what happened was that from 1536 to 1869 the Anglican Church of Ireland was the state Church even though protestantism was the minority religion nowadays most of Ireland is a republic and there's no State church and most of the Irish are still Catholics whales by the 1500s was simply a part of England so they came under the Church of England although I should point out that in 1920 an independent church in Wales was formed when it comes to Scotland well that's actually a whole other story which we'll get to in a bit now as the English started to develop colonies all over the world they took anglicanism with them initially churches and colonies were simply part of the Church of England but over time they gained independence a special note is the Episcopal Church in the USA basically when the American colonies split away from Great Britain the Anglican Church there split away as well becoming known as the Episcopal Church Episcopal meaning led by Bishops over time the Anglican churches in South Africa Canada Australia Etc became independent as well so that today rather than just the Church of England there are now 42 autonomous churches that together formed the Anglican communion after the church of England the two largest are actually the Church of Nigeria and the Church of Uganda and I should note that altogether the Ang Anglican communion is currently the third largest division within Christianity the largest being Catholicism and the second largest being Eastern Orthodoxy however that might be about to change because it looks as though the Anglican communion is on the verge of splitting in two the reason is that most of the leadership in the western churches in places like the UK US Canada and Australia support blessings for same-sex couples whereas most of the leadership in the rest of the world do not so for example the Church of Uganda and the Church of Nigeria are part of an organization called the global South Fellowship of Anglican churches just a few weeks ago in February of 2023 they voted to no longer recognize the Archbishop of Canterbury as their spiritual leader so it's yet to be seen whether the global South Fellowship will leave the Anglican communion altogether or whether some other resolution will occur and I should point out that there are even some conservative anglicans in the west who are also not happy with the current communion either so for example some Churches belonging to the Episcopal church and the Anglican Church of Canada have split away to form the Anglican Church in North America which is in communion with the global South Fellowship but not with Canterbury okay let's now look at the reformed branch which is strongly associated with the French Theologian John Calvin in fact the word reformed is often used interchangeably with calvinist now most people associate Calvinism with its purest form also called Five Point Calvinism and often summarized by using the acronym tulip however I want to point out that there are actually several different versions of Calvinism and that not all Calvinists hold strictly to the Five Points generally speaking the main difference between Calvinism and other forms of Christian theology is that Calvinists believe in some sort of predestination meaning that some people are destined for salvation and some people are not but in this video we're mostly concerned with denominations not theology so let's now look at the reformed trait although the reformed movement started in Switzerland one of the main places where it really took hold was in the Netherlands in 1571 the Dutch Reformed Church was established and for over 400 years it was the main Protestant Church in the lowlands also spreading to other countries wherever Dutch settlers traveled such as South Africa in 1892 there was a major Schism in the Dutch Reformed Church resulting in the creation of the reformed churches in the Netherlands however in 2004 they merged back together with the main Church along with a few Dutch lutherans to form the Protestant Church in the Netherlands in France those who embraced Calvinism became known as huguenots however in France Protestants remained the minority and were often persecuted they do still exist though and most of them now belong to a denomination called the United Protestant Church of France which brings us to the Church of Scotland which ended up following a very different path than that of the Church of England there a theologian named John Knox LED Scotland to embrace Calvinism as well as a type of church government in which groups of presbyters or Elders make decisions thus this branch of reformed Christianity became known as presbyterianism it spread to Ireland and then also to the American colonies where eventually the Presbyterian Church of the USA was formed because of the nature of Presbyterian Church governance there were a lot of splits and mergers within American presbyterianism I won't show most of them however I do want to point out that because of the U.S Civil War the church was pretty much split in two in 1861 resulting in a new southern-based denomination called the PC us that division stayed in place until 1983 when the the two parts were merged back together to form the Presbyterian Church USA however a decade before the merger a group of conservatives split away from the PC us to form the Presbyterian Church in America another type of Christianity that is associated with Calvinism is congregationalism in the next episode we'll be looking at the English Puritans and separatists who were among the first Europeans to settle in America they had a theology similar to the Presbyterians but had an even more democratic form of church governance basically in congregationalism every local church is independent and can make its own decisions several of the early American colonies had congregationalism as their official state religion including Massachusetts Connecticut and New Hampshire in fact three famous Ivy League schools Harvard Yale and Dartmouth were all founded by congregationalists over time though other denominations eclipsed congregationalism in the U.S so that nowadays it's actually one of the Lesser known branches of protestantism in 1957 the largest congregationalist denomination merged with the enr church which was a mixed Lutheran reform church to form the United Church of Christ [Music] So speaking of changes let me show you a few things I've done since last time first of all I've added some infographics at the top on the left I have the 10 largest Christian communions worldwide basically each Church icon represents 10 million members so as you probably know the Catholic church is by far the largest Christian group in the world with around 1.35 billion members second is the Eastern Orthodox church with 200 million with one exception the rest of the list is all Protestant so coming in at number three is the Anglican communion followed by the reformed churches the methodists and the Lutheran World Federation all of these groups have around 80 million members we then have the Assemblies of God which is a Pentecostal denomination that I've not yet talked about we probably won't get to them until episode 7. then we have the Oriental Orthodox Churches remember these are different from the Eastern Orthodox Churches we talked about them in episode one and they include the Coptic church and the Ethiopian Church finally we have the Baptist World alliance with round 48 million members and The Seventh-Day Adventists with 22 million I'll be talking about the Baptists in episode 5 and the Adventists in episode 6. on the right hand side of the chart I've added this map showing the dominant type of Christianity by country so first of all note that on this map Green represents any type of protestant whereas yellow is Catholic red is Eastern Orthodox and purple is Oriental Orthodox the gray areas are those countries where Christianity is very much in the minority representing less than 10 percent of the total population okay on the main chart I've made some changes as well for example once again and I've had to fix the Georgian Orthodox Church I initially had it stemming from Russia and then from Constantinople however it was actually granted independence from Antioch so I've added a line to make that clear I've also added two extra groups stemming from the Catholic church but separate from the Protestants the first is the Philippine independent church which broke away in 1902 and is now in communion among others with the anglicans that's why they are colored purple note that I've also changed the union of Utrecht Catholics to be purple as well because they too are in communion with the anglicans the second edition is sspx which stands for the Society of Saint Pius X their status is kind of up in the air they are different from the set of acantists because they do not claim that the current pope is illegitimate however in 1988 their leader Archbishop Marcel cell LeFevre consecrated several new priests without the Pope's permission creating a controversy that is yet to be resolved over here Beneath The Armenian Church I've added a few medieval groups that have come up in the comments quite a bit namely the politians bogamills and cathars I'll explain who they are and why I decided to add them to the Chart not in today's episode but in episode 5 when I talk about the Baptists so I'm going to keep you in a bit of suspense for now however in another medieval group The lollards I've added over here they were a proto-protestant group inspired by the early English Bible translator John Wycliffe so I felt that they deserved to be included alongside the waldensians and the hussites who also fit under the category of Protestants before Protestants let's now move over to the Anglican section note that I've added the Scottish Episcopal Church alongside the Church of Scotland for a while during the 1500s and 1600s it was unclear which one of these would end up being the state Church of Scotland in the end presbyterianism won out however I decided to show the Scottish Episcopal Church on the chart as well due to its connection to the Episcopal Church in the U.S you see when the American colonies broke away from Great Britain their Bishops could no longer be consecrated by the church of England because that would require taking an oath of allegiance to the king so in order to get around this they were consecrated by the Scottish Episcopal Church instead by this point the Scottish Episcopal Church was independent from the church of England and was not the state Church in Scotland therefore no oath to the King was needed now on to the reformed section last time I failed to mention the two main reformed denominations in the U.S the oldest one is the Reformed Church in America which started off as a branch of the the Dutch Reformed Church most of its members merged with a Lutheran Synod in 1934 to form the enr church which then went on to become part of the United Church of Christ however some of those in the Reformed Church in America remained separate and kept the name and therefore that church still exists to this day in addition to this the Christian Reformed Church had previously broke away from them in 1857 and that church still exists too when it comes to the Presbyterian part of this section I decided to add the two largest Presbyterian churches in Korea as they are the main churches in that country and together they represent the largest group of Presbyterians in the world originally they were a single church but they split up in 1959. the original church was planted by American Presbyterians so I showed the connection back to them as well okay with that out of the way we can now focus on the main topic Forte today the anabaptists and the Quakers these two groups are very different from the lutherans anglicans and reformed that we discussed last time you see when the Reformation occurred in places like Germany England and Switzerland it's not as if all the Catholic churches in those places were shut down and new Lutheran Anglican and reform churches were established no instead most of the Catholic churches in those places simply switched to become Lutheran Anglican or reformed churches and in many cases the new type of Christianity was established as the state's sponsored religion so in other words the Lutheran Anglican and reformed churches weren't actually new churches they were simply old churches that changed their Theology and in some cases their practices but usually only a little bit and slowly over time in contrast all of the groups that we're going to discuss from this point forward were actually new groups groups that were radically different from the Catholic Church not only in theology but also in practice when it comes to the anabaptists one of the practices that they were most concerned with was baptism in the Catholic church as well as in the Lutheran Anglican and reformed churches Christians are usually baptized as infants the anabaptists thought this was unbiblical because infants are not able to understand what is happening or to make a conscious commitment to follow Jesus instead they felt that people should only be baptized once they were old enough to understand and believe and make the decision for themselves the initial anabaptists therefore baptized themselves again which is why they ended up being called annabaptists meaning re-baptizers however the original anabaptists simply called themselves Brethren the movement started in Switzerland so the term Swiss Brethren is also sometimes used for these initial anabaptists one of their early leaders was a man named meno Simons he helped spread anabaptist ideas in the Dutch Republic and hence the largest branch of the anabaptists eventually became known as the Mennonites however in 1693 there was a Schism in which some of the Mennonites left to follow a man named Jacob a man from that point forward those who broke off became known as the Amish there is a third main group as well known as the Hutterites named after Jacob hutter who helped spread anabaptist ideas to Austria and further east now these days all three of the original anabaptist groups are mostly associated with simple living old-fashioned clothes and a rejection of modern technology however it is important note that when it comes to the rejection of Technology there is actually a wide range of practices among anabaptists today generally speaking it's really only the Amish who reject almost all modern technology for example they are well known for still using the horse and buggy instead of cars but even among the Amish there is at least one group The beachy Amish who for example will use the internet albeit in a restricted way the Hutterites are the next most traditional group but they tend to allow more colorful clothing and in some cases even use cell phones and the Mennonites well aside from the old order Mennonites who are very much in the minority most Mennonites no longer have any extreme restrictions on the use of Technology conservative Mennonites still wear traditional clothing but most Mennonites are actually indistinguishable from the average American if you want to learn more about the Mennonites I suggest you check out today's ready to harvest video which I'll link to in the description ready to harvest hosted by Joshua is all about the differences between Christian denominations and he's almost at 100K subscribers so if you haven't yet subscribed I highly recommend that you do so now I should point out that although the anabaptists first emerged in Europe many of them ended up migrating to North America this is because initially North America offered more freedom when it came to what religion a person could follow however some moved East towards Poland and then settled in Russia in the late 1700s while there they were influenced by the radical pietists whom we'll be discussing next and therefore they took the name Mennonite Brethren many of them ended up immigrating to North America as well and kept that name which distinguishes them from the other American Mennonites who were originally split into two main conferences but who merged in 2002 to form the Mennonite Church USA now before I get to the pietists I want to point out two anabaptist groups that emerged much later than the original Three these are the apostolic Christian Church established in 1832 by a man named Samuel frolick and the bruderhof established in 1920 by everhard Arnold in both these cases the founders were inspired by the earlier anabaptist groups but rather than join them they founded New groups the bruderhof like most of the Amish and Hutterites live communally whereas the apostolic Christian Church like most Mennonites do not okay I now want to talk about pietism which is based on the word Pious meaning a strong Devotion to one's religion unlike the anabaptists who emerged early on in the Reformation the radical pietists emerged more than a century later in the late 1600s and early 1700s by this point Lutheranism was firmly established in many areas of Europe but some Germans and Scandinavians felt that the Reformation hadn't gone far enough they wanted to go beyond mere discussions about Theology and focus more on a religion of the heart some pietists wanted to change things from within the established churches but others were more radical and ended up establishing new groups instead one of these more radical pietists was a man named Alexander Mack from schwarzenau Germany he founded the schwarzenau Brethren also known as the German Baptists or dunkers the main denomination to come out of that movement was the Church of the Brethren note that although the Church of the Brethren emerged out of the pieta's movement and is often classified under the term Brethren it was also heavily influenced by anabaptism and therefore is usually considered to fit under that umbrella as well another anabaptist church that falls under the Brethren category is the riverbred Brethren founded by a former Mennonite they are more traditional like the old order Mennonites and exist in far fewer numbers now I want to point out that the term Brethren can be quite confusing because there are several other totally unrelated churches that also use this same term the most notable being the Plymouth Brethren I'll discuss them in a future episode but for now just note that they are unrelated to the anabaptist Brethren I also want to point out a few churches that developed out of pietism but are not associated with the anabaptists and are thus not peace churches these include the Evangelical Church of America and the Evangelical Covenant Church both of these denominations emerged out of the Scandinavian free churches free churches being those that were not part of the state's sponsored churches such as the Church of Sweden Church of Norway Etc okay let's now talk about the Quakers they are similar to anabaptists and that they are pacifists but they trace their Origins to England instead of to Continental Europe and never did live in communal settings as we learned last time the Church of England was established in 1534 as the new state Church however like in other areas there were some in England that felt that the Reformation hadn't gone far enough in England these people became known as the Puritans most of the Puritans wanted to change the church from within such as Oliver Cromwell but there were some who wanted to separate and form new denominations these more extreme reformers became known as English separatists initially there were many different types of English separatists the Quakers were just one of them as were the Baptists which we'll be discussing next time some of the other groups were the diggers the enthusiasts the ranters The Seekers and my personal favorite the the muggletonians all of these movements have since died out but the Quakers and Baptists continue to this day the main founder of quakerism was a man named George Fox when he was brought before the courts on charges of blasphemy he told those gathered that they should tremble or Quake at God's word probably a reference to Isaiah 66 verse 2 which says but this is the one to whom I will look to the humble and contrite in spirit who trembles at my word this is why the followers of George Fox became known as Quakers even though their official name is the religious Society of Friends one of the distinct aspects of quakerism is their emphasis on the inner light or the ability of every person to experience God from within this is why traditional Quaker meetings are usually unplanned and involve a lot of Silence so that each person can listen carefully to God's voice within themselves lucky for the Quakers and other English separatists the origins of their movements coincided with the settling of the Americas this allowed many of these controversial groups to avoid persecution by simply moving Far Far Away although that didn't always work either and the Quakers ended up being persecuted in America as well as I mentioned last time among the first English separatists who came to America in the 1600s were the congregationalists who fit under the reformed branch of Christianity they were the dominant group in New England and thus congregationalism became the state religion in most of the New England states including Massachusetts and Connecticut one early exception to this was Rhode Island which was established by Roger Williams who founded the First Baptist Church in America there we'll talk more about him next time but for now I want to focus instead on the middle colonies just south of New England this area was originally controlled by the Dutch in 1657 a group of settlers living in what is today Flushing Queens wrote a letter to the governor asking that Quakers be allowed to worship there in fact they also wanted religious freedom to extend to all Christian groups as well as to Jews and Muslims the request was denied but the letter known as the flushing remonstrance ended up setting the stage for what would become the first amendment of the U.S Constitution the one that separates church and state and allows for the freedom of religion interestingly one of the individuals who signed the flushing document was William Thorne who happens to be one of my wife's direct ancestors my wife is Jewish on her father's side and Quaker on her mother's side another step on the path towards religious freedom in America was the founding of Pennsylvania in 1681. it was founded by a Quaker named William Penn who allowed people from all religious groups to come and settle in his Colony so not only did Quakers settle there but also anabaptist groups like the Mennonites and the Amish however in 1827 the Quakers experienced a major Schism with those following a man named Elias Hicks becoming known as the hexites Hicks was an early abolitionist and was involved in the Underground Railroad which helped black slaves to escape to the north today the descendants of the hicksites are those who belong to the Friends General Conference the most liberal of the three main Quaker groups the non-hicksites eventually split into the Wilbur writes and the gurneyites with the Wilbur writes basically being slightly more conservative versions of the hixites and the gurneyites going in a totally new Direction basically the gurneyites ended up becoming like other churches in America with planned Services pastors and more mainstream Christian beliefs most of the gurneyite descendants today belonged to the Friends United meeting although some belong to the smaller more conservative Evangelical Friends Church now before I go I can't really bring up Quakers without addressing this I I think most people assume that Quaker Oats was a company started by Quakers well this isn't actually true the founder of the company simply named his product Quaker Oats because by then Quakers were associated with integrity and honesty and he wanted to be associated with those traits as well if you want to associate actual Quakers with a product that product should be chocolate not oats all three of the big British chocolate companies that started in the 1800s cadburys round trees and Fries were all founded by Quakers [Music] as usual let me Begin by pointing out a few changes that I've made to the Chart since last time if you've watched the previous episodes you'll know that I've been building this chart as I go and that sometimes I incorporate suggestions from comments well one thing that several people wanted was an others section so I went ahead and added one at the bottom however I also added a few other other sections as well for example not all lutherans belong to the Lutheran World Federation but rather than include those lutherans at the bottom I included them here as other lutherans likewise I added other Pentecostals next to the Assemblies of God in order to make it clear just how many Pentecostals there are in the world even though most of them do not belong to a single denomination or ecumenical organization in fact if all the Pentecostals were to create a worldwide communion they would rank above of the Eastern Orthodox Church as the second largest Christian communion in the world finally I also added other Baptists as only about half of the Baptists worldwide belong to the Baptist World Alliance again if all the Baptists in the world did unite they'd be much higher on the list coming in just above the anglicans now the reason why there is no other methodists section and no other reformed section is because in these two cases virtually all methodists belong to the Methodist World Council and virtually all reformed churches Belong To The World Council of reformed churches so there's not really any other methodists or other reformed to mention there are other anglicans but at least for now they number less than a million so I opted not to show them since on this infographic each Church symbol is supposed to represent around 10 million members okay there were some comments about the world map as well for example several people pointed out that Lebanon should be yellow since that country is more than 10 Christian and Catholicism is the dominant type there so although it's hard to see Lebanon is now yellow Germany and Australia were mentioned as well since both of those countries are split around 50 50 between Catholics and Protestants with Catholics starting to take the edge in both places but I'm going to do a bit more research into the most recent stats before making a final decision in the family tree section there's just one thing to point out many people requested that the Shakers be added so I've gone ahead and done that their founder was an early Quaker so I've shown them as splitting off before the other major Quaker groups were formed okay let's now look at the Baptists the Baptists along with the Quakers and the congregationalists were among the many English separatist groups that left the church of England in the 1600s however as I mentioned last time most of the other groups such as the diggers enthusiasts ranchers Seekers and mughaltonians have since gone extinct the Quakers have always been a relatively small group and the congregationalists although Once A large group are today relatively small meaning that it's mostly the Baptists who are the modern day descendants of the English separatists the two men usually credited with having started the Baptist movement are John Smith and Thomas hellis both former anglicans they ended up moving to Holland where they crossed paths with the anabaptists and became convinced that Christians should be baptized as adults not infants this is why the Baptists are sometimes shown on charts as being an offshoot of the anabaptists however while early interaction did take place and while they did share one big thing in common the idea that baptism should be for adults only or at least older children the two groups quickly ended up going in very different directions and thus I think it's better to see the Baptists as being an offshoot of the anglicans rather than the anabaptists now in some Baptist circles there's actually another hypothesis about baptist Origins but before I dive into it I want to point out that many Christian Traditions have alternative views on their Origins views that often differ from the more academic narrative that I've been sharing in this series for example the Roman Catholic Church sees themselves as being the one true church going all the way back to the Apostle Peter who they see as being the first pope in the Catholic view everyone else split off from them including the Eastern Orthodox Churches however the Eastern Orthodox Church holds the opposite view they see themselves as being the one true church and they see the Roman Catholics and Protestants as being misguided offshoots even some anglicans like to see their church as having an origin that predates the Roman Catholic Church these anglicans would say that the Church of England can claim an unbroken descent from much earlier Celtic churches that were planted in the first century so my point is that the Baptists are by no means unique when it comes to having an origin story that treats their particular tradition as being special anyhow According to some Baptists known as Landmark Baptists the Baptist tradition did not start in the 1600s but rather can be traced all the way back to the first century through a series of Fringe movements this chart from the 1931 book The Trail of blood illustrates the idea at the top you can see the mainstream churches including the original state-sponsored church that eventually split into the Greek and Roman branches with the Roman Branch eventually including the various Protestant groups as well the red dots which make up a trail of blood represent congregations of quote-unquote True Churches that according to landmarkism would have been similar to baptist churches today and at the bottom there's a steady line of red dots meaning that in certain areas there existed a direct continuity between the first century churches and the Baptists that eventually settled in amer America note that there's a large gray area marked the Dark Ages where the trail of blood is associated with certain Fringe groups such as the politians and the waldensians which brings me to this part of the chart because the politians were in fact a real historical branch of early Christianity not much is known about them for certain but they originally popped up in Armenia in the 600s most Scholars think that they probably ended up influencing The bagamils Who emerged in Bulgaria in the 900s and that the bagamils in turn influence the cathars who emerged in southern France in the 1100s also emerging in southern France in the 1100s were the waldensians a group of proto-protestants that I mentioned in episode 3. so according to the landmark hypothesis the quote-unquote true church can be traced from the politians in the Middle East all the way to the waldensians in France and then from there through the anabaptists to the Baptists in America today now it probably won't surprise you to learn that I don't agree with this hypothesis at all nor do most religious Scholars nor do even most Baptists the general consensus is that the politians bhagamils and cathars probably practiced some sort of gnosticism and that therefore they do not relate to the Baptists at all so let's now return to what we know about Baptists from verifiable history early on there emerged two main types of Baptists particular Baptists and general Baptists basically particular Baptists are Calvinists whereas General Baptists are not and the reason why both types are able to coexist is because Baptists follow a congregationalist form of church government meaning that each congregation is basically independent and can decide their own theology however that doesn't mean that they are the same as the congregationalists shown over here as part of the reformed tradition the congregationalists practice infant baptism whereas Baptists do not the First Baptist congregation in what is today the U.S was founded by Roger Williams in 1638 as I mentioned last time most of the New England colonies had congregationalism as their state religion and therefore Baptists were not allowed because of this Roger Williams helped establish what is now the state of Rhode Island so that Baptists and other Christians could have a place where they could freely practice their faith eventually the congregation that he started there built this building which stands to this day and which is known as the First Baptist Church in America prior to 1730 the Baptists were actually a fairly small group within American Christianity however that all changed with the first Great Awakening by this point some Christian leaders felt that protestantism had become too intellectual while they still felt that it was important to get one's theology right which was the whole point of the Protestant Reformation in the first place they also felt that Christianity at its core should be a religion of the heart this idea had shown up in Continental Europe a bit earlier as pietism but hadn't really taken off yet in the English speaking world but then came the first Great Awakening basically the first Great Awakening can be seen as the start of what we today call Evangelical Christianity unlike the more liturgical forms of Christianity which focus more on communal rituals Evangelical Christianity is more focused on the individual conversion experience in more recent times this experience is often described as being born again what happened during the first Great Awakening is that many preachers such as Jonathan Edwards started to preach more about the need for each person to repent of their sins and to receive the gift of Salvation through belief in Jesus this led many churches to become more interested in missionary work which refers to trying to convince other people to become born again as well thus among Baptists the initial division that existed between particular Baptists and and general Baptists became less important with most Baptists unifying to become missionary Baptists and those who did not support Mission boards becoming known as primitive Baptists primitive Baptists are very much in the minority today and the only Primitive Baptist Church that you're likely to have heard of is the infamous Westboro Baptist Church the group known for picketing funerals and for promoting hatred towards gay people however let me be clear in saying that they are by no means representative of all primitive Baptists I simply mention them because they show up in the media quite a bit now one of the results of the first Great Awakening is that Christianity really started to grow among black Americans for the first time both among those who were enslaved in the South as well as among free blacks in the north most black Americans thus ended up joining either the Baptist movement or the Methodist movement which we'll get to in a bit in the South black Baptists were originally required to have white ministers however after emancipation the first black LED churches started to form now I should point out that because all Baptist congregations are technically independent there's really no such thing as denominations in the Baptist tradition instead Baptists have conventions which are state level or national level organizations that individual congregations can affiliate with if they so choose however at the end of the day they are actually quite similar to denominations so I'm just going to use that word going forward so the earliest still existing black Baptist convention to be formed in the U.S was the National Baptist convention USA established in 1895. today it is the largest historically black church in America however in 1915 some Churches split off to form the similarly named National Baptist Convention of America or nbca and then in 1961 a different set of churches split off to form the progressive National Baptist convention which Dr Martin Luther King Jr was a member of finally in 1988 a group of churches split off from the nbca to form the National Baptist missionary Convention of America so note that all four of these denominations have very similar sounding names but don't get them confused because they are actually all different as you might have guessed the progressive National Baptists are more Progressive whereas the other three tend to be more conservative in terms of white American Baptists most of the missionary Baptists eventually formed the triennial convention in 1814 however because of disputes over slavery this eventually split into the northern Baptist convention and the Southern Baptist convention although note that the northern convention continued to use the triennial name until 1907. nowadays the northern convention is known as the American Baptist Churches USA and they tend to be more liberal whereas the Southern Baptist convention has kept its original name and tends to be more conservative I should also point out that the Southern Baptist convention is currently the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S with approximately 14 million members this is smaller than the number of Catholics in the U.S which is around 70 million but keep in mind that when all Protestant churches are combined Protestants in the U.S do outnumber Catholics now besides the southern Baptists and the other groups I've mentioned so far there are still several more Baptist denominations to mention for instance there's the National Association of Free Will Baptists Free Will Baptists being another name for general or non-calvinist Baptists then there's the American Baptist Association which is a landmark Baptist group that holds to the trail of blood explanation of Baptist Origins that I mentioned above but perhaps most important are the so-called Independent Baptist groups out of which the Baptist Bible Fellowship International is the largest this is the denomination that Jerry Falwell was originally attached to Falwell is known for having founded the Moral Majority which during the 1980s grew to become a major political Lobby group for Evangelical Christians and which laid the groundwork for right-wing Christians to have more influence at the national level something that continues to this day as I mentioned earlier the northern-based American Baptist Churches went in a more liberal Direction whereas the southern baptist went in a more conservative Direction this led to the conservative Baptist Association splitting off from the ABC in 1947 because they didn't like that the ABC was so liberal note that they recently changed their name to the Venture Church Network however in contrast there's also the Cooperative Baptist Association that split off from the SBC because they didn't like that the SBC was so conservative finally there's converge formerly known as the Baptist General Conference and even further back as the Swedish Baptist General Conference they have their roots in the Scandinavian free churches that also produced the Evangelical Covenant Church and the Evangelical Free Church now I should point out that although I focused only on U.S Baptists there are in fact Baptists all over the world however since most of those churches were planted by American missionaries I thought it was best to focus on the U.S ones the one exception to this are the Baptists in the UK who like the American Baptists can trace their Origins all the way back to Smith and hellis nowadays most Baptists in the UK belong to a denomination called Baptists together it was also in the UK that The Seventh-Day Baptists originated I'll mention them again next time when I talk about the Adventists okay let's now talk about the methodists whereas the Baptists existed before the first Great Awakening the methodists did not and in fact it was because of the first Great Awakening that the methodists were formed the three big names associated with the founding of methodism are John Wesley his brother Charles Wesley and their friend George Whitfield all former anglicans like many denominational Founders they didn't initially set out to make a new denomination it just sort of happened during their youth they started a group at Oxford called The Holy Club in which members methodically strove to incorporate Christianity into every part of their life other students made fun of them and called them methodists a term that stuck and which later became the official name for the movement in 1739 after having done missionary work in the Americas and having come into contact with the moravians whom I mentioned in episode 3 3. the trio started to preach throughout England in unconventional ways including outside in the open air this attracted many working-class people who had not previously been regular church-goers while whitfield's theology was calvinist John Wesley's was not he emphasized that salvation was available to everyone and in particular focused on something called the second work of Grace according to Methodist theology the first work of Grace is the initial conversion experience of being born again whereas the second work of Grace is the process by which a Christian is transformed into becoming a more perfect and holy person just a few years after John Wesley's death the first two Methodist denominations were formed one in the U.S and one in the UK in the U.S it was called the Methodist Episcopal Church in order to to distinguish it from the Episcopal Church which had become independent from the Anglican Church just 10 years earlier eventually the U.S methodists split in two over slavery just like the Baptists did but unlike the Baptists the two groups eventually reunited in 1939 which is when they became known simply as the Methodist Church then in 1968 it merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to become the United Methodist Church which is the main Methodist denomination in the U.S today in fact it is the second largest Protestant denomination in the U.S after the southern Baptists however recently it has experienced another Schism this time over the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy in 2022 the more conservative Global Methodist Church was formed and to date at least 1 thousand congregations have left the United Methodist Church to join it the split is still very fresh so it's yet to be seen where all the chips will fall like the Baptists black American methodists formed their own denominations early on so in the early 1800s in the north the African Methodist Episcopal church or AME was formed in Philadelphia and the AME Zion Church was formed in New York to this day they have remained separate but as far as I can tell there's not a lot of theological differences between the two then after the Civil War a third black Methodist denomination was formed this time in the South it was originally called the colored Methodist Episcopal church but nowadays is called the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church okay also separating from the original Methodist denomination in the U.S was the Wesleyan Church in 1843 and the Free Methodist Church in 1860. they are both aligned with the Holiness movement which grew out of the second and third great Awakenings which I'll talk more about in future episodes for now I'll simply point out that these two Methodist denominations are generally speaking more conservative than the much larger United Methodist Church in the UK the main Methodist denomination was originally known as the Wesleyan Methodist Church however there were many smaller denominations that broke off from it to form independent denominations however in 1932 most of these merged back with the main denomination to form what is now simply called the Methodist Church of Great Britain the well-known Salvation Army denomination has its roots in British methodism as well but is aligned more with the Holiness movement so again I'll talk more about them in a future episode however I do want to mention to other churches that have strong connections to methodism First there's the United Church of Canada which is the largest Protestant denomination in Canada which is where I'm from it formed in 1925 from a merger between three Christian groups in Canada the methodists Presbyterians and congregationalists the methodists were the largest of the three groups which is why I've decided to include the United Church of Canada here with the methodists rather than with the reformed churches being a Canadian their logo is something that is immediately recognizable to me since I see it a lot on church signs what I didn't know until I started doing research for this video is that three of the four symbols represent the three Traditions that merged back in 1925. the Dove is a common symbol used by methodists the burning bush is a common symbol used by Presbyterians and the Open Bible represents the congregationalists the final symbol the Alpha and the Omega is a symbol for Jesus and the four colors used in the design white red yellow and black are colors often associated with indigenous Canadians in Australia there is a similar Church known as the uniting Church of Australia it too formed from a merger between congregationalists Presbyterians and methodists I'm not sure if the methodists make up the largest component in this case so maybe someone in the comments can let me know finally I want to point out two more united churches that I've added to the Chart this time in the Anglican section as in these two cases it was the anglicans who were the largest components in 1927 anglicans in India became independent as the Church of India Burma and Ceylon however after the country itself achieved Independence the anglicans in South India merged with the methodists as well as with the South India United Church which was itself a union of congregationalists and Presbyterians the new United Church was called The Church of South India and to this day it is the largest Protestant denomination in South Asia the Church of North India was formed later in 1970 but basically it too represents a merger of anglican's methodists Presbyterians and congregationalists friends so as I mentioned last time the first Great Awakening marked the beginning of what's known as Evangelical Christianity a type of Christianity that is more focused on the individual conversion experience the Second Great Awakening occurred about 100 years later and continued along the same theme however the Second Great Awakening was different in a few key ways first of all whereas the first Great Awakening occurred in both the UK and the US the Second Great Awakening was mostly limited to the U.S also during the first Great Awakening it was mostly existing Christians who were involved people may have had a new conversion experience or even decided to switch to nominations but in most cases they were Christians to begin with in contrast the Second Great Awakening saw many more non-christians convert to Christianity for the very first time this is because by then the world had changed whereas in the early 1700s almost all American settlers were Christians by the early 1800s there were many who were not mostly due to the spread of Enlightenment ideas finally whereas the first Great Awakening was a continuation of the Protestant Reformation in that it mostly sought to reform and changed the church the Second Great Awakening was quite different this time many of the new churches saw the old churches as entirely misguided and were instead attempting to restore the original quote-unquote true church for this reason many of the groups that we are going to talk about today do not consider themselves to be Protestants but rather restorationists note that sometimes the term restorationism is used exclusively to refer to the churches that grew out of the stone Campbell movement whereas sometimes it is instead used for groups such as the Latter-Day Saints and the Jehovah's Witnesses let's start with the stone Campbell restorationists named after two of the earliest preachers associated with the Second Great Awakening Barton Stone and Thomas Campbell both of whom were originally Presbyterians these two men and their followers felt that the church had lost its way and they wanted to return to a more primitive form of Christianity something closer to what the original first century Church would have looked like those who followed Barton Stone simply called themselves Christians whereas those who followed Thomas Campbell and then later his son Alexander Campbell called themselves Disciples of Christ eventually the two groups realized that they had a lot in common and therefore they merged in 18 32 however in 1906 this United group ended up dividing in two those who believed that instruments should not be used in worship became known as Churches of Christ whereas those who were okay with instruments became known as Christian churches but the Christian churches eventually split into as well in 1968 with the more liberal Branch adopting a denominational structure and becoming known as the Christian church and in parentheses Disciples of Christ and the more conservative Branch remaining as a loose network of congregations that use either the name Christian church or Church of Christ now one of the things I like about the various groups that came out of the Second Great Awakening is that many of them have produced some really cool charts such as this one made in 1982 even though I don't agree with the message of this chart from a design point of view I think it's pretty great what we have here here is something similar to the trail of blood chart I showed in the last episode once again we have the idea that the majority of Christians have strayed from the one true church of Christ starting first with the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches followed by the various Protestant denominations but note here all the little arrows going from the Protestant churches towards the restoration movement these represent the churches who were part of the original Stone Campbell movement however the person who made this chart is trying to make the point that even most of those churches have since Fallen away as well including the Disciples of Christ the Christian church and a group that he calls the sectarian Churches of Christ now before I move on since I now have the Disciples of Christ on the chart I can finally point out the seven churches that in the U.S are considered to be the seven Mainline denominations these are the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America the Episcopal Church the Presbyterian Church USA the United Church of Christ the United Methodist Church the American Baptist Churches USA and The Disciples of Christ Mainline churches are kind of the opposite of Evangelical churches generally speaking Mainline churches are older and more liturgical meaning that they are more focused on carrying out the traditional elements of the weekly service and taking care of their existing members rather than on going out and trying to convert others and generally speaking they are also considered more liberal in that they're more likely to see some parts of the Bible as being symbolic rather than literal they also tend to be more concerned with social justice issues rather than questions about who is or is not going to heaven finally note that Mainline doesn't mean the same thing as mainstream the word mainstream is more broad meaning dominant or conventional whereas the term Main Line comes from the fact that these seven churches were the kind of churches that you would find in towns along the main Railway line in early America okay let's now move on to the next major group to come out of the Second Great Awakening the Latter-Day Saints AKA The Mormons now it used to be that the main LDS denomination embraced the term Mormon and encouraged their own people to use it however in more recent years they have actually reversed course and they are now trying to distance themselves from that term instead promoting the use of Latter-day Saints or LDS note that going forward I'll be using both terms out of respect for their preference I'll be using LDS whenever I talk about the main denomination but Mormon for the movement as whole including its earliest followers but before I jump into it let me address the elephant in the room are Mormons Christians well for my purposes here that's the wrong question to ask since I am approaching this whole project from an academic perspective rather than a faith-based perspective the only question that I'm interested in is do they belong on this chart and to me the answer to that is yes because if we want to go down the road of R fill in the blank Christians we are going to run into a lot of problems because there are a lot of groups on this chart already who don't see other groups on this chart as being Christians for example some Protestants don't see Catholics as being Christians and some Catholics don't see Protestants as being Christians there are even Baptists who don't see other Baptists as being Christians and so on however I do want to say this if I were to come up with a criteria for distinguishing mainstream Christianity from groups that are more On The Fringe I would use the definition of Nicene Christianity as my measuring stick in episode 1 I pointed out that originally there were many different types of Christianity but that eventually one particular type came to dominate the type known as Nicene Christianity based on what was decided at the Council of nicaea in 325 CE up to now pretty much every group that we have discussed whether they be Catholic Orthodox or Protestant have fit under the category of Nicene Christianity at least traditionally The Only Exception I can think of would be perhaps the Quakers especially the more liberal streams but now that we have reached the Mormons this is no longer the case the main LDS church is quite clearly non-nicene when it comes to their theology what this means is that they reject the traditional concept of the Trinity instead of seeing God the father Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit as being one the LDS church sees them as being three distinct beings so in order to highlight the various non-nicene churches as they come up on this chart I've decided to indicate them by placing them in this special area here okay so I've already done a fairly lengthy video about the Book of Mormon both from an internal perspective as well as from an external perspective so I won't go into all the details again instead I'll just review the basics if you want to learn more I'll leave a link to that previous video in the description basically it all starts with a man named Joseph Smith who claimed to have found and miraculously translated an ancient document called The Book of Mormon LDS see this book as a third Testament equal in authority to the Old and New Testaments it contains an account of how a group of Israelites traveled to the America's over 2000 years before Columbus and then how Jesus visited the descendants of those people after he was crucified over in Judea remember the United States was a very young country in the days of Joseph Smith and the U.S was on the other side of the world so the places where the events in the Bible took place so you can see why a new set of scriptures that expanded the biblical story to include the Americas was very appealing originally Joseph Smith simply called his church the Church of Christ although This was later changed to the Church of Latter-day Saints and then later still to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints however in 1844 when Joseph Smith was just 38 he was assassinated resulting in the movement splitting into several groups the largest group and the one that kept the original name was led by a man named Brigham Young he moved his group from Illinois all the way to what is now Utah where he founded Salt Lake City you can see from this map that today most LDS are concentrated in this same area worldwide the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has about 17 million members the second largest Mormon group was originally called the rlds standing for reorganized Latter-Day Saints and from 1860 to 1914 it was led by Joseph Smith's eldest son Joseph Smith III however in 2001 it changed its name to The Community of Christ it differs from the main LDS church in that a it is actually quite liberal and B its theology is Nicene the final Mormon church I want to point out is quite the opposite it is the flds which stands for fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints originally the main LDS church was known for practicing polygamy which allows one man to have many wives although the main LDS church put an end to this practice in 1890 the flds which is a splinter group formally established in 1984 continues to practice polygamy in a very extreme fashion which is why its current leader is now in prison okay let's now talk about the Adventists I grew up in the worldwide Church of God which is located on this branch of the tree so I've been looking forward to covering this section the word Advent refers to the arrival of someone or something which is why you'll often hear it used around Christmas time Christmas being a celebration of the Advent or arrival of Jesus however the Adventists do not get their name because they are focused on the original arrival of Jesus they get their name because they are focused on the second arrival of Jesus or in other words on looking forward to his return the movement began with a man named William Miller who taught that Jesus was going to return in the year 1843 although This was later revised to 1844. he came up with this date based on several sets of numbers from the Bible most of which were taken from The Book of Daniel let me share with you just a few of them in Daniel chapter 9 it mentions a period of 49 years followed by a period of 434 years followed by a period of seven years in the middle of which something important would happen Miller interpreted the start of each period as the date when a decree was made for the Jewish temple to be rebuilt which he calculated to be 457 BCE the date when it was finished 408 BCE and the date when Jesus began his ministry 27 CE halfway through that final period Jesus was crucified so it all seemed to fit then there's a verse in Daniel chapter 8 that mentions a period of 2300 years Miller once again started with 457 BCE and used it to argue that 1844 was therefore the year when Jesus would return now there were some other calculations involved as well but this gives you the basic idea the important thing is that during the late 1830s and early 1840s a bunch of people in America started to get really excited thinking that the world was actually about to end but obviously in 1844 the world did not end this led to what's been called the great disappointment at this point most of Miller's followers simply left the movement but others stayed and tried to work out some sort of explanation for why Jesus hadn't returned those who stayed eventually fell into two main camps on one side there were those who felt that Miller had simply gotten his date wrong they therefore came up with a new date and then another new date and so on with many eventually falling back on a position of he's coming soon but we don't know exactly when on the other side there were those who felt that Miller had been right in a sense and that Jesus did sort of come back in 1844 but just not quite as expected I'll come back to that idea in a moment but first I want to mention something else that some Adventists became known for and that is sabbatarianism which is the practice of meeting on Saturday like Jews instead of on Sunday like most Christians although note that the seventh day Adventists use the term seventh day rather than Saturday because technically the seventh day starts on Friday at sundown the idea to observe the sabbath was actually inherited from a very small group of Baptists known as the seventh day Baptists who had been meeting on Saturday since the 1600s but not all Adventists are Seventh-day Adventists there is also a small group of first day Adventists known as the Advent Christian church and then there's the Jehovah's Witnesses a very well-known group with around 8 million members worldwide while they don't see themselves as being Adventists I would argue that they do belong to this part of the tree originally known simply as Bible students they were founded by Charles Russell who taught that 1914 was the year that the world would end once again the world did not actually end in that year but to this day the Jehovah's Witnesses believe that 1914 marked the beginning of the quote-unquote last days like the Mormons their theology is non-nicene and in this case it's quite similar to a very old type of Christianity called arianism which was mentioned in episode one basically they believe that Jesus was created by God rather than being co-eternal with him they also prefer to call god Jehovah because they believe that that's how these four letters should be pronounced note that they're probably wrong though as most scholars believe that they should be pronounced closer to this for now let's move on to the largest Adventist group the seventh day Adventists Who currently have about 22 million members worldwide it was founded by these four individuals but out of these four the most important was arguably Ellen G white because she was considered to have been a prophet or more accurately a profit Tess she was known for having visions and ended up writing over 150 books one of the unique doctrines that she espoused was that something important did happen in 1844 according to Seventh-day Adventist theology there exists in heaven a temple similar to the physical one that used to exist in Jerusalem this Temple has two main rooms the holy place and the holy of holies according to Ellen G white and other early Adventists in 1844 Jesus moved from the Heavenly holy Place into the Heavenly holy of holies where he began a process known as the investigative judgment whereby he started to make his final determination on who's a true Christian and who is not now not all Sabbath observing Adventists agreed with the teachings of Ellen G white eventually those that didn't formed a much smaller denomination known as the Church of God seventh day it was from this church that Herbert W Armstrong split he went on to form the worldwide Church of God which is the non-nicene church that I was raised in although relatively small it became well known during the 60s 70s and 80s for producing the plain truth magazine as well as the world tomorrow television show now growing up in the worldwide Church of God I had no knowledge of anyone named William Miller but basically Herbert Armstrong was just recycling many of Miller's ideas for example here's one of Miller's original charts my church talked about a lot of the same things stuff taken from Daniel and Revelation it just used updated images the one unique thing that Armstrong added to the mix was British israelism a topic that I've discussed in a previous video again I'll leave a link to that in the description however in the mid 90s something interesting happened within the worldwide Church of God it gave up all of its non-mainstream ideas and embraced Nicene Christianity instead and it eventually changed its name to Grace Communion International which is what it's known by today of course lots of members didn't agree with these changes so a good chunk of them formed a new church called the United Church of God which is basically the same as the old worldwide Church of God now before I move on a quick note about my personal Journey because I get asked about it a lot after having grown up in the worldwide Church of God and having been in that church during the time of its doctrinal changes I ended up attending an Assemblies of God Church as well as an Anglican Church while living overseas but then while working on my PA HD thesis about atheists I myself became an atheist or more of an agnostic actually then I married my wife who is Jewish a few years later I started to become interested in Judaism after learning that it was actually quite different from what I thought it was in particular I liked how it encouraged doubt and questioning at the same time as maintaining a basic faith in God there was also the fact that I was already familiar with many Jewish Customs because the worldwide Church of God had integrated many of those into its belief system so overall it seemed a good fit after a year of study which is required for all Jewish converts I converted so nowadays I am a Jew although because I attended several different Christian churches in the past and have an undergraduate degree in Christian theology plus a PhD in religious studies I'm still able to teach about Christianity from an academic perspective active like I'm doing in this series okay one last thing about the Adventist Branch I want to point out these guys here the Branch Davidians although a very small group they are well known because in 1993 their leader David koresh had a standoff with the FBI in Waco Texas that ended in the deaths of 86 people including koresh 47 of his adult followers 28 children and four Law Enforcement Officers the event took place just a few months before I myself left for Texas to attend the worldwide Church of Gods College there my friends knowing that I belong to a strange Church joked that I must be part of the Waco group well strangely while I didn't realize it at the time there was actually a connection between my church and David koresh's group both traced their Roots back to William Miller the Branch Davidians are actually a brand inch that split off from the Davidians who themselves split off from The Seventh-Day Adventists also known as The Shepherd's Rod the Davidians are not well known but luckily Joshua over at ready to harvest has done a video today all about them so after you finish this video be sure to head over there and check that out okay so there's one more branch that I want to talk about before I go that's the Plymouth Brethren who are different from the anabaptist Brethren that I mentioned in episode 4. they originated in the UK as a split from anglicanism but ended up influencing American Christianity in a major way even though they themselves remained a relatively small unstructured group this is because it was the founder of the exclusive Brethren John Nelson Darby who became the father of dispensationalism dispensationalism is a theological framework that spread throughout American Christianity in the early 1900s and remains popular in many churches today especially among the Baptists and Pentecostals one of my all-time favorite chart makers is the Baptist dispensationalist Clarence Larkin he made hundreds of hand-drawn charts like this one which remind me a lot of what I was taught during my childhood but it's this one that I want to take a closer look at because it nicely sums up what dispensationalism is all about basically the idea is that human history can be divided into six dispensations with one more to come a dispensation being a kind of legal structure so first there was innocence which is what Adam and Eve lived under this was followed by personal conscience which lasted up until the flood then there's human government up to Abraham a family-based dispensation during the patriarchal period and then the law from Moses to Jesus according to dispensationalists we are currently living under the church-based dispensation but soon Jesus will return ushering in the final dispensation in which the world will be recreated as God intended it to be now before I go I should mention that the Holiness movement started during the Second Great Awakening as well but since it continued on during the third Great Awakening I'm going to wait and cover it in the next episode along with the Pentecostals and charismatics friends okay so last time I talked about the Second Great Awakening which gave rise to the restorationists Mormons millerites and Plymouth Brethren this time I'm going to talk about the third Great Awakening which mostly grew out of the Holiness movement which in turn grew out of the methodists as I mentioned in episode 5 one of the distinct features of methodism is the idea of a second work of Grace also known as entire sanctification according to methodists this is the process by which a Christian is transformed into becoming a more perfect and holy person now initially this was understood to be a gradual process in other words it was something that occurred slowly Over time however in the mid-1800s some methodists such as the female preacher Phoebe Palmer started promoting the idea that entire sanctification can also occur instantaneously this marked the beginning of the Holiness movement which initially started as a movement within the Methodist Church but then eventually resulted in the creation of new denominations the earliest Holiness denomination was the Wesleyan Methodist Church it was formed in the U.S in 1841 when the main Methodist Church failed to take a firm stand against slavery the new denomination also became a strong supporter of women in Ministry in fact it was the president of the Wesleyan Methodist Church who ordained Antoinette Brown Blackwell the first female minister in the United States the second Holiness denomination was the Free Methodist Church formed in the U.S in 1860. it too broke away from the main Methodist Church this time over several issues one of which was the practice of renting the best pews to the rich then in 1865 over in the UK the Salvation Army was established by the Methodist couple William and Catherine Booth a lot of people tend to think of the Salvation Army as more of a charitable organization being that they're mostly known for collecting money me for the poor around Christmas time and for running secondhand stores but the Salvation Army is actually a Protestant denomination as well complete with ministers and Sunday Services although they prefer to call their ministers officers and they give them ranks that are similar to military ranks however it was in the 1880s that the Holiness movement really took off with dozens of new denominations forming eight of which I've named on the chart this coincided with the start of the third Great Awakening which also involved some new denominations that had nothing to do with methodism one such denomination is the Church of God Anderson Indiana Anderson is the location of their headquarters and this is often added to their name in order to distinguish them from the many other denominations that use the name Church of God as well in particular the Church of God Cleveland Tennessee which we'll get to in a bit for now let me point out the main difference the Church of God Anderson is a Holiness denomination whereas the Church of God Cleveland is a Pentecostal denomination basically what that means is that the Church of God Anderson does not allow the speaking in tongues during worship whereas the Church of God Cleveland does I'll be explaining what speaking in tongues is in a moment but for now just take note that while many Holiness denominations went on to become Pentecostal not all did and the Church of God Anderson is a good example of one of those that did not another Holiness denomination that did not become Pentecostal is the Church of the Nazarene it was formed by a merger in 1908 between an earlier church called The Church of the Nazarene and the association of Pentecostal churches of America in addition to these two churches more than a dozen other Holiness denominations not shown on this chart ended up joining them as well interestingly they were originally called the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene but that was before the word Pentecostal came to refer to those who speak in tongues once the Pentecostal movement became firmly established the nazarenes dropped the word Pentecostal from their name in order to avoid confusion I also want to point out the Wesleyan Church which was formed in 1968 when the Wesleyan Methodist Church merged with the pilgrim Holiness Church another movement that occurred around the same time as the Holiness movement was the higher life movement which started at a gathering in Keswick England it led to the creation of the Christian Alliance and the Evangelical Missionary Alliance which then merged in 1897 to create the Christian and Missionary Alliance I'll mention them again a bit later let me now introduce you to the Pentecostals the word Pentecost means 50th and it refers to the Jewish Festival of Shavuot which is always observed on the 50th day after Passover according to the New Testament book of Acts it was on this day 50 days after the death of Jesus that the Holy Spirit descended upon his disciples allowing them to quote unquote speak in tongues now for most versions this is interpreted as a miracle in which people who spoke foreign languages were suddenly able to understand what the disciples were saying however Pentecostals interpret it differently Pentecostals believe that in addition to suddenly being able to speak in a different human language speaking in tongues can also refer to the sudden ability to speak in a Heavenly language they think that this is what Paul was referring to in First Corinthians 13 when he said he was able to speak in tongues of men and of angels let me give you a quick example of what this can sound like [Laughter] so here's the thing all Christians believe in a first work of grace in which a Believer experiences justification meaning that they are in an instant made right with God Holiness Christians add to this a second work of grace in which a Believer experiences entire sanctification meaning that they are in an instant made holy and perfect while the early Pentecostals added to this a third work of grace in which a Believer experiences again in an instant the baptism of the Holy Spirit the evidence of which is that the believer is now able to speak in tongues the first person to connect the ability to speak in tongues with the baptism of the Holy Spirit was a man named Charles Parham however it is one of his former students William J Seymour who I think deserves the title founder of Penn Pentecostalism Seymour was the main person behind the Azusa Street Revival an event that started in 1906 and which sparked the Pentecostal movement it took place in downtown Los Angeles in what is today Little Tokyo back then on a small Lane called Azusa Street stood this old building which was once an AME church but had been converted into a stable Seymour rented the building and pretty soon crowds started showing up and word began to spread about strange things that were happening there people were shouting and speaking in tongues and supposedly some people were getting healed but perhaps the biggest miracle was the fact that even though this was the height of the Jim Crow era the crowds consisted of both blacks and whites rich and poor educated and illiterate immigrants from Asia and Latin America were there along with Native Americans and Christians from all churches dropped by to check it out there Baptists methodists Quakers Presbyterians Etc but not everyone was happy about what was happening the Los Angeles Times ran in a story about a new sect of Fanatics breaking loose and another paper described it as follows they make howling noises all day and into the night they run jump shake all over shout to the top of their voice spin around in circles fall out on the sawdust blanketed floor jerking kicking and rolling all over it these people appear to be mad mentally deranged or under a spell but despite the controversy Pentecostalism did not fade away in fact it continued to grow at an exponential Pace many of the new Holiness denominations ended up becoming Pentecostal denominations such as the mostly black Church of God in Christ and the mostly white Camp Creek Holiness Church which split into the Church of God Cleveland and the Church of God of Prophecy there was also the fire baptized Holiness Church and the Pentecostal Holiness Church that merged to form the iphc or International Pentecostal Holiness Church but the largest Pentecostal denomination ended up being the Assemblies of God it was formed in 1914 when some of the original participants of the Azusa Street Revival calling themselves the apostolic faith movement merged with a group of white ministers who left the Church of God in Christ as well as a large chunk of members who left the Christian and Missionary Alliance the Assemblies of God differs from other Pentecostal denominations in that it holds to a finished work Doctrine basically this is the belief that both justification and sanctification occur simultaneously and therefore the three-stage teaching of other Pentecostals is reduced back to two there's just the initial conversion followed by the baptism of the Holy Spirit which is evidenced by speaking in tongues however there's a third type of Pentecostal as well these are the Oneness Pentecostals and I've placed them in the non-nicene box because they reject the Trinity instead believing that God is only one person Jesus in 1917 some members left the Assemblies of God to join the Pentecostal Assemblies of the world which is the main Oneness Pentecostal denomination two other denominations later split from them and they eventually merged to form the United Pentecostal Church International the next Pentecostal group I want to point out is the Four Square Church founded in 1923 by a woman named Amy sempel McPherson the four squares represent the idea that Jesus is savior baptizer healer and King McPherson was an early example of a faith healer something that is associated with Pentecostalism to this day she Drew large crowds with people often bringing the sick in on stretchers and many claiming to leave healed however like many of the faith Healers today her career plummeted after a major controversy in 1926 she was allegedly kidnapped and went missing for five weeks but later she was accused of setting the whole thing up herself either as a publicity stunt or to hide an affair that she was having to this day the truth of the matter is not known now something else that was happening around the same time that not only impacted Pentecostalism but Christianity as a whole was the fundamentalist versus modernist debate the late 1800s and early 1900s saw major advances in the fields of science archeology and textual criticism therefore many biblical Scholars started to understand the Bible in a more literary way rather than as a primary source for straightforward history and science this led to the Divide I mentioned in a previous episode Between the more liberal Mainline denominations and the more conservative Evangelical denominations on the Evangelical side were those who called themselves fundamentalists this term comes from the 1910 book called The fundamentals which among other things emphasized that the Bible should be understood in a literal way generally speaking most Pentecostals as well as most Baptists stuck to a more fundamentalist approach to the Bible going forward whereas the mainline denominations adopted a more modernist approach creating a divide within Christianity that exists to this day now before I leave Pentecostalism I want to point out one denomination that actually originated outside of the U.S this is the Apostolic Church which grew out of the Welsh revivals of 1904 and 1905. I should also mention that all of these Pentecostal denominations went on to plant churches all over the world so much so that Pentecostals taken as a whole now make up the second largest group within Christianity after the Roman Catholics I now want to turn my attention towards the charismatics who are often lumped together with the Pentecostals but are actually a bit different the largest charismatic church is actually The Universal Church of the kingdom of God in Brazil the charismatic movement started in the 1960s as sort of a second wave of Pentecostalism but this time rather than leading to new denominations it mostly just led to some people within older denominations embracing a new style of Christianity so nowadays within the Anglican church and even the Roman Catholic Church you can find certain congregations that look a lot like Pentecostal churches in these cases we would call those congregations charismatic this could mean that the members there speak in tongues either publicly or privately but it could also just mean that the music and worship style they use is more similar to the worship you'd find in a Pentecostal church so I suppose you could think of charismatic churches as being a kind of Pentecostalism light the Christian and Missionary Alliance is a good example while they see speaking in tongues as being valid they do not require it or see it as a necessary sign the word charismatic is related to the Greek word for gift so often charismatics will focus on other kinds of spiritual gifts instead now in addition to the charismatic Christians that exist within existing denominations there are also many so-called non-denominational churches that would be best classified as belonging to the charismatic movement which brings me to an important Point although this is now the seventh episode in my series on Christian denominations I've not once stopped to define the word denomination the main reason for this is that while it can be a difficult word to Define most of us have an intuitive understanding of what it means some would argue that the Roman Catholic Church is not a denomination likewise many would argue that Baptist churches are not part of any denomination nor are Churches of Christ or Quaker meetings and so on but in this series I've been using the word denomination in a fairly loose way to refer to any grouping of Christians based on shared characteristics and or shared history ready to harvest actually has a great video on what is a denomination that goes into this topic in Greater detail so if you want to know what I mean when I use the word denomination I suggest that you watch his video which I'll link to in the description along with a video he released just today about Pentecostals which brings me to the point I want to make about non-denominational churches non-denominational churches are not really non-denominational most of the newer ones have a lot in common and started to spring up around the same time so basically we could lump most of these non-denominational churches together into a denomination of their own and that denomination would probably fit best under the charismatic umbrella some examples of this would include the British new church movement in the UK and the many churches associated with Calvary Chapel the original Calvary Chapel having started as a breakaway from the Foursquare Church its founder Chuck Smith was associated with the Jesus Freaks of the 1960s who were kind of the Christian version of hippies he also founded Maranatha music which to this day produces a lot of the worship songs used in churches all over the world however before I go I do want to point out one change to the chart that I decided to make a lot of people requested that I remove the westbro Baptist Church which I had mentioned in episode 5. initially I didn't want to remove them because I felt that they were notable and I didn't want to be an arbitrator of who is or is not a Christian even though in the case of Westborough Baptist Church virtually everyone agrees that they are more of a hate group than a church but eventually someone who I believe is a veteran convinced me that they should go so they're gone as are the flds and the Branch Davidians although in those two cases it was mostly about them being so small and they're simply being not enough room to include them yes okay so for today's video let's start with Unitarian universalism I have actually added this group to the Chart a while back but forgot to talk about them so let me do that now as the name suggests Unitarian universalism is actually the result of two different movements that eventually merged Unitarianism and universalism a Unitarian with a small U is basically anyone who believes in the Oneness of God and who rejects ideas such as the Trinity or the Divinity of Jesus so in this sense all Jews and Muslims are unitarians however a Unitarian with a capital u is someone who belongs to one of the various Unitarian movements that grew out of protestant Christianity the earliest of these Unitarian movements were actually based in Eastern Europe but eventually there were movements in the UK and U.S as well in the U.S Unitarianism grew out of congregationalism and it became official in 1825 when the American Unitarian Association was formed universalism is quite different it's the idea that ultimately All Humans will receive salvation in other words no one is going to hell this idea became popular in some churches around the same time as Unitarianism and in 1793 the Universalist Church of America was formed over time unitarians and universalists became two of the most liberal denominations in America and in 1961 because they had so much in common they decided to merge to form the Unitarian Universalist Association now take note that I have not placed Unitarian universalism in a colored box like all the other denominations on this chart this is because they are non-trinitarian and thus non-nicene in fact one could argue that they aren't even a part of Christianity anymore but instead of drawing a line all the way down to the non-nicene Christians box I opted instead to show them as a black and white symbol like I did for Judaism and Islam to indicate that they're more of a separate religion rather than a part of Christianity in contrast another very Progressive group that definitely is still a branch within Christianity is the Metropolitan Community Church which started out as a single non-denominational congregation but has since grown into its own denomination it was founded in 1968 by a gay man named Troy Perry who wanted to start a church where gay and lesbian Christians could feel welcome starting in 1969 the church started performing the very first public same-sex marriages in the United States although those marriages weren't recognized as being legal in California until 2008. to this day the Metropolitan Community Church is mostly made up of members from the LGBT community however it does have many straight members as well let me now point out the Catholic Apostolic Church better known to Outsiders as the irvingian church named after its founder Edward Irving from Scotland I probably should have mentioned them in episode 6 alongside the restorationists because not only did they emerge around the same time they also have a lot in common with them in that they see themselves as restoring the original structure of the early church and that they are quite focused on the second coming however please note that nowadays the original irvingian church has mostly died away and has been replaced by the New Apostolic Church which started off as a splinter group in 1863 and is mostly based in Continental Europe another group that has roots in Scotland are the two by twos they were started by a Scotsman named William Irvine who was initially Loosely connected to the higher life movement he ended up in Ireland where he began an independent Ministry that focused on sending out preachers in groups of two these pairs called go preachers were to have no salary and no home and thus they also became known as preachers one of the early preachers was a man named Edward Cooney although he was eventually expelled he continued to grow the movement on his own and thus some two by twos became known as kuniites nowadays the two by twos are a rather secretive group with no official name they do however reject the Trinity which is why I've placed them in the non-nicene box if you want to learn more about this mysterious group I suggest that you watch today's video by ready to harvest which is all about the church with no name another non-nicene group of Christians that are very Loosely organized are the christadelphians whose name is based on the Greek phrase christu adelphoi which means Brothers and Sisters in Christ their founder John Thomas was originally connected to the stone Campbell movement which is why I've shown them as descending from that branch I now like to focus on what I've called the metaphysical groups starting with the swedenborgians also known as the new church their name comes from that of Emmanuel swedenborg who as you might have guessed was from Sweden he believed that humans become either Angels or demons after death and that previous humans now living in the form of spirits are all around us on a daily basis trying to guide us towards good or evil he died in 1772 and 15 years later some of his followers established a church in England based on his ideas and from there it also spread to the U.S the most famous swedenborgian is probably John Chapman better known as Johnny Appleseed although he's now mostly associated with folk Legends Johnny Appleseed was actually a real person who in addition to being a new church missionary also helped to introduce apple trees to many U.S states another key person in the development of certain metaphysical ideas was a man named Franz Mesmer he's the person that the word mesmerism is based on which nowadays is mostly used to mean hypnotism but originally mesmerism was more than just hypnotism also known as animal magnetism it's centered on the idea that there exists an invisible force that connects all living things and that this force can be manipulated so swedenborg had introduced the idea that there are spirits all around us and Mesmer had introduced techniques for manipulating an invisible force therefore what happened was that people started to use mesmer's techniques to try and contact the spirits of dead relatives this became known as spiritualism and it was all the rage in the mid-1800s although not as popular nowadays spiritualists do still exist and in the U.S they have an organization called the National spiritualist Association of churches founded in 1893. one of the earliest practitioners of mesmerism was a man named Phineas Quimby he's considered the founder of the new thought movement which is a philosophy that connects some of these 19th century metaphysical ideas with similar ideas from the ancient world in 1889 this movement combined with the transient dentalist movement inspired a couple known as Charles and Myrtle Fillmore to establish an organization called Unity also known as the Unity Church it sees God as more of a Divine energy that connects all things and teaches that we can use our thoughts to change reality which brings me to the most successful of these metaphysical groups the Church of Christ scientist better known simply as Christian Science the first thing you need to know about Christian Science is that it is not related to Scientology Scientology was founded by L Ron Hubbard in 1951 and has no historical links to Christianity Hubbard who was a science fiction writer simply made the whole thing up from scratch Christian Science on the other hand was founded in 1879 by Mary Baker Eddie who happened to be a patient of Phineas Quimby as the name suggests Christian Science is connected to Christianity which is why it gets a spot on this chart but not Scientology the second thing you need to know about Christian Science is that it actually has very little to do with science at least not mainstream science in her book science and health with key to the scriptures Mary Baker Eddie taught that the material world including sickness is really Just an Illusion therefore instead of using medicine or physical therapy to treat health problems Christian Science practitioners simply use prayer the idea is that by focusing on the fact that the physical world isn't really real you can make physical health problems go away according to Christian Science this is what Jesus did and what we can do too if we follow Mary Baker Eddie's teaching interestingly the Church of Christ scientist is also of the publisher of the Christian Science monitor which does not actually promote their religious views but rather simply reports the news it has won several Pulitzer prizes and is generally seen as being a fairly unbiased news source okay that takes care of the metaphysical groups I now want to mention a few more non-nicene churches all of which developed in Asia the earliest of these is inglesia ni Cristo which is based in the Philippines it was founded by Felix Manalo and is today run by his grandson Eduardo Manalo according to Iglesia ni Cristo Christianity in the west became false Christianity within the first few centuries it points to a scripture in Isaiah which says fear not for I am with you I will bring your descendants from the East as you can probably guess Iglesia ni Cristo believes that it is those descendants from the East like many of the other churches in this non-nicene section it believes that it is the one and only true church and that every other church on this entire chart is false even more extreme is the unification Church based out of Korea its followers are known as Moonies named after the church's founder Sun myung-moon Moon taught that he was the second coming of Jesus and that it was his task to do something that Jesus hadn't done during his first coming and that was to get married Moonies believe in a special kind of marriage one that removes the couple from Adam and Eve's sinful line and places them back in God's sinless Line This is why the Moonies are known for their Mass weddings which sometimes involve thousands of couples getting married at the same time but if you think that's weird it gets even weirder after sun moon moon died in 2012 a power struggle began between Moon's wife hak Jahan and their son hyung Jin Moon which eventually led to the sun forming his own Breakaway church called Rod of iron Ministries based mostly in the U.S it focuses on gun rights and gets its members to carry semi-automatic rifles during their wedding ceremonies and other rituals back in Korea the unification church has now been eclipsed by a newer non-nicene church now known as the World Mission Society Church of God originally called The Church of God Jesus Witnesses it was founded by a man named ansang Hong who had originally belonged to The Seventh-Day Adventists because of these roots the World Mission Society shares much in common with the Adventists but they also developed some rather extreme beliefs which include the idea that on seonghong was the second coming of Jesus he has since passed away and they now also see him as being God the father and the Holy Spirit and they see his wife Zhang gilja who is still living as God the mother let's now move out of the non-nicene box back to mainstream trinitarian churches and take a look at how Christianity has developed in China even though Christianity is followed by less than five percent of the population in China in terms of sheer numbers China is actually one of the most Christian countries on Earth according to some estimates China now ranks seven overall Which is higher than both Italy and Greece but due to the communist government there things are well complicated officially there are only two churches in China the three self-patriotic movement which is a coalition of protestant groups and the Catholic patriotic Association which is Roman Catholic however the vast majority of Christians in China do not belong to either of these two churches for example in 1957 when the Catholic patriotic Association was set up it was forced to reject the authority of the Pope in Rome and therefore many Roman Catholics became part of an underground Catholic church instead however this is recently starting to change in 2018 China and the Holy See agreed to a situation whereby the pope now gets to sign off on Bishop appointments so it's yet to be seen how things will develop from this point forward when it comes to Protestant churches in China there are many House Church networks that run independently from the three self-patriotic movement the three largest Are The born-again Movement the fangsheng fellowship and the China gospel Fellowship however due to the situation in China it's difficult to know exactly how many members belong to these organizations it's likely though that these are some of the largest Protestant denominations in the world I also want to point out a group known simply as local churches which was established in China prior to the Communist Revolution by a man named Watchman knee this group was initially connected mostly to the Plymouth Brethren but then went on to build connections with other Evangelical churches as well after the Communist Revolution knee was arrested and imprisoned but one of his followers known as witness Lee continued to grow the movement in Taiwan and then later in the U.S where he founded living stream Ministry okay let's now move from China to Africa and look at a few churches that were founded by Africans these differ from most churches in Africa which were originally led by European or American missionaries the earliest of these African initiated churches is the Zion Christian Church which is based in South Africa but don't be confused by the word Zion Zionist churches in Africa have nothing to do with the modern state of Israel surprisingly the name actually comes from the city of Zion Illinois which was founded by a controversial figure named John Alexander dowie in an attempt to create a modern day theocracy I call him controversial because although he started out as a popular faith healer he's now mostly known for having fraudulently made Millions off his followers however the idea of creating a new city of Zion spread to other areas and became particularly popular in South Africa it is for this reason that when a man named decided to start a church he decided to call it the Zion Christian church today it is run by his grandson Barnabas and it has grown to become the largest denomination in South Africa the next African initiated church that I want to point out is based in Nigeria and is called the Eternal sacred order of caribim and seraphim although nowadays they like to use the acronym as socks it was founded in 1925 by a Yoruba man named Moses arimolade who supposedly performed many miracles today essox is the largest of the so-called white garment churches in Nigeria also known as alidora churches alidora being a Yoruba word meaning praying person the words Caribbean and seraphim refer to two different types of angels you're probably more familiar with the word cherub which nowadays is used to refer to angels that look like little winged babies another popular Church in Nigeria is the Redeemed Christian Church of God I've shown it in red because it is a Pentecostal Church many of the other African initiated churches share certain Pentecostal elements as well but they do not officially consider themselves Pentecostals whereas the Redeemed Christian Church does it was founded by Josiah alufemi akindaome and is currently led by Enoch adeboye however the one African initiated church that really stands out as being different is the kimbanguist church based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo it was founded in 1921 by Simon kimbangu back when the country was controlled by the belgians kambangu was another supposed Miracle Worker but in this case he ended up being imprisoned by the white authorities because he also preached about Black Liberation I've placed the kimbanguist church in the non-nicene Box because eventually kimbangu was seen as being the Incarnation of the Holy Spirit something that goes against Nicene theology nearby I've also included a symbol representing the Rastafari religion which developed in the 1930s not in Africa but in Jamaica according to Rastafarians halei Selassie the 4 former king of Ethiopia was The Reincarnation of Jesus so although Rastafari is in a sense based on Christian ideas it has since evolved into its own religion which is why I've shown it as a black and white symbol instead of placing it in a colored box okay the last group of Christians that I want to talk about are Messianic Jews we've come full circle because Messianic Jews are Jewish Christians which is what the very first Christians were let's therefore go back up to the top of the chart to recap during the lifetime of Jesus there were four main sects within Judaism of these four only one survived the destruction of the temple the Pharisees it was the Pharisees who went on to become the rabbis and therefore virtually all of Judaism today is considered to be rabbinic Judaism however just before the destruction of the temple a fifth sect emerged which went on to become Christianity in other words Christianity started out as a sect of Judaism which is why I've labeled this box Jewish Christians however from there early Christianity went in three very different directions those who rejected Jesus as God and continued to practice Jewish Customs like circumcision and avoiding pork became known as ebionites or nazarenes both of these groups eventually went extinct although before they did they likely had a big influence on the development of Islam On The Other Extreme were the gnostics who also went extinct but in the middle were the Pauline Christians who Christians today see as being the true Christians from here Christianity became a mostly Gentile or non-jewish religion although early on there were still many Jews however the point I want to make which I made in an earlier episode is that there is no direct continuous line between early Jewish Christians and modern mess ionic Jews Jews who embraced pre-nicene Christianity and then later Nicene Christianity were simply integrated into the now mostly Gentile Church congregations made up primarily of Jewish Christians did not arise again until the 19th century with the start of the Hebrew Christian movement in the U.S the Hebrew Christian Alliance of America was established in 1915 although it later changed its name to the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America today it is the largest of the various Messianic Jewish organizations which is why I chose it to be kind of Representative of Messianic Jews as a whole note that they fully accept the Trinity and all other aspects of Nicene Christianity which is why they are shown within the main part of the chart but the question a lot of people ask is are Messianic Jews Jews or Christians or are they perhaps both well according to all the modern branches of rabbinic Judaism from reform to orthodox Messianic Jews are definitely Christians and not Jews while many Messianic Jews were born Jewish and would show up as being Jewish on a DNA test they are actually no longer considered to be Jewish by the greater Jewish Community this boils down to the fact that Judaism and Christianity share common Roots but because Christianity ended up being by far the larger and more dominant group this has forced Judaism to Define itself in part as being very deliberately non-Christian in other words one of the defining features of Judaism is that Jews do not believe that Jesus was God therefore if a Jew converts to Christianity they are no longer a Jew ironically a Jew can stop believing in God altogether and still be considered a Jew that's because Judaism is in a sense still a very tribal group so long as you don't join another tribe you're still a Jew but if you do join another tribe like the one that believes Jesus Is God you're no longer a Jew okay so that concludes our look at the family tree of Christian denominations a big shout out to Joshua from ready to harvest for helping me along the way if you want to get a copy of the finished chart as a poster you can do so now by heading over to our website usefulcharts.com thanks for watching [Music] thank you [Music]

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Length: 181min 15sec (10875 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 15 2023