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:
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.)
- 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
- seventh level
- sixth level
- fifth level
- fourth level
- third level
- second 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