Number of Protestant denominations
Comments
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Thomas Black said:
That part may be a myth.
It is. First, if they lock you in and you want to leave, that is against the law (where and when I grew up I very seldom saw police though). When I was very young, my aunt and uncle attended this type of church for a short period of time and there were maybe two more congregations within a 40 mile radius. My understanding is that the closet or room storing the snakes was kept locked and that they did not use them every service, just "when the spirit was moving".
I was very young at the time (10 or 11) but can remember my mom and dad wondering what in the world was wrong with my uncle and aunt! As I said previously, there were a couple of other churches throughout my teenage years but I was never interested in attending but had friends who had went to see what it was all about or claimed that they did not know.
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Rick Hypes said:
I was very young at the time
Thanks for sharing that Rick. When I was little, a visiting missionary brought out a live snake at the end of his presentation for kids to touch. I did because I love animals. I don't want to do it again. That is the closest I will ever come to "snake handling." [:|]
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Thomas Black said:
I've never seen a church that locked their doors when a politician was invited to speak
I would probably rather handle snakes (Green, Garter, King) [8-|]
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Thomas Black said:
I've never seen a church that locked their doors when a politician was invited to speak.
One Sunday I attended Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, where Jimmy Carter is a member and teaches a Sunday School class (in the sanctuary) before the service. We all had to go through tight security to get in, and we had to stay for the church service afterward if we wanted to get to stand in line to shake President Carter's hand and get our picture taken with him and Rosalyn after the service.
Yes, there was a lot of rigmarole involved in hearing him speak, but it was so worth it. He really is a sincere believer and his Bible teaching was quite good.
Oh, and I've been in a church service with a sitting president once, too. President Clinton was in Seattle for some political fundraiser for a congress person from our state and wanted to attend church while he was in town. So he had his staff investigate our church as he'd heard Earl Palmer was a good preacher. So he came and merely attended/worshiped with us, and there were no political undertones to the service. (Apart from us having to go through metal detectors to get into the church, and not starting the service quite on time, to throw off any would be assassins who might have been waiting for his arrival if they'd gotten wind of it ahead of time; but it was kept all hush-hush. Even I as a member of the choir wasn't told what the big deal was going to be, only that we had to arrive early at church for some special event.) The service went on as planned, with the sermon topic chosen long ahead of time. It turned out to be very apt; the Scripture Earl preached on included some verse that mentioned that all authority on earth comes from God (maybe Rom 13:1, Dan 2:21, can't remember for sure). It was part of a sermon series we were in the midst of, on a book of the Bible, so totally not cherry-picked for the situation. Just providential. Clinton nodded in agreement when he heard it. He also sang along heartily on all the hymns, followed along in the pew Bible when the Scripture was being read, etc. He was really into being there, and while I'm sure there were some political points to be gained for being seen in church by such a large congregation, I don't necessarily think he would have done it if he hadn't had some real interest in being there and hearing Rev. Palmer speak. Clinton was whisked out into a waiting limo before we could all leave the sanctuary, for security purposes, so there was no handshake line. Our church leadership really did a good job of keeping the service from turning into a political thing. They did make one mention of welcome to him during the welcome remarks at the beginning, but that was all.
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I think they handled it well Rosie. Let him come and hear the word. That is what political leaders need.
Mission: To serve God as He desires.
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Rosie Perera said:
There will probably always be a few of these tiny little denominations that are not officially subsets of anything else, that you wouldn't hear about unless you knew someone who knew of their existence.
Well, Logos has an awful lot of users, don't they? Once MJ has gotten as far as she can on her own, we could start writing "check if your church is there" posts, both to the forums, Facebook and Twitter. If everyone looks for their own church, plus the oddest denomination/church they know about locally, we should catch a few more.
Mac Pro (late 2013) OS 12.6.2
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I saw a list a long time ago (the 1980's I think) that listed 2300+ different protestant denominations in the US. I'll see if I can find it. One was "The Holy Ghost Inc." (or something very similar to that). Of course, the list would presumably be a little different today.
Just interested, how are you counting? What makes an established denomination? What about the one-of-a kinds? I often see local community churches with unique names: things like Peace Fellowship Chapel, Spiritual House of Praise, etc. I'm sure many of them would simply think of themselves as "evangelical" or some kind of independent church.
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fgh said:
the oddest denomination/church they know about locally, we should catch a few more.
Have you seen the "churches" springing up on Youtube? I am not talking about the mockeries (lots of those too) but sincere, albeit wacky, persons preaching.to their web cam. Their doctrine can usually be pigeon-holed but they would never willingly be associated with any denomination or even each other.
Logos 7 Collectors Edition
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David McClister said:
What makes an established denomination?
Good question.
I wonder what criteria was used to collect data for these:
- Wikipedia's List of Christian denominations
- Religion Facts Christian Denominations
- David Bennett http://www.ancient-future.net/denominations.html
- http://www.adherents.com/
- Internet Archive Full text of "Handbook Of Denominations In The United States" 2nd ed.revised (13th edition here)
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