Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Denominations

This was a response to a comment on a youtube video by someone that didn't believe there were many denominations of christianity or that all claimed to be biblical.

Unitarians.
Don't believe in the trinity. Don't believe man is born sinful. Prefer not to use words like "father" for god as that's a human term and we can't use human terms to describe  such an ethereal concept.

And they're a very common branch of christianity. They even marry atheist couples.

http://www.unitarian.org.uk/docs/publications/1973_What_Do_Unitarians_Believe.shtml

Church of Christ
Believe in baptism of the dead and plural marriage (not practiced but the doctrine stands). They can give biblical reasons for all of these.

Catholic & Orthodox vs protestant
Catholic church teaches the bread and wine actually, in reality, become the body and blood (They mean really and truly change). Protestants believe its symbolic. This is no small matter. Millions have been killed over this issue.

Plymouth Brethren
Have no clergy whatsoever (which breaks the whole idea of the apostolic succession that catholics and many other protestant churches follow). But again, they point to the bible for their reasons.

Pentecostalists
Speak in tongues and believe that this is the spirit working through them (again because of references in the bible such as the spirit appearing to the disciples in the upper room). Many, many other denominations completely denounce this as evil and demonic and (yet again) use the bible for their references.

Affirmationists
Believe that god is open to all. They don't condemn sin. Indeed, they welcome practicing LGBT people, for example. And, as ever, use the bible as the basis for their beliefs.


Keep in mind that almost all denominations use phrases like "one true church" despite all the various beliefs


Would you like me to go on? I can do this for ages.


BTW, my number was wrong, it's 41,000 denominations of christianity. All of whom (by definition, and probably involving violence) believe different things that are fundamental enough to cause a new church.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations

[EDIT]: I should add that there are other denominations that use revelation as their basis and the bible as a reference. Personal revelation is taken as more recent and accurate evidence for god rather then a second (that's being generous) hand translations of copies of translations of word of mouth tellings of some vague remembered person that saw something once.