Varieties of non-Catholic Christianity

Because non-Catholics disagree with each other as much or more than they disagree with the Catholic Church, there is only one true statement that can be made about all of them as a group: whatever they have kept from the Catholic Tradition unites them with Catholics; whatever they have rejected from or added to the Catholic Tradition separates them from Catholics.

There isn't even a convenient label for all of the kinds of non-Catholic Christianities; neither the ancient Eastern schismatics nor many of the recent non-denominational Christians want to be identified as "Protestants"; I still tend to lump all of the Western schismatics together as Protestants because it is a handier term than "non-Catholic Christian," but I have seen that this makes some of the more recent schismatics unhappy; they do not want to be associated with any other form of Christianity from history or from some other part of the world. Since they still do meet as a group, they have not yet reached the logical conclusion of one person per Church, but they come as close as they can to the ideal of "just me and my Bible."

A technical distinction is made by some between schismatics and heretics. The "schismatics" are those such as the Eastern Orthodox who retain the basic doctrine and sacraments of Catholicism but reject the jurisdiction of the Pope. "Heretics" reject part of the tradition and keep part of the tradition. For my purposes, "schismatic" is the better general category for all who splinter away from Mother Church, regardless of whether they accept much or little of the Deposit of Faith, including the recent "Catholic" Schisms in the West.

The schisms in Christianity date to different times and places:

Association of Religion Data Archives — Denominational Profiles in the U.S.

Denominational Family Trees in the U.S.

Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey

1054	Schism between Roman Catholicism and Eastern, Orthodox Catholicism
October 31, 1517	Martin Luther inaugurates the classical, mainline Protestant schisms
19th-20th century	New "Catholic" schisms
20th century	Rise of non-denominationalism; thousands or tens of thousands of independent Christian groups that do not want to be called "Protestant" or be identified with any kind of Christianity other than their local church.

All it takes to launch a new version of Christianity is a Bible and a collection basket. The essence of Protestantism is private judgment. There is no Pope of Protestantism. No Protestant can tell another Protestant what to believe. This is a formula for more splintering. In the end, there are logically as many different kinds of Protestantism as their are Protestants, each one saying: "Leave me alone. I've got my God, my Bible, and my way of life. That's all I need or want."

The Moral of the Story:

Schism breeds schism.

Some identifiable groups

Adventists
Anabaptist
Anglican / Episcopalian
Baptist
Calvinist
Congregational
Gospel Hall Brethren
Lutheran
Methodist / Wesleyan
Non-denominational
Pentecostal (Charismatic)
Presbyterian
Quakers
Reformed
Restoration movement
Unitarian
Waldensians

Sacramental

Orthodox
"High Church" Anglicans and Lutherans

Agrarian

Shakers (?)
Mennonites
Hutterites
Amish

Evangelical

Revivalist
Wesleyan Methodists
Baptists?

Fundamentalist

Biblical literalists
Messianic Jews

Modernist

Feminist
Secularized
- Bultmann
- Tillich
- Harvey Cox
- Gregory Baum
Syncretistic — New Age
- Matthew Fox, The dancing bear
- Hindu/Buddhist Christianity
- Neo-pagan (Druids, witches, warlocks; really, anti-christians, so perhaps they don't belong here at all.

Emerging Churches — postmodern Christianity.

Apocalyptic

Dispensationalists

Pacifist (cuts across other categories?)

Quakers

Different methods of grouping:

Date of schism from Catholicism or from another schism
Ecclesiology
- Church organization
- Relation to other Christian bodies (connected or disconnected)
Dogmatic theology (creeds of the churches)
Sacramental theology (liturgy)
Relationship to society (established or free)
Biblical hermeneutics

patristic, neo-patristic
monastic
scholastic, Thomist
idealist, Kantian, Hegelian, transcendental
positivist, rationalist
existentialist
evangelical, Pentecostal
socialist, liberationist, Marxist
secularist, atheistic
Catholic vs. Protestant?
mystical (gnostic?)
Scriptural, Biblical
fundamentalist

Fideist

Barthian

Existentialist

Kierkegaardian

ARDA Families (U.S.)

ARDA.

Adventist Family
Anglicanism Family
Baptist Family
Christian Science Family
Communal Family
Eastern Liturgical Family (Orthodox)
European Free-Church Family (Brethren, Mennonites, Quakers, Amish)
Holiness Family
Independent Fundamentalist Family
Judaism Family
Latter-day Saints Family (Mormonism)
Liberal Family
Lutheran Family
Methodist/Pietist Family
Other Groups
Pentecostal Family
Presbyterian-Reformed Family
Spiritualist Family
Western Liturgical Family (Catholicism)

Possible methods of representation

Genealogy
Timeline
Decision tree
Cartesian grid
YAML or JSON
Spreadsheet
HTML table
Nested list
- second level
  - third level
    - fourth level
      - fifth level
        sixth level
        seventh level
        eighth level

Derivatives of the Catholic Church

This table comes from from the chart, "Derivation of Protestant Denominations," in Catholicism: The Faith of our Fathers by Albert J. Nevins (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 1995).

I've reorganized this table chronologically in an outline of Christian schisms.

Zwinglianism
Calvinism
	Unitarian
	Presbyterian
	Reformed
Lutheranism
	Schwenkfeldian
	Pietists
	Moravian
	Anabaptist
		Mennonites
Small Church
Old Church
Catholic Apostolic of France
Gallican Catholic
French Catholic
Old Catholic
Primitive Catholic
Polish National
Lefebvreites
Anglican
	Methodist
		English Methodist or Wesleyan
			Calvinist Methodist
			Methodist New Connection
			Primitive Methodist
			Primitive Christians
			Free Methodists
			Salvation Army
		American Methodist (Methodist Episcopal)
			Reformed Methodist
			African Methodist Episcopal Zion
			Union African
				African Union Methodist Episcopal
				Union American
			Protestant Methodist
			African Methodist Episcopal Church
				Reformed Union
				Independent African Methodist Episcopal
			Wesleyan Connection
			Pentecostal or Assembly of God
				Revival Union
				First Century Pentecostal
				Evangelist Revival
				Christian Decision
				Missionary Revival
				Free Pentecostal
				Independent Pentecostal
				Pentecostal Holiness
				Pentecostal Assembly
				French-Swiss Pentecostal
				Gospel Mission
				Bethesda
				Friends of Revival
				Pentecostal Alliance
				Independent Pentecostal
				Apostolic Church
				United Pentecostal
				Calvary Pentecostal
				Voice of Healing
				Assembly of Christian Evangel.
			Methodist Episcopal
				Free Methodist
				Holiness Methodist
				Congregational Methodist
				Reformed Zion
				Colored Methodist Episcopal Church
				New Congregational
	English Baptist
	German Baptist
	American Baptist
		Seventh Day Adventists
			Church of God
			Reformed Adventists
			Life and Advent
			Primitive Adventists
			Bible Students
				Jehovah's Witnesses
				Friends of Man
		Disciples of Christ
		Independent Baptists
		Free Will Baptists
		Primitive Baptists
		Evangelical Baptists
	Apostolic or Irvingites
	Neo-Apostolic Church
		New Neo-Apostolic Church
Plymouth Brethren
	Closed Brethren
	Open Brethren
	Brethren-Eight Groups
Puritans
Protestant Episcopal
Quakers
	Hicksites
	Wilburites
		Primitive Friends
Congregational
Christian Science
	New Christian Science
	Free Christian Science
	Reformed Christian Science

References

Links