The Line and the Branches

The temple destroyed

Titus takes Jerusalem and the temple is destroyed. The Jerusalem church scatters, the center of Christian life moves to the Gentile cities — Antioch, Ephesus, Rome, Alexandria — and the last institutional tie to the temple system is gone.

It falls inside the trunk period, and is part of why the sub-apostolic church had to work out its own order so quickly.

Marcion, and the canon

Marcion of Sinope is expelled from the church at Rome in 144 and builds a rival communion across the empire with its own bishops, its own liturgy and — decisively — its own Bible: one gospel and ten letters of Paul, edited, with the Old Testament thrown out entire.

His reason was that the God of the Old Testament, the creator, is a lesser and harsher being than the Father of Jesus Christ; that the creation is not good; and that Christ was therefore not born and had no body of flesh.

He is on this row rather than on a branch, and the reason is a rule this chart needs stated. The chart measures distance from the New Testament pattern, which presupposes a body that is trying to keep it. Every lane drawn here — Rome, Ethiopia, the Oneness Pentecostals, the Arian churches — appeals to the same Scriptures and claims to be doing what they say, and the disagreement the chart draws is a disagreement inside that appeal. A body that rejects the Old Testament, the creation and the incarnation is not a long way along this axis; it is answering a different question, and the rubric cannot read it. The same rule keeps the Gnostic schools off, and the Paulicians, Bogomils and Cathars a thousand years later. It is a limit of this chart, not a verdict on anybody.

And his importance here is not that he was a branch. It is that he forced the canon question: the church's earliest lists of what counts as Scripture are answers to Marcion, and the whole of this chart's `A1` criterion — the rule of faith — presupposes that the answer was given.

Islam begins

Muhammad's migration to Medina begins the Muslim calendar. Within a century Islamic rule extends from Spain to the Indus, taking in the Christian heartlands of North Africa, Egypt, Syria and Palestine.

Three of the five ancient patriarchates — Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem — end up under Muslim rule, which is much of why the weight of the church shifts to Rome and Constantinople, and why those two come to face each other with no counterbalance. It is also the end of Latin Christianity in North Africa, where the Donatists had survived four centuries.

The First Crusade

Urban II calls the First Crusade. Whatever else it did, it hardened the estrangement between East and West — and the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 did more to make the 1054 schism permanent than the excommunications had.

Constantinople falls

Mehmed II takes the city on 29 May 1453 and the Eastern empire ends. The patriarch of Constantinople becomes the civil head of the Christian population under the sultan, and the Eastern church spends the next four centuries under Muslim rule, with Moscow left as the only Orthodox power — which is much of why Moscow becomes a patriarchate in 1589.

Greek scholars leaving the city carry their manuscripts west, and the New Testament is in print in Greek by 1516. Erasmus's text is what Luther and Tyndale translate from.

The printing press

Gutenberg's Bible. Within seventy years a reformer's tract could reach tens of thousands in weeks, and a vernacular Bible could be owned by an ordinary household.

Every movement to the right of this point on the chart depends on it. An appeal to the text over the institution is only possible where ordinary people can read the text.

The King James Version

The Authorized Version. Not the first English Bible — Tyndale's is its ancestor, and it cost him his life — but the one that put a common text into English-speaking hands for three centuries, and the text nearly every body on the right-hand side of this chart argued from and against.

The Martyrs Mirror

Thieleman J. van Braght compiles Het Bloedig Tooneel of Martelaers Spiegel at Dordrecht in 1660, recording some four thousand deaths — Anabaptists put to death by Catholic and Protestant authorities alike in the century and a half after 1525, set alongside the martyrs of the early church.

It changed nothing about how any congregation baptized, communed, chose its ministers or governed itself, which is why it is here rather than on the `anabaptist` lane. What it changed is what the family understood itself to be. After 1660 the peace churches read their own history as a martyr history, and the book has stayed in print in Dutch, German and English ever since — in many Amish and Mennonite households the one book besides the Bible.

The First Great Awakening

Whitefield and Edwards. Revival preaching crossing denominational lines splits nearly every American body into New Light and Old Light factions and establishes conversion experience as a category alongside membership.

The Second Great Awakening seventy years later is the soil the Restoration Movement grows in — Cane Ridge, 1801, is its most famous meeting.

The Shakers

James and Jane Wardley's "Shaking Quakers" gather in 1747, first at Bolton and then at Manchester, England, out of the same Quaker and Camisard milieu as the wider Seeker tradition. Ann Lee joins in September 1758 and, after a revelation in prison in the summer of 1770, is acknowledged as their leader, Mother Ann. The Society's own 1823 texts call her "the distinguished personage to whom Christ revealed himself in his true character, in this day of his second appearing" — that appearing "manifested in that particular object, (namely, woman)" — and teach that "the present testimony of salvation and eternal life was fully revealed to Ann Lee, and by her to the society". They also say the appearing is "not the appearance of the same personal Being, but a manifestation of the same Spirit". The surviving community now says "Mother Ann was not Christ, nor did she claim to be", and that "the second appearing of Christ is in His Church"; it has not withdrawn the 1823 books. She brings eight followers to New York in 1774; the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing establishes eighteen communities in all, on communal property, celibacy and confession of sin, and reaches some five thousand members in the decade before the Civil War by its own count (about six thousand in the 1840s, in Lawrence Foster's and Perry's accounts). Three Shakers remain, at Sabbathday Lake, Maine, by NPR's count of August 2025 — one of them, under the community's own rules, a novice.

It belongs on this row for the same reason the Latter-day Saints (1830) and the Watch Tower (1879) do, and by the strongest version of that reason on the chart: those two claim a living messenger sent to restore a church that had failed; the Shakers' published doctrine places the second appearing of Christ itself in their founder and their society, with a testimony revealed through her. That is not a long way along the New Testament axis — it is a different claim than the axis reads, which is why it sits here rather than as a branch of `quaker`, the body Ann Lee's own Wardley Society left.

The Doukhobors

The name Doukhobors — spirit wrestlers — first appears in 1786, for peasant dissenters of Tambov who had left the Orthodox Church a generation earlier under Ilarion Pobirokhin and his successors. The Molokans (`molokan`) broke from the same circle, and in Wikipedia's account they did so because they thought the Doukhobors neglected the Bible.

That is the difference that puts one on a lane and the other here. The Doukhobors' own answers, recorded by Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich and published in 1909 as The Book of Life, set the written word aside for the word within: "A baptism with water is not beneficial to our soul; for our soul baptism means that one accepts God's word", and of the Supper, "your communion is of no use to us". Asked to whom God prays, the answer recorded is "To the word." The largest Doukhobor body in Canada, the Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ, says the same in its own FAQ: "Doukhobors do not consider the Bible to be either a “holy” book or infallible in its content." (The page is undated; it speaks of events as late as 2008, and the home page still shows a notice of March 2020 suspending activities, so the site seems not to have been updated since about 2020.) Under Peter Verigin more than seven thousand of them burned their arms in the Caucasus in 1895, and in 1899 about a third of all Doukhobors emigrated to Canada with the help of Leo Tolstoy and the Quakers, where their descendants remain.

It sits on this row for the same reason the Shakers do. A body whose rule is the word within, not the word written, is not standing a long way along the New Testament axis; it is answering a different question, and asking how far it stands from the pattern is the wrong question about it.

The New Church

Emanuel Swedenborg reported from 1745 that his "spiritual eyes" were opened, enabling him to converse with God, angels and spirits, and between 1749 and 1771 published the theological works his readers call the Writings. In them he wrote that the Last Judgment "commenced in the beginning of the year 1757, and was fully accomplished at the end of that year" — in the spiritual world, and the beginning of what his readers hold to be a "spiritual second coming of Christ". Swedenborg founded no church. His readers did: the first Swedenborgian church was registered in England in 1787, and the General Convention (1817), the General Church of the New Jerusalem (1890 or 1897, the two bodies' own dates differ) and the Lord's New Church Which Is Nova Hierosolyma (1937–39) followed.

What puts it here is the Writings. The General Church draws its teaching from "the Bible and something called the Heavenly Doctrine ... we believe the Lord revealed through Emanuel Swedenborg"; Nova Hierosolyma calls the Writings "the Third Testament of the Word"; the General Convention presents them "with the authority of the Holy Word" while declining to make them "final and prescriptive". Restoration by a further revelation is the rule that seats the Latter-day Saints (1830) and the Watch Tower (1879) on this row, and the New Church is its earliest instance on the chart.

Vernacular Scripture restricted

The Synod of Toulouse, canon 14, forbids the laity to possess the Old and New Testaments in the vernacular, in the aftermath of the Albigensian crusade.

State its scope honestly, because it is often overstated: this is a regional council addressing one heresy, not a universal ban, and Latin Bibles were never restricted. But it is the clearest instance of a principle that governed the West for three centuries — that the text was safer with the clergy than with the people — and it is why Wycliffe in 1382 and Tyndale in 1526 were dangerous men.

Wycliffe's people have no lane, and this is where they belong. The Lollards put the whole Bible into English in the 1380s and denied transubstantiation two centuries before England could say it aloud — but they never organized: no ministry, no assembly they could name, no confession, and after De heretico comburendo (1401) no way to hold one. Wycliffe himself was condemned at Constance on 4 May 1415, a month before the same council burned Hus, and his bones were dug up and burned in 1428. What survived was a set of convictions underground, which surfaced again in the 1520s with Tyndale — which is why the chart shows Lollardy as an idea in this row rather than as a body on a branch.

And the crusade this canon follows in the wake of is why the Cathars have none either. This chart measures distance from the New Testament pattern, which presupposes a body trying to keep it; the Cathars held matter to be the work of an evil principle and the incarnation therefore impossible, which is not a long way along that measure but a different question altogether. That is a limit of the chart, not a verdict on anybody — and it is worth saying here, because Ad abolendam (1184) condemned Cathars and Waldensians in one sentence, and the Waldensians are a lane.

Frequently miscited as the Council of Valencia. Valencia's index is 1551, and a different thing entirely.

The Scofield Reference Bible

C. I. Scofield's reference Bible is published by Oxford in 1909 and revised in 1917. It prints the dispensational scheme — the seven dispensations, the church and Israel as two peoples with two destinies, the secret rapture before the tribulation — in the margins and notes of the Authorized Version, and several generations read it there as though it were the text.

It is on this row rather than on a branch because it never became a body. The teaching was worked out by John Nelson Darby among the Brethren between 1828 and 1833 (see `plymouth`, 1833), carried to America on Darby's seven journeys between 1862 and 1877, and passed through the Niagara Bible Conferences and the Bible institutes into Baptist, Presbyterian, Holiness and Pentecostal churches alike — without founding a denomination anywhere. What carries it now is a network of independent Bible churches, IFCA International, prophecy conferences, seminaries and paperbacks, none of which is a body with a date, a membership or a rubric row.

That is the shape of a movement rather than a branch, and this chart has no primitive for one — which is why Pietism, the Awakenings, Fundamentalism and the charismatic renewal are also on this row rather than on lanes.

The Sunday school

Robert Raikes opens a school in Gloucester for the children of the mills, teaching reading from the Bible on the one day they were not at work.

Within a century it had reshaped congregational practice worldwide, and it is the origin of an arrangement most readers assume is apostolic: the assembly divided into graded classes by age. It is the direct occasion of one of the divisions this chart draws — the non-class churches, from about 1910.

The Latter-day Saints

Joseph Smith organizes his church in Fayette, New York, publishing the Book of Mormon the same year.

It belongs to the same restorationist moment as the Stone-Campbell movement, the Millerites and the Bible Students — several groups at once claiming to recover the original church. What separates it is the method: restoration by new revelation and new scripture rather than by appeal to the New Testament alone. That is why it appears here as context rather than as a branch of this chart: it is not measuring itself against the same standard.

The fundamentalists are on this row with it. When the church ended plural marriage by the Manifesto of 1890, a minority held that a revelation to John Taylor in 1886 stood above it, and out of Lorin C. Woolley's Priesthood Council of 1929 came the community at Short Creek, on the Utah–Arizona line, now the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It holds the same added canon, and it binds plural "celestial marriage" as a requirement of exaltation on the word of a living prophet — "If we do not live these laws we are damned here and hereafter", as Warren Jeffs read to a Texas court in 2011. Its place on this chart is the parent church's, for the parent church's reason, with a living office added.

The God Worshippers, and the Taiping

After a fourth failure at the imperial examinations in 1843, Hong Xiuquan read Liang Fa's tract Good Words to Admonish the Age, reinterpreted a vision he had had years earlier, and concluded that he was the son of God the Father and the younger brother of Jesus Christ. His cousin Feng Yunshan organized the followers as the Bai Shangdi Hui — the God Worshipping Society — some three thousand of them before there was an army. In January 1851 Hong proclaimed the Taiping Tianguo, the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace; it held Nanjing for a decade and was destroyed in 1864, at a cost conventionally given in the tens of millions of lives.

It is on this register and not on a branch for the same reason as the Latter-day Saints and the Watch Tower: its own account is not that it read the New Testament better, but that a named living man was told something new about himself. Asking how far it stands from the New Testament pattern is the wrong question about it.

The Great Disappointment

William Miller's followers expected Christ's return on 22 October 1844. The failure scattered the movement, and out of it came the Seventh-day Adventist Church (organized 1863), the Advent Christian Church, and indirectly the Bible Student movement.

Restorationist energy in this period produced several bodies at once, and they did not all reach the same place.

On the Origin of Species

Darwin publishes. Together with German higher criticism it produces the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the 1920s, which splits Presbyterians and Baptists in the United States.

Note what is new about it: for the first time since the Reformation the dividing question is not what Scripture teaches but whether it can be relied on at all.

The Watch Tower

Charles Taze Russell begins Zion's Watch Tower. The Bible Student movement it founded became the Jehovah's Witnesses under Rutherford in 1931; other Bible Students separated after 1917.

Like the Latter-day Saints, restorationist in claim but resting on a body of teaching outside the New Testament — which is why it is here as context.

Restoration by a messenger

Two large bodies founded within twelve years, on opposite sides of the world, on the same claim — and they belong on this row for the same reason the Latter-day Saints and the Watch Tower do.

Iglesia ni Cristo, registered by Felix Manalo at Manila on 27 July 1914; 2.8 million in the Philippines at the 2020 census, and substantial congregations wherever Filipinos have gone. Non-Trinitarian, and restorationist in the strongest sense: Manalo is held to be the sugo, the last messenger of God foretold in Scripture, sent to re-establish the church that had wholly apostatised.

La Luz del Mundo, founded at Guadalajara in 1926 by Eusebio Joaquín González, who took the name Aarón and is held to be the Apostle of Jesus Christ for these times. The office has passed to his son and to his grandson. Between one and five million adherents are claimed, mostly in Mexico.

The rule they meet is the chart's own. Where a body's account of itself is that the church ceased and was restored through an identified living messenger, the descent a chart can document and the descent the body claims are not two readings of one line — they are different kinds of claim, and drawing a branch would quietly decide between them. So these go here, as the Latter-day Saints (1830) and the Watch Tower (1879) do, and their own account is left standing beside the record rather than absorbed into it.

Note what the rule does not turn on. It is not that their doctrine of God is unusual: `oneness`, `unitarian` and the `arian` churches are all drawn as lanes. It is the messenger.

Rastafari

Ras Tafari Makonnen is crowned Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, on 2 November 1930. In Jamaica from 1933 Leonard Howell preached "that the Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia (Ras Tafari) was the Messiah, that Black people were the chosen people, and would soon be repatriated to Ethiopia", and with Joseph Hibbert, Archibald Dunkley and others the movement took his name.

Rastafari is not one body but several "mansions", and they do not all say the same thing: the Nyabinghi proclaim Haile Selassie "the promised Messiah and incarnation of Jah"; the Twelve Tribes of Israel read him "as Jesus Christ in his Kingly character"; some hold him a divinely anointed king and not the Messiah himself. The Emperor, in RE:ONLINE's account, "did not accept Rastafari belief himself while he was alive, remaining a member of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church", and that church's archbishop in the Western Hemisphere would baptize Rastafari only in the name of Jesus Christ.

It belongs on this row for the reason the Taiping do: a named living man held to be the Messiah, or God incarnate, is not a reading of the New Testament standing some distance from it, and the question the chart asks of its lanes does not apply.

World Mission Society Church of God

Ahnsahnghong, baptized at Incheon in 1948, founds the Church of God in the Republic of Korea in 1964 — in the church's own words, "established by the Second Coming Christ Ahnsahnghong". It had thirteen churches in South Korea by 1980. After his death in 1985, in the account of the scholars Massimo Introvigne and Holly Folk (World Religions and Spirituality Project, 2017), his followers divided between "a majority that recognized Zahng Gil-jah as God the Mother, and the leadership of Kim Joo-cheol" and a minority that followed his widow and children, and the church now teaches God the Mother alongside God the Father; it keeps the Saturday Sabbath and an annual Passover.

Its own statement of the Godhead is the reason it is here: "Jesus is God the Father Jehovah who came as God the Son in the New Testament times, and Ahnsahnghong is God the Holy Spirit—Christ who has come a second time—in this age according to the prophecies of the Bible." The church also says that "the Bible is the only standard of judgment", and it should be heard saying so. But a founder held to be Christ come again is the strongest form of the claim that seats the Latter-day Saints and the Watch Tower on this row, and the chart's question — how far from the New Testament pattern — is not one this church's own account can be measured by.

The Kingdom of Jesus Christ

Apollo C. Quiboloy leaves the United Pentecostal Church of the Philippines at Davao City and begins the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, the Name Above Every Name, on 1 September 1985, "with only 15 members" by the church's own count. On 13 September 2003, in the church's words, "being the sole recipient of the Almighty Father's revelations", he "publicly declared himself to be the Appointed Son of God", and the church dates the "Birth of the Kingdom Nation" to 13 April 2005, when "the Almighty Father raised His own Son to be the Revealer of His Secrets, the manifestation of His coming, and His Audible Voice."

The church keeps Jesus as the Begotten Son and distinguishes "the Created Son, the Begotten Son, and the Appointed Son". What puts it on this row is not that distinction but the authority that goes with it: the founder's words "are now backed by the Father's absolute power" and "bear the power to save, to destroy, and to bless", and "The world will be judged by the life and message of the Son." Revelation through a named living man, binding beyond the Scriptures it quotes, is the rule that seats Iglesia ni Cristo and La Luz del Mundo here (1914), and it applies with the same force.

The World Council of Churches

Founded in Amsterdam. The twentieth-century ecumenical movement runs the other way from most of this chart: the unions of 1925, 1947, 1957, 1961, 1968, 1983 and 1988 all belong to it, and the Presbyterian reunion of 1983 closed a division opened in 1861 over slavery.

Worth keeping in view — lineage is a graph, not a tree, and this is where most of the merging happens.

The Second Vatican Council

Vatican II. Vernacular liturgy, a changed posture toward other Christians and toward other religions, and a reappraisal of the church's relation to the modern world.

It reversed none of the definitions on the Roman line of this chart — 1215, 1274, 1854, 1870 and 1950 all stand — but it changed how Rome speaks about everyone else on it. It also triggered its own traditionalist reaction, the Society of St Pius X, in 1970.

The great sorting

Pew's Religious Landscape Study, fielded across 2023-24, finds non-denominational Protestants at 7% of US adults (6% in the evangelical tradition and 1% in the mainline) — a family that, by Pew's own classification, leaves out Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard, which it counts as Pentecostal, and Acts 29, which it counts as Reformed — the second-largest Protestant family in the country, behind Baptists at 12%, and the only Protestant family that is larger as a share of the population than it was when Pew first ran the study in 2007.

The detail that makes the point better than the percentage: when the United Methodist disaffiliation window closed on 31 December 2023 with 7,631 US congregations out, most of them did not join the Global Methodist Church. They went independent.

The category is on this row rather than on a branch because the honest answer to "how far is this from the pattern?" is that it is the wrong question. (The networks with statements of their own — Calvary Chapel, the Vineyard, Hillsong, Acts 29 — are drawn since 2026-10-27 as the lane `nondenom`, off `pente`; what follows is about the congregations that belong to nothing.) A lane needs one parent and one score. These congregations came out of everything — Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, Reformed, Catholic, and increasingly out of no prior affiliation at all — and answer the rubric's questions about eldership, baptism and the Supper in every direction at once. What is true of all of them is the absence of the thing this chart is a diagram of.

The Restoration Movement argued in the 1830s that denominations should dissolve into congregations wearing no party name. Something very like that has now happened at scale, for entirely different reasons, and it produced neither unity nor a common practice.

Pietism

Ids

• lutheran
• unitas
• methodist
• reformed
• anabaptist
• brethren

Philipp Jakob Spener's Pia Desideria (1675) asked for small groups reading Scripture together, a lay priesthood exercised rather than confessed, preaching aimed at the heart, and ministers trained in devotion as well as in dogma. August Hermann Francke built the institutions at Halle; Zinzendorf was Spener's godson and Francke's pupil.

It crossed the structure and founded nothing. It reshaped the Lutheran state churches from inside, renewed the Unity of the Brethren at Herrnhut, reached Wesley through the Moravians and Methodism through Wesley, ran into the Reformed churches through Labadie and the Dutch Nadere Reformatie, and touched the Anabaptists through the Brethren of Schwarzenau — who are on this chart precisely because they are a body, and were the exception rather than the rule.

What it did to this chart's criteria is mixed and worth stating. It moved several lanes toward the pattern on `S1` and `B3` — the collegia pietatis put Scripture in the hands of people who were not clergy. It moved them away on `C3`, because a conversion a man can date and describe displaces baptism as the point of entry; the mourner's bench and the anxious seat are downstream of Halle.

The Awakenings

Ids

• congreg
• presby
• baptist
• methodist
• anglican
• restore
• sbc
• primbap
• holiness

Two waves, and the chart already carries the first as a context event because it had no way to draw it as anything else.

The First Awakening (c. 1735–1745) — Edwards at Northampton, Whitefield everywhere — divided the Congregational and Presbyterian churches into New Lights and Old Lights, filled the Baptist churches from the Separate congregations it produced, and made the itinerant preacher a fixture. The Second (c. 1795–1840) — Cane Ridge in 1801, Finney's new measures from 1825 — produced the camp meeting, the protracted meeting, the anxious seat, and an expectation that a church could be revived on demand.

Nine lanes on this chart change shape inside it and not one of them is its child. The Restoration Movement begins in it: Barton Stone was at Cane Ridge. The Primitive Baptists begin by rejecting it. The Southern Baptist Convention inherits its machinery. The Holiness churches are the Second Awakening's methods applied to Wesley's doctrine.

On the rubric its consistent effect is on `C3` and `J1`: the point at which a man is put into Christ moves to a datable inward experience, and the means of producing that experience become a technology. Almost everything to the right of 1800 on this chart inherits it, including the bodies that most dislike it.

Dispensationalism

Ids

• plymouth
• exclusive
• baptist
• sbc
• presby
• pente
• holiness
• landmark
• premill

Darby worked out the secret rapture and the parenthesis in Daniel's seventy weeks between 1828 and 1833 (see `plymouth`, 1833). It left the Brethren with the Synopsis from 1859, crossed to America on Darby's seven journeys between 1862 and 1877, passed through the Niagara Bible Conferences and the Bible institutes, and was printed into the margins of the Authorized Version in 1909 by C. I. Scofield, where several generations read it as though it were the text.

It is the clearest case on the chart of a teaching that went everywhere and founded nothing. It is held today across bodies that will not commune with one another: Baptist, Presbyterian, Holiness, Pentecostal, Bible-church, and — with the sign reversed — it is what the premillennial Churches of Christ divided over in 1915.

The chart scores it at `G1` where a body binds it. What it cannot score, and what this band is for, is that the scheme is the same scheme in nine lanes with nine different rubric rows — which is exactly the shape a branch cannot draw.

The fundamentalist controversy

Ids

• presby
• baptist
• sbc
• congreg
• methodist
• anglican
• tec
• lcms
• landmark

The Fundamentals were published in twelve volumes between 1910 and 1915 and posted free to every pastor, missionary and theology student the publishers could find an address for. The name comes from there, and the quarrel it names ran through nearly every large Protestant body in the English-speaking world at once.

It produced almost no denominations and a great many marks. The Presbyterian side is on this chart at 1936; the Baptist side produced the GARBC in 1932 and the Conservative Baptists in 1947, neither drawn; the Southern Baptist Convention fought the same argument fifty years later and it is marked at 1979. The Episcopal, Methodist and Congregational bodies had it without dividing over it.

What makes it a movement rather than a body is that both sides of it are on the same lanes. A chart of branches can show the exits; it cannot show that the argument was going on inside the churches that did not divide, which is most of them. The band is drawn to say so.

The charismatic renewal

Ids

• rome
• anglican
• tec
• lutheran
• methodist
• baptist
• presby
• pente
• cogic
• nigeria
• csi

On 3 April 1960 Dennis Bennett, rector of St Mark's, Van Nuys, told his Episcopal congregation that he had spoken in tongues, and resigned. What followed did not become a denomination anywhere.

Within fifteen years there were charismatic renewal movements inside the Roman Catholic Church — Duquesne in 1967, and the Vatican's cautious recognition of ICCRS afterwards — the Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist churches, and the Orthodox fringes. Rome's charismatic renewal alone is reckoned in the tens of millions. None of them left.

That is the whole point of drawing it this way. The chart's `pente` lane and its children are the bodies that were founded on this teaching between 1901 and 1916; this band is the same teaching arriving sixty years later in bodies that kept their bishops, their liturgies and their infant baptism and simply added it. On the rubric almost nothing moves, which is itself the finding: a movement can reach a hundred million people and change no cell of a body's row.

The unregistered churches

Ids

• tspm
• littleflock
• baptist
• presby
• methodist

When the Three-Self Patriotic Movement required registration in the 1950s, Wang Mingdao, Watchman Nee and a great many others declined, and were imprisoned. What grew out of that refusal is now estimated at anywhere between 36 and 115 million people, and nobody can narrow the range.

`asia.md` §2 argued it out as a lane and was right to: a body defined by having no roll, no name, no address and no founding date cannot be drawn by a chart that draws bodies, and a lane with a guessed number on it would be worse than none.

But a mark on `tspm` was the wrong primitive too, because it said the unregistered churches belong to the registered one, which is the single thing they are not. The band is what they actually are: something crossing the structure — Brethren assemblies from Nee's work, old Baptist and Presbyterian congregations that never re-formed, and a great deal that has no ancestry at all — for seventy years, without becoming a body.

The base communities

Ids

• rome

The Latin American bishops met at Medellín in 1968, and the comunidades eclesiais de base followed: small lay-led groups meeting to read Scripture together and to act on it, tens of thousands of them in Brazil alone by the 1980s.

On this chart's own criteria that is a move toward the pattern from inside Rome — lay people reading the text in a language they speak, in a group the size of a congregation — and it is marked on the `rome` lane at 1968 as a step back.

It has a band as well as a mark because it never became anything. It founded no church and took no name; its theological wing was disciplined through the 1980s; and the people kept leaving anyway, mostly to the Pentecostal lanes below. A single-lane movement is the limiting case of this primitive, and it is here to make the point that the band is not a claim about breadth — it is a claim about kind.

The apostolic church

The early divisions

Ids

• imperial
• donatist
• east431
• oriental

Prophecy and Arius

Ids

• montanist
• arian

East and West

Ids

• oriental
• orthodox
• rome
• east431

The East after the schism

Ids

• orthodox
• oldbeliev
• oriental
• ethiopian
• east431

Rome's Eastern wing

Ids

• rome
• eastcath
• orthodox
• east431

Bohemia and the chalice

Ids

• rome
• hussite

Before the Reformation

Ids

• waldens
• unitas

The Reformation

Ids

• rome
• anglican
• lutheran
• reformed
• anabaptist

Lutheran America

Ids

• lutheran
• lcms
• elca

The peace churches

Ids

• anabaptist
• brethren
• quaker

The English separations

Ids

• anglican
• congreg
• baptist
• presby
• methodist

Anglicanism goes global

Ids

• anglican
• tec
• nigeria

The Brethren and the rapture

Ids

• plymouth
• exclusive

The Baptist family

Ids

• baptist
• sbc
• primbap
• landmark

Where Congregationalism went

Ids

• congreg
• unitarian

Herrnhut and Wesley

Ids

• unitas
• methodist

Revival, holiness and race

Ids

• methodist
• christcon
• ame
• holiness
• salvarmy

Pentecost

Ids

• holiness
• pente
• cogic
• oneness
• cogcleve

Out of 1844

Ids

• sda
• cogsd
• wcg

Anglicanism divides again

Ids

• tec
• acna
• nigeria

Where Congregationalism ended

Ids

• congreg
• ucc

The Aladura

Ids

• cac
• celestial

The church moves south

Ids

• kimban
• zcc
• nigeria
• cogic

Brazil

Ids

• assembleia
• iurd

China

Ids

• tspm
• tjc

The church with no name

Ids

• plymouth
• littleflock

India: four churches into one

Ids

• csi
• anglican
• methodist

The return

Ids

• presby
• restore
• acappella

The movement divides

Ids

• restore
• acappella
• ccoc
• disciples

Inside the Churches of Christ

Ids

• acappella
• coc
• mutual
• nonclass
• onecup
• premill
• mainstream

Back into hierarchy

Ids

• mainstream
• icoc
• icc

Rome divides too

Ids

• rome
• oldcath
• sspx

Leaving to stand still

Ids

• oldcath
• pncc

The New Testament pattern

How far a body sits above the line is a claim, and this is the claim written down.

Thirty-one questions are put to every body on the chart. Each is answered from 0 — matching the New Testament pattern — to 4, furthest from it, against a published ladder saying what each rung means. The answers are weighted and summed. Authority and the terms of entry into Christ carry the most weight because they settle everything else; a body's name carries the least.

Not every question is the same kind of question. Where Scripture speaks, the practice itself is scored. Where it is silent on an incidental — how many cups the fruit of the vine is carried in, how the teaching of a congregation is arranged — the departure is not the choice but binding that choice on somebody else, and that is what is scored instead. Four questions are marked contested, because the two sides disagree about which kind they are; instrumental music is the largest of them, and a contested question is scored on this chart's reading with the sensitivity run below available to a reader who reads it otherwise. And where a question presupposes a practice a body does not have at all, it is left unscored rather than answered — a question about the mode of baptism has no answer for a body that does not baptize.

What the rubric found. Run independently of the placements already on this chart, it put the Roman Catholic Church at 71.8 against an authored 72, and disagreed with the chart in a dozen places — chiefly by drawing the ancient Eastern churches too near the line, since they avoided Rome's additions, which is not the same as avoiding addition. Those placements were corrected, and the chart's heights are now calibrated onto the rubric wherever the rubric is reliable enough to carry them. Rome now reaches the maximum on 17 of the 31 questions.

And the ordering does not rest on the organ. Drop all four contested questions — concede in full that instruments, the located preacher, institutional funding and apostolic succession are matters of judgment that should score nothing — and 52 of the 61 bodies move by two places or fewer, the median body not at all, and the furthest body on the chart is the same either way. The distances here are driven by baptism, authority, the priesthood, the ground of a man's standing, and bound doctrine.

The four newest questions were run before they were kept. How a man is justified, how he continues in Christ, whether apostolic authority continues in men, and what is done with a member overtaken in sin were added together, each with a published scriptural baseline behind it. Removing all four moves only 49 of the 61 bodies by two places or fewer — which is the test they had to pass: a question that adds roughly the same charge to everybody moves the field rather than ordering it, and this chart's axis is order. Removing any one of them leaves 54 to 61 of the 61 within two places, so none is carrying the chart alone.

The scores are authored judgements, not measurements. Distance sets order, not quantity. Every one of them is a single editable cell in the scoring file, and the file exists so the working can be checked rather than trusted.

The rule of faith

The apostolic word, now written, is complete and final.

The silence of Scripture

Speak as the oracles of God; go not beyond the things which are written.

Who Christ is confessed to be

God the Son, incarnate; distinct from the Father and the Spirit, and not less than either.

How a man is justified

The ground is never anything the man brought: justified freely by grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; not by works done in righteousness which we did ourselves. Faith is the means named, and the one faith the New Testament describes as assent only is the demons' — they also believe, and shudder. Both vocabularies are on the page: righteousness reckoned to him that worketh not, and the many made righteous. So are both halves of the verdict — a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law, and God will render to every man according to his works. Where those two stand to each other is where the traditions divide, and this ladder does not settle it: it scores what a body puts between a man and the verdict, and who holds it.

How a man continues in Christ

God's keeping is stated against every power outside the man — no one shall snatch them out of my hand; neither death nor life nor any other creature shall separate us; the Lord shall guard you from the evil one — and it is stated as running through faith: guarded by the power of God through faith. The promises carry conditions in the text itself: if so be that ye continue in the faith; if we hold fast firm unto the end. The warnings are addressed to Christians in the second person — take heed, brethren; let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall — and how a man lives is put to congregations in relation to the outcome: be not deceived, and such were some of you. Assurance is offered now, that ye may know that ye have eternal life; and the man who has fallen is sought, restored, and told he shall be made to stand. Jude says all of it in one letter: kept for Jesus Christ, keep yourselves in the love of God, able to guard you from stumbling. This ladder scores how much of that a body still preaches, and how hard it holds what it has put in its place.

The eldership

Elders and bishops are one office, plural, in each congregation.

Congregational autonomy

Oversight is of the flock which is among you; nothing outside binds it.

Clergy and laity

All believers are a holy priesthood; there is no sacerdotal order.

Whether apostolic authority continues in men

One qualification is stated for a place among the Twelve — to have companied with the Lord from the baptism of John to the day he was received up, and to be a witness of his resurrection — and no other is ever stated. The first apostle to die is not replaced. The apostles are the foundation of the building and the twelve names on the wall of the city, and what was revealed to them was revealed in the Spirit. What the New Testament directs in so many words to be committed onward is the teaching: the things which thou hast heard from me, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. Where a man's standing to minister is challenged, the evidence produced is the gospel he preached, the fruit of his work and the signs done among them; and every test the New Testament applies to a claimed ministry is doctrinal, moral or evidential.

Subject of baptism

Mode of baptism

Purpose of baptism

Unto the remission of sins; the point at which one is put into Christ.

When the Supper is kept

There is exactly one verse that names a day, a Christian assembly and the act in the same sentence: upon the first day of the week, when they were gathered together to break bread. The collection is ordered for the same day, and Paul says he gave that order to the churches of Galatia — so it is at least two regions' practice. No other day is ever named for it, and no other day is ever named for a church assembling at all. This ladder scores both of the things that one clause states — the day and the interval — and it scores them together, because they are stated together. Note its limit: where a body departs on both, the interval governs the rung and the day is named in the body's own entry. And note what is NOT scored here or anywhere: which day a congregation meets on otherwise. The only command to assemble, Hebrews 10:25, names no day, so a midweek class or a second service on any day is charged nothing.

Nature of the Supper

A memorial and a proclamation; the elements remain bread and cup.

Access to the Supper

The baptized partake, of both bread and cup, each proving himself. The text itself limits the table, and a body that keeps those limits is charged nothing for them: with a brother who walks disorderly, no, not to eat; and let a man prove himself, and so let him eat. A restriction is charged only where Scripture is against that restriction — where it sets a test the text does not set, puts another man's judgment where the text puts the communicant's own, or contradicts the text outright, as withholding the cup contradicts Drink ye all of it.

Music

Singing: speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody with the heart. Every reference to music among Christians in the New Testament is vocal, and the mutuality — "one to another" — is stated outright.

Acts added to the assembly without warrant

Teaching, singing, prayer, the Supper and giving are what the New Testament names when the church came together. This criterion scores what is added WITHOUT warrant. A practice carrying its own command — washing one another's feet (John 13:14-15), the holy kiss (Rom 16:16; 1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12; 1 Thess 5:26; 1 Pet 5:14), anointing the sick (Jas 5:14) — is not an addition and is not charged here, whatever one concludes about whether it binds today.

To whom prayer is offered

To the Father through Christ. One mediator.

Qualifications of overseers

The qualifications of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 are the test, and are applied.

Who leads the assembly

Men lead the assembly; women teach and serve within that.

Terms of membership

Confession of Christ and baptism. The Lord adds.

A member overtaken in sin

A brother in sin is gone after — alone first, then before one or two, then told to the church — and company is withdrawn only from one who will not hear it. Every passage names the same aim: that thou hast gained thy brother; that the spirit may be saved; count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother; rather forgive him and comfort him, lest he be swallowed up. The paragraph closes six verses later at seventy times seven. Score the ground of an exclusion, not the fact of it: a sin the New Testament names is charged here, an opinion Scripture is silent on is S6, and the object being another body rather than a member is H2.

Teaching bound that the NT does not teach

Nothing beyond the apostolic deposit is bound on anyone.

An ordinance of Christ omitted altogether

Baptism and the Supper were commanded and kept. Omitting one is not the same as performing it differently, and the questions about how are unanswerable where the thing is not done.

The name worn

A designation the New Testament uses.

Fellowship with others who confess Christ

Simply the church, in fellowship with all who are in Christ; neither a denomination nor an exclusive institution.

Whether the teaching can be checked

Each may bring a teaching and all may learn; and the teacher himself is examined against what was delivered before — the Bereans searched the scriptures daily to see whether Paul's own preaching was so, and Paul put himself under the same rule: though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel, let him be anathema.

Binding one cup on others

The vessel count is an incident of the act; binding it is the departure.

Binding the class arrangement

The arrangement of teaching is a judgment; binding it is the departure.

What the treasury is for

Every collection named in the New Testament is designated, and the designation is the same: the saints. The treasury supplies needy saints, under the congregation's own oversight. That much is not disputed; whether an institution may stand between the congregation and the work, and whether general benevolence is licensed, are the contested parts, and they are rungs 3 and 4.

Other opinion made a test of fellowship

Him that is weak in faith receive ye, yet not for decision of scruples.

Assemblies of God

The Assemblies of God in the United States, organized at Hot Springs in 1914 out of independent Pentecostal missions and churches: 3.1 million adherents in 12,651 churches (2025). Its rubric row IS the `pente` lane's own `scored` block — a general council over churches that call their own pastors and are bound to it in doctrine, credentialled ministers, tongues as initial evidence — so a lane here would measure the same thing the parent lane already measures.

It is also the founding member of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship (1989), whose 180-odd self-governing national councils count some 89 million adherents between them. That fellowship is not a church, and its number is not this body's.

Assemblies of God Media Kit (2025 statistics)

3,102,546 US adherents in 2025, the figure `adherents` takes; and the worldwide 88,866,189, the fellowship's

History of the WAGF — World Assemblies of God Fellowship

the fellowship's 1989 founding; it "does not keep statistics" of its own — its figures are compiled by AG USA World Missions

Church of Uganda

The third-largest Anglican province and a GAFCON member, drawn off `anglican` rather than off `nigeria`: the registry first recorded it under Nigeria on a comparative mention in that lane's note, but Uganda's own founding (1961) predates the Nigerian lane (1979) by eighteen years, and a body cannot descend from a lane that has not begun. Provincial autonomy is a jurisdictional arrangement, not a doctrinal one — the faith and orders are the Communion's, so the rubric row is unchanged and the distance is its parent's.

Membership is the 2024 census: 13,311,801 people (29% of Ugandans) identified with the Church of Uganda. The World Christian Database estimated 16,297,000 baptized members in 2020, which is the round 16 million the chart carried before the 2026-09-23 rulings; the census is newer and a count, and the chart takes census affiliation for `anglicanau` and `ireland` too.

National Population and Housing Census 2024, Final Report vol. 1 — Uganda Bureau of Statistics

13,311,801 identifying with the Church of Uganda (2024)

Church of Uganda — Wikipedia

the census figure, and the World Christian Database's 16,297,000 (2020)

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

Aka

• AME Zion

Formed by Black congregations in New York that ordained their own elder in 1820 and organized in 1821, for the same reason `ame` itself exists — exclusion from full standing in the white-controlled Methodist Episcopal Church. Same episcopacy, same Discipline, same infant baptism as `ame`: the rubric row is identical, so a second lane on the family's own founding grievance would measure nothing new.

Moravian Church in Tanzania

The largest concentration of Moravians on earth — 737,930 across seven provinces in the Unity's 2016 table (North, East, Rukwa, South, South West, Lake Tanganyika and West), more than the European and North American provinces combined — grown from mission work begun in 1891 into a self-governing province rather than out of any dispute with `unitas`. Its rubric row is `unitas`'s row: nothing about becoming Tanzanian changed the faith, liturgy or orders it carries.

Moravian Church in Tanzania — World Council of Churches member profile

the history of the provinces to 1986; its 'four provinces' predates the North, East and Lake Tanganyika provinces of 2005–07

Moravian Church — Wikipedia

the Unity's 2016 province table: the seven Tanzanian provinces sum to 737,930 (the Tanzanian mission areas sit inside an undivided 25,000 for all mission areas and are not added)

Most Moravians Live In Tanzania — GeoCurrents

the source for the finding that Tanzania alone holds more Moravians than the European and North American provinces combined

Chaldean Catholic Church

The chart's earliest division rejoining its own parent's rival: a 1552 party of the Church of the East entering communion with Rome, already carried as `east431`'s 1552 mark and as a parent edge on `eastcath` (`parents: ["orthodox", "rome", "east431"]`). Its distinctives are the ones `eastcath` already carries, so a lane here would spend a lane to say the same thing again about 3% of the people it represents.

Chaldean Catholic Church — Wikipedia

'As of 2018, it counted approximately 616,639 members globally', cited to the USCCB's 2018 Eastern Catholic statistics; replaces the undated ~640,000 (2026-09-23 rulings)

Shimun VIII Yohannan Sulaqa — Wikipedia

the 1552 election and 9 April 1553 consecration that entered communion with Rome — the division this record's whole finding turns on

Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod

Aka

• WELS

The most confessionally strict of the large Lutheran bodies, and the synod that broke fellowship with `lcms` in 1961 over the doctrine of church fellowship — how far cooperation with other Lutherans could go. That breach is a difference of degree on a criterion `lcms` already scores at 3, not a different position, so the rubric row does not move.

The connector at 1850 is not a split from Missouri. The synod was founded on its own that year by congregations in and around Milwaukee, with pastors trained by German mission societies; it entered fellowship with Missouri in October 1868 and joined it in the Synodical Conference of 1872. It hangs from `lcms` because that is the row it shares and the fellowship it ended in 1961.

Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod — Wikipedia

founded 1850 around Milwaukee; the October 1868 fellowship agreement with Missouri; the 1961 break

Hutterites

The Moravian community of goods begun under Jacob Wiedemann outside Nikolsburg in 1528, led by Jakob Hutter as chief elder from 1533: colonies practicing community of goods from Acts 2 and 4, 58,392 people in 544 colonies in North America (2024). The existing 1527 mark on `anabaptist` already states the chart's position on the practice — it describes rather than prescribes it, so there is nothing further to score — and a lane would have to sit level with its parent for the same reason the Amish one would.

Research Note: Hutterite Population and Colonies, 2024 — Journal of Plain Anabaptist Communities (Young Center, Elizabethtown College), 28 January 2026

the membership figure, 58,392 in 544 colonies (2024); read directly on 2026-10-27

History: Community of Goods — Hutterian Brethren

1528 under Jacob Wiedemann outside Nikolsburg; Hutter first seen in Austerlitz in 1529, chosen chief elder after 1533

Advent Christian Church

Aka

• Advent Christian Association

The Sunday-keeping, conditionalist half of the Millerite settlement, organized at Salem, Massachusetts in 1860 — the control case showing that conditional immortality and Sabbath observance travel independently of each other, since this body kept the one and not the other. At ~25,000 members its distance from `baptist` is small — no Sabbath, no prophetess, no investigative judgment — so a lane at nearly its parent's own row would buy narrative, not measurement.

Advent Christian Church — Wikipedia

Adventist denominations — Mid-Atlantic Christian University LibGuide

the only other source adventist.md lists for this body; a general survey, not a dedicated study

Christian Methodist Episcopal Church

Aka

• CME
• Colored Methodist Episcopal Church

Organized at Jackson, Tennessee on 16 December 1870 by forty-one former slaves — the more interesting of the AME/AME-Zion/CME trio because it was set off by the white Southern Methodist church rather than walking out on its own initiative. Same episcopacy, same Discipline, same infant baptism as `ame`: the rubric row is identical, so a third lane on the family's own founding grievance would measure nothing new.

CME Church History — Christian Methodist Episcopal Church

the church's own account of the 1870 Jackson, Tennessee founding — set off by the white Southern Methodist church, not a walkout

Christian Methodist Episcopal Church — Wikipedia

Church in Wales

Disestablished from the state in 1920 — the same disestablishment-not-division argument as the Church of Ireland below. The rubric scores no church-state criterion at all, so ceasing to be established is a rubric no-op: the row is `anglican`'s by construction.

Church of Ireland

Disestablished from the state in 1871 — disestablishment, not division: it never separated from the church's teaching or government. The rubric scores no church-state criterion at all, so the row is identical to `anglican`'s by construction.

The church itself is older than its lane: it dates from the Irish Reformation of 1536, and from 1800 it was joined to the Church of England as the United Church of England and Ireland until disestablishment took effect in 1871. The lane starts at 1871, when it began to govern itself again, as `wales` starts at 1920.

Membership is the two censuses of the island summed: 219,788 Church of Ireland in Northern Ireland (2021) and 124,749 "Church of Ireland, England, Anglican and Episcopalian" in the Republic (2022).

Church of Ireland — Wikipedia

the 1536 origin and the 1800–1871 United Church

Census 2021 Main Statistics for Northern Ireland: Religion — NISRA

219,788 Church of Ireland in Northern Ireland, 2021

Census of Population 2022 Profile 5 — Religion — Central Statistics Office

124,749 in the Republic, 2022

Elim

George Jeffreys' body, founded at Monaghan, Ireland in 1915 — the one non-American classical Pentecostal body in this group. It sits at or near the `pente` lane's own distance, so its row buys narrative rather than measurement. Its figure is weekly attendance (2018), about 50,000 in the UK and more than 300,000 overseas; Elim publishes no membership count.

One cell is open. Elim is known for holding its churches' property centrally — the question Jeffreys himself left over in 1939–40 — which would read B2 3 against `pente`'s 2 and make it a lane candidate. It has not been scored.

Evangelical Lutheran Synod

Aka

• ELS
• Norwegian Synod

The continuing minority of the old Norwegian Synod. When that synod merged with two other Norwegian Lutheran bodies in 1917 — the line that runs through the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the American Lutheran Church into `elca` — a group that would not join over fellowship without doctrinal agreement reorganised at Lime Creek, near Lake Mills, Iowa, on 14 June 1918. It never belonged to the Missouri Synod: it stood in fellowship with it inside the Synodical Conference, suspended that fellowship in 1955 and left the Conference in 1963, keeping fellowship with the Wisconsin Synod.

It hangs from `lcms` because that is the row it shares, not the body it came from. Its descent is Norwegian and runs nowhere near Missouri, and none of its ancestors is drawn. But on every cell its own statements can be read — a quia subscription to the Book of Concord, a synod advisory to autonomous congregations, men only in the pastoral office, fellowship bound on doctrinal agreement — it scores as `lcms` scores, and an offshoot is drawn off the lane whose row it is. About 15,000 members in some 120 congregations.

About — Evangelical Lutheran Synod

the church's own figures: 15,000 members in 120 congregations, founded 1918

Evangelical Lutheran Synod — Wikipedia

the descent this note corrects: the 1917 Norwegian merger, the 1918 reorganisation at Lime Creek, the 1955 suspension of fellowship with the LCMS

The Doctrine of the Church — Evangelical Lutheran Synod

the advisory synod over autonomous congregations — the B2 cell it shares with `lcms`

Global Methodist Church

Aka

• GMC

A 2022 conservative exit from the US-based `methodist` lane over the denomination's sexuality debate, already a mark on that lane. Its rubric row is `methodist`'s minus the sexuality question, which the rubric does not score, so a lane at the parent's own row would buy narrative, not measurement. (Over 7,000 congregations and 4,504 ministers, self-reported — the Christian Post, October 2025, as cited in February 2026 — is a congregation count, not an adherents figure, so `adherents` is null.)

Malankara

Aka

• Indian Orthodox
• Jacobite Syrian

The Indian churches' division is over the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Antioch — the same jurisdictional shape as the OCU and OCA rows below — not anything the rubric scores. (The Mar Thoma Syrian Church, in the same cell, divided over a genuinely different, Reformed-influenced position and would be rubric-distinct; it remains on the backlog, never tested, rather than in this harvest.)

National Baptist Convention of America

Aka

• NBCA

Divided from the National Baptist Convention over control of the publishing board in 1915 — not over anything the rubric scores. Its row today is `nbc`'s: a World Council of Churches member since 1955, which is fellowship and not government (the WCC "cannot legislate or act for its member churches"), so H2 1 as for the NBC; and no NBCA document could be read to move F2 off the family's 2. Re-parented from `baptist` to `nbc` in the 2026-09-23 rulings, when the NBC became a lane on that same H2 cell.

National Baptist Convention of America, Inc. — World Council of Churches

National Baptist Convention of America — Wikipedia

225,776 members in 389 churches (ARDA, 2020)

Open Bible

A classical Pentecostal body at or near the `pente` lane's own distance, "similar in doctrine and practice to the Assemblies of God": each congregation calls its pastor and owns its property, under bylaws that bind it to the body's Policies and Principles and require national consent before that property is sold — the leverage `pente`'s B2 of 2 scores. Its founders left Foursquare in 1932 over that body's ownership of local church property. It publishes no membership figure; the 2020 US Religion Census counts 31,068 US adherents in 242 congregations, and the "more than 150,000 worldwide" in circulation has no source.

Orthodox Church of Ukraine

Aka

• OCU

The largest live rupture in Orthodoxy since 1054 and still unresolved: a tomos of autocephaly granted 5-6 January 2019, already carried in `orthodox`'s 2018 mark. Its rubric row is identical to `orthodox`'s — the quarrel is over which patriarch a territory belongs to, not over anything the rubric scores — so a lane at the same distance would buy narrative, not measurement. It is a division rather than one of the churches the `orthodox` lane stands for, because Moscow and the churches that side with it do not recognize it and Moscow broke communion with Constantinople over it.

Autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine — Wikipedia

Orthodox Church of Ukraine receives the Tomos of Autocephaly, 6 January 2019 — UCC

the tomos this row's founding turns on

Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia

Aka

• ROCOR
• ROCA

An émigré jurisdiction formed in 1920 by Russian clergy fleeing the revolution, reunited with Moscow in 2007. A jurisdiction, not a doctrinal body, so no rubric distinction from `orthodox` is claimed — the same jurisdictional pattern as the OCU row. It is drawn as a division rather than counted among the churches the `orthodox` lane stands for (as the OCA is) because it was out of communion with Moscow for most of its life. Judged on its row, nothing moves: its separation was over the Soviet state's hold on the Moscow Patriarchate after Metropolitan Sergius's declaration of 1927, a question of government; its 1983 anathema against ecumenism adds one more anathema to a row whose G1 already reads multiple dogmas bound under anathema, and ROCOR did not make it a test of communion with the Serbian or Jerusalem churches.

United Methodist Church

Aka

• UMC

Already a mark, and it IS the `methodist` lane after 1968 — the 1968 merger of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren produced the body the lane itself now tracks, so its rubric row and the lane's are one and the same row. There is nothing here for a separate lane to measure that the parent does not already measure; the lane already is it.

Christian Reformed Church

Aka

• CRC
• CRCNA
• Christian Reformed Church in North America

In 1857 four congregations, about 130 families, left the Reformed Church in America's Classis of Holland in Michigan, led by elders and ministers from the churches of the 1834 Dutch Afscheiding; they named the use of hymns, open access to communion, lax preaching of grace, lodge membership and neglected catechism. It grew into the largest Dutch Reformed body in North America, and the URCNA left it in 1996 (`urcna`).

Re-tested on 2026-09-23, and its row is `rca`'s outright. Its Church Order opens every office to all adult confessing members who meet the biblical requirements, each congregation free to use it; that differs from `reformed`'s composite F2, and it is exactly what moved the RCA into a lane of its own. Everything else read — the Supper at least every three months and open to baptized members who come with faith, confessing membership as a commitment to the creeds, assemblies whose decisions are settled and binding — is the RCA's too. A body that left over strictness now stands where its parent stands. Its synods' rulings of 2022–2024 on sexuality are not scored, on `ucc`'s precedent. 189,753 members, about 1,000 congregations (2024).

Church Order and Its Supplements 2025 — Christian Reformed Church

Arts. 3, 59–60 and 81 — the cells compared with `rca`

Christian Reformed Church in North America — Wikipedia

the 1857 secession and 189,753 members (2024)

Pilgrim Holiness Church

The Holiness-descended half of the 1968 Wesleyan merger, formed from the International Holiness Union and Prayer League (1897) and several other Holiness associations. Reference works describe it as virtually identical in theology and very similar in government to the Wesleyan Methodist Connection — both connexional, non-episcopal, General-Superintendent-led — which is why its rubric row is `wmc`'s and not merely the wider Holiness family's. The merged body does not continue under this name; two 1968 secessions do — the Pilgrim Holiness Church, Inc. (of the Midwest) and the Pilgrim Holiness Church of New York — separate bodies aligned with the conservative holiness movement, not drawn here.

Pilgrim Holiness Church — Wikipedia

the two groups that seceded from the 1968 merger and still use the name, "not associated with the Wesleyan Church today"

History of The Wesleyan Church — Wesleyan Discipline

the denomination's own account of the two connexional, non-episcopal bodies as near-identical in theology and government — the finding this record's re-parenting to `wmc` rests on

The Wesleyan Church

Formed by the 1968 merger of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection and the Pilgrim Holiness Church, and it IS the `wmc` lane after that merger — its polity is still classified connectionalism today, General Superintendents and no bishops, exactly the government `wmc` established in 1843. The Pilgrim Holiness Church's people and institutions came into a body that kept `wmc`'s government, not the other way round. This hairline names the lane after 1968, as `umc` does for `methodist`; the lane's row is scored on this body as it is today, so the two are one measurement, not two.

Wesleyan Church — Wikipedia

Wesleyan Church — Britannica

History of The Wesleyan Church — Wesleyan Discipline

the 1968 merger and the still-connectionalism polity the "it IS the wmc lane" finding turns on

African Independent Pentecostal Church of Africa

Aka

• AIPCA
• AIPC

Kenya, 1929 — the Kikuyu female-circumcision controversy: the Church of Scotland mission resolved that any Christian not renouncing the practice would be suspended, and thousands of Kikuyu Christians left to found their own churches and schools, this among them. "Pentecostal" reached the name only in the 1940s, adopted for affiliation with the Pentecostal Evangelistic Fellowship of Africa to secure colonial legal recognition — a badge for the courts, not a description of 1929's doctrine, which was the Presbyterian mission's own. The division was national and disciplinary — who governs, and whether a cultural rite may be bound as a term of membership — not a departure the rubric's 31 questions read; no source obtained for this pass documents a baptism, Supper or government practice distinct from the mission it left.

Campaign against female genital mutilation in colonial Kenya — Wikipedia

the March 1929 Church of Scotland resolution to suspend any Christian who would not renounce the practice — the disciplinary act this division actually turned on

Resurrecting the African Independent Pentecostal Church — Journal of African History, Cambridge Core

National Association of Congregational Christian Churches

Aka

• NACCC

Formed by congregations that would not follow the 1957 merger into the United Church of Christ, and continuing `congreg`'s own row unmoved rather than a doctrinal branch off it: the NACCC binds no creed or confession on a member church — its own governing documents require no specific doctrinal position — and its regional associations hold no authority over members at all, which member churches can overrule by petitioned referendum. That is `congreg`'s A1 (no confession subscribed) and B2 (already the rubric's floor) with nothing added. Its sibling body from the same 1948-57 refusal, the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, binds a Statement of Faith its ministers must affirm without reservation and is drawn as its own lane (`cccc`) for exactly that reason.

National Association of Congregational Christian Churches — Wikipedia

the no-confession-bound, no-authority-over-members structure the R (unmoved) finding rests on

About the NACCC

American Baptist Association

Aka

• ABA
• General Association

Landmark Baptists organized at Texarkana in 1905 as the General Association, over the Southern Baptist Convention's move to make its mission boards standing, permanent bodies rather than local churches sending and controlling their own missionaries directly — the same local-church-primacy argument the Cotton Grove Resolutions had already made in 1851. It took its present name at the 1924 consolidation. Its own doctrinal statement affirms exactly `landmark`'s own tenets: the church is local and visible only, no universal or invisible church exists, and there has been "a continuous succession of Missionary Baptist Churches from the days of Jesus Christ down to this day." Tested against `landmark`'s own row, nothing moves: G1 and H2 are already at `landmark`'s ceiling for an unbroken-succession, one-true-church claim, and the 1905 dispute was over which body controls a mission board, not over any of the 31 questions the rubric reads. The institution the theology built, not a further step the theology took.

American Baptist Association | Christian denomination, evangelicalism, missionary work — Britannica

the 146,820-member figure this source (and `adherents` here) uses is a 2020 ASARB/ARDA estimate read from a search-engine summary, not a directly fetched page — a soft figure, flagged as such in baptist.md

The Landmark Controversy: A Study in Baptist History and Polity — Maranatha Baptist Seminary

the 1905 dispute over standing mission boards versus direct local-church control — what the split actually turned on

Baptist Missionary Association of America

Aka

• BMAA
• North American Baptist Association

Organized at Little Rock in 1950 as the North American Baptist Association, in protest at the American Baptist Association's practice of seating messengers who were not members of the churches that elected them — a dispute over voting rules and control of ABA-run seminaries, not over doctrine. It took its present name in 1969. Its own polity statement holds each state and local association autonomous, cooperating with but not controlled by the national body — `landmark`'s own local-church-primacy position, restated rather than moved. No criterion in `landmark`'s row is touched by a messenger-seating rule.

Baptist Missionary Association of America — Wikipedia

the messenger-seating and seminary-control dispute the 1950 split actually turned on

Baptist Missionary Association of America — Timeline Event, ARDA

the 234,334-member figure this source (and `adherents` here) uses is from 1997 — the most recent membership total found for this body, flagged as dated in baptist.md

Conservative Baptist Association

Aka

• CBAmerica
• Conservative Baptist Association of America
• Venture Church Network

Organized at Atlantic City in 1947 after the Northern Baptist Convention's foreign mission board appointed a theological modernist to the field in 1943 and then, in 1946, refused to let a competing conservative mission society operate within the Convention — the same modernist drift that produced the GARBC (1932) from the same Convention. But where the GARBC bound member churches to withdraw from anyone who would still fellowship with a modernist, the Conservative Baptist movement split again in the 1960s over exactly that question and took the other side: the "soft" position, willing to work with Billy Graham's cooperative evangelism despite the liberals on his platforms. `baptist`'s own S6 (an opinion strongly urged, not bound) and H2 already describe a body that neither claims exclusivity nor constitutionally bars cooperation — this body's own account of itself ("not a denomination. It has no power to make decisions for the churches") states the same thing `baptist`'s row already reads. Renamed Venture Church Network in 2019; ~1,200 churches is the only figure found, and no membership total accompanies it, so `adherents` is left null rather than substituting a congregation count for a headcount.

About — Conservative Baptist Association of America (Faithlife)

the 1943 mission-agency appointment and 1946 Northern Baptist Convention refusal — what the 1947 split actually turned on — and the body's own "not a denomination" self-description

Fundamentalism, Modernism, and the Dangerous Middle (Part 2) — SHARPER IRON

Conservative Baptist Association of America (CBAmerica) — usachurches.org

the only figure found is ~1,200 churches with no accompanying membership total, why `adherents` is null here

Converge

Aka

• Baptist General Conference
• BGC
• Converge Worldwide

Gustaf Palmquist organized the first Swedish Baptist church in America at Rock Island, Illinois, in 1852 (Converge itself dates its history "Since 1856"); the Swedish congregations that grew from it organized their own conference in 1879, named the Baptist General Conference in 1945 and Converge in 2015. The division is linguistic and ethnic — a Swedish-speaking immigrant conference, not a doctrinal branch off the English-speaking family — and its own confession affirms the same inerrancy, believer's baptism by immersion and congregational autonomy `baptist`'s row already scores. Radical Pietism supplied an emphasis on holy living, not a bound doctrine the rubric's 31 questions would newly score. No source found for this pass documents a baptism, Supper, government or ministry practice distinct from `baptist`'s own row; a claim that Converge's national office now supports women's ordination could not be corroborated against a formal denominational policy statement the way `abcusa`'s 1989 statement was, so F2 is left unmoved rather than asserted on a thin source.

About — Converge

the body's own dating, "Since 1856"; the chart keeps 1852, the first congregation, because no source reached says what 1856 marks

Converge (United States) — Wikipedia

the 1852/1879 founding as a linguistic and ethnic split, not a doctrinal one — what this division actually turned on

What is the Baptist General Conference? — GotQuestions.org

Women as Evangelical Leaders (But Not Pastors) — The Pietist Schoolman

checked for a women's-ordination finding parallel to abcusa's; ambivalent and no formal Converge-wide policy statement was found, which is why F2 is left unmoved rather than scored on this thin a source

Anglican Church of Kenya

An autonomous province since the Province of East Africa split into Kenya and Tanzania in 1970, with Festo Olang' its first archbishop. F2: women ordained priest from 1983/1990 and bishop from 2021 — `anglican`'s own rung, later by date, not by kind. G1: a founding GAFCON province holding the traditional marriage teaching without qualification. No criterion in the row differs from `anglican`'s.

Anglican Church of Kenya — Britannica

the 1970 provincial founding this row is scored against

What does the Anglican Church of Kenya believe about the ordination of women? — Britannica

Anglican Church in Kenya appoints first two women bishops — Episcopal News Service

Church of the Province of South Africa

Aka

• Anglican Church of Southern Africa
• ACSA

An autonomous province since Robert Gray's first Provincial Synod at Cape Town in 1870 — the same Colenso dispute that produced `anglican`'s own 1867 Lambeth mark. Renamed the Anglican Church of Southern Africa in 2006. F2: women ordained priest from 1992 (Nancy Charton, 5 September) and bishop from 2012 (Ellinah Wamukoya, the first on the African continent) — `anglican`'s own rung, later by date. G1: the province's own canon still reads one man and one woman, and its bishops declined formal same-sex blessings in 2023 and 2024 — more conservative than `anglican`'s note, not less. No criterion moves.

Membership is the church's own claim of 3–3.57 million across its provinces, taken at the low end; the 2001 South African census counted 1.7 million Anglicans in South Africa alone, and is not current.

Anglican Church of Southern Africa — Wikipedia

the membership figure: "claims 3–3.57 million members"

Robert Gray (bishop of Cape Town) — Wikipedia

the 1870 provincial synod this row is scored against

Episcopal News Service Press Release #92189 — women priests ordained, CPSA, 1992

Swaziland's Ellinah Wamukoya becomes Africa's first female bishop — Episcopal News Service

Southern Africa bishops OK prayers for same-sex couples, won't offer blessings, marriage — Episcopal News Service

Anglican Church of Australia

An autonomous province since the 1872 first General Synod of the dioceses of Australia and Tasmania (full legal autonomy 1962, present name 1981); markedly more diocesan than its siblings — a General Synod canon touching a diocese's order or property has no effect there until that diocese's own synod adopts it — but that distributes the same authority further down the one hierarchy every province has, not a different one. F2: women ordained priest from 1992 and bishop from 2008 (Kay Goldsworthy, Perth) — `anglican`'s own rung. G1 was checked closely: the Appellate Tribunal's 2020 ruling let the Diocese of Wangaratta alone bless same-sex civil marriages under an existing constitutional provision for diocesan-approved local forms of service, leaving the Fundamental Declarations and the national marriage doctrine untouched — one diocese of twenty-three, under a reading of existing law, and the rival GAFCON Australia jurisdiction it provoked is itself evidence the mainline province has not adopted the practice as its own. Left unmoved; the branch prose records the close call.

The membership figure is the 2021 census count of people identifying as Anglican (2,496,273, down almost a third from 2016) — census affiliation, not a parish roll.

Anglican Church of Australia — Wikipedia

the membership figure: 2,496,273 in the 2021 census

Governance — Anglican Church of Australia

the diocesan-adoption structure this row's B2 reasoning rests on

Proceedings of the First General Synod, Dioceses of Australia and Tasmania (1872) — Charles Sturt University Regional Archives

Wangaratta's same-sex wedding blessing "valid", Australia's highest Church court rules — Anglican Communion News Service

GAFCON Australia Launches Parallel Anglican Jurisdiction — The Living Church

Anglican Church of Canada

An autonomous province since the 1893 General Synod at Toronto (present name 1955). F2: women ordained priest from 1976 and bishop from 1994 (Victoria Matthews) — `anglican`'s own rung, earlier than England's. G1 is the closest call of the four bodies in this cell: the 2019 General Synod's marriage-canon amendment fell short in the Order of Bishops, and General Synod affirmed "local option" instead — dioceses may proceed on diverse readings of a canon that was not rewritten and is not required of any of them, the opposite of the written-into-the-canons/required-of-every-diocese test that actually moved `tec`'s G1 to 3. Left unmoved; the branch prose records the close call and the argument not made.

Membership is 294,931 on parish rolls (2022); the 1,447,080 baptized (2016) and the 1,134,315 census Anglicans (2021) are older or a different unit.

Anglican Church of Canada — Wikipedia

the membership figure: 294,931 on parish rolls (2022)

General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada — Wikipedia

the 1893 founding this row is scored against

Marriage canon amendment fails to pass at General Synod — Anglican Journal

the 2019 vote and the "local option" resolution G1 turns on

What the Anglican Church of Canada's same-sex marriage vote means for its future — Episcopal News Service

Ownership 'clearly vested in the diocese' — General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada

Brasil para Cristo

Aka

• Igreja Pentecostal O Brasil Para Cristo
• Brazil for Christ

Manoel de Mello, a former Assemblies of God convert, founded the church in 1956, after the vision of 1955 with which, the church's own national council says, 'it all began', building it through stadium healing crusades and two decades of radio broadcasts. The one real candidate for rubric movement is his 1969 decision to enter the World Council of Churches — active, formal fellowship with Catholic and mainline bodies almost unheard of for a Pentecostal denomination, which would read against `pente`'s own H2=3. But the rubric scores a living body as it stands today, not at a past high-water mark, and the church does not appear on the WCC's current member-church list for Brazil; the membership caused internal strife and did not last. No criterion in `pente`'s row is shown to differ at the present day, so the finding is a real, sourced episode that does not survive to a rubric distance.

Brazil for Christ Pentecostal Church — Wikipedia

Brazil: De Mello the Missionary — Christianity Today (26 April 1974)

the 1969 World Council of Churches entry, and the internal strife it caused

Igreja Evangélica Pentecostal O Brasil Para Cristo — Wikipédia (pt)

180,000 members in 2,300 congregations (Veja, c. 2014): the `adherents` figure

Conselho Nacional — O Brasil Para Cristo

'Fundada em 1956 pelo missionário Manoel de Mello… Tudo começou em 1955': the `from`

Tabela 137 — População residente, por religião (Censo 2010) — IBGE SIDRA

'Igreja o Brasil para Cristo': 196,665 in 2010

Iglesia Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús

Aka

• IAFCJ
• Apostolic Church of the Faith in Christ Jesus

Romana Carbajal de Valenzuela carried the Oneness "New Issue" across the border to Villa Aldama, Chihuahua, converting twelve family members on 1 November 1914 — a third independent arrival at the doctrine in the same three years as Arroyo Seco and Beijing, `latinamerica.md`'s own flagged coincidence. The church's own account dates its formal organization under a General Directorate to 1932, which is the `from` used here rather than the 1914 evangelistic origin — `oneness`'s own drawn lane begins in 1916, and 1914 would fire the chart's parent-precedes-child check for a body that in fact organized later. Tested against `oneness`'s own row, nothing moves: the same baptismal formula, the same tongues-as-evidence teaching, and — per the church's own statement — a theocratic-episcopal structure under that General Directorate, not visibly more or less concentrated than the family `oneness`'s B1/B2 already describe. The one genuine practice difference this pass found, foot washing kept as a standing ordinance alongside the Supper, has no criterion in the 31 that reads it — the same limit of the instrument `oneness`'s own note names for the doctrine of God itself.

Iglesia Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús — official site, "Nosotros"

the church's own account of its government (theocratic-episcopal, General Directorate, 1932) and its practices

Iglesia Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús — Wikipedia

Apostolic Assembly of the Faith in Christ Jesus — Wikipedia

the US sister body sharing this church's origin and confession

What We Believe — Apostolic Assembly of the Faith in Christ Jesus

Fraticelli

Aka

• Spiritual Franciscans

Condemned by John XXII in 1317-18 over apostolic poverty — the same objection Rome had raised against Waldo, from inside the order Rome created to answer him. They went further than a poverty dispute: per the Catholic Encyclopedia, they held that an immoral priest, or (after 1323) a pope they judged heretical, forfeits the power of orders, so "only their clergy could validly administer sacraments." That is Donatist in shape, but it is a dispute over WHO legitimately holds an office both sides affirm in the same kind — the same sacrificing priesthood, the same seven sacraments, the same worship, the same doctrine otherwise — not over what the office is or does. No criterion `06-DISTANCE-RUBRIC.md` reads moves: `rome`'s own row, unchanged, which is why this is drawn here rather than as a lane. Suppression ran long past the first condemnation: John of Capistrano's inquisitorial campaign (from 1426) reduced the sect to scattered remnants by 1466, with sporadic burnings reported to 1471.

Fraticelli — Wikipedia

Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), Fraticelli — New Advent

carries John XXII's 1317-18 condemnation and the Donatist-shaped forfeiture-of-orders claim the finding turns on — a Roman Catholic reference work describing a movement Rome itself suppressed, so its "carnal and corrupt"/"the true Church" framing is the encyclopedia's paraphrase, not a surviving Fraticelli text

Malabar Independent Syrian Church

Aka

• Thozhiyoor Church
• Anjoor Church

Mar Gregorios consecrated Kattumangattu Abraham as a rival bishop against the wishes of Mar Dionysius I in 1772; the new Metropolitan was expelled from Travancore and Cochin, fled to Anjur under the Zamorin of Calicut, and built his cathedral at Thozhiyoor. A high court verdict of 1862 confirmed the body as an independent church under its present name.

Its row is `oriental`'s row: the West Syriac Rite, the Qurbono in Syriac and Malayalam, Miaphysite Christology, a Metropolitan and his synod. The criteria a skeptical reader would name are `B1`/`B2`, who governs, and `H2`, what it says about its neighbors — and neither moves. It is governed as its parent is, and far from drawing a line against its neighbors it has spent two centuries consecrating for them. The division was over who held the see, not over anything the rubric scores.

It is `marthoma`'s consecrator: Thozhiyoor bishops raised Titus I Mar Thoma in 1894, which is what kept the Mar Thoma reform inside the Oriental Orthodox line of ordination even as it left it doctrinally. About 35,000 members in fifteen parishes and five chapels.

Malabar Independent Syrian Church — Wikipedia

the 1772 rival consecration, the 1862 high court verdict, the 1894 consecration of Titus I Mar Thoma, and the West Syriac Rite the row is scored against

About the Church — Malabar Independent Syrian Church

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil

Aka

• IELB
• Igreja Evangélica Luterana do Brasil

The Missouri Synod's Brazilian District from 1904, an independent church body from 1980, and now the LCMS's largest sister church and a member of the International Lutheran Council; about 243,000 members.

Self-government made it a body; it did not move its row. On every criterion the pages can read it is `lcms`'s: it subscribes the Book of Concord as the correct exposition of Scripture, reserves the pastoral office to men, holds that the office exists only on a congregation's call, and baptizes infants. Closed communion (S6) is not stated on the pages consulted and is the cell a later pass should confirm.

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil — Wikipedia

LCMS Brazilian District, independent 1980, ~243,093 members, ILC

Igreja Evangélica Luterana do Brasil — Wikipédia

Lutheran Church–Canada

Aka

• LCC

The Missouri Synod's Canadian congregations, federated under the LCMS from 1958 and self-governing from 1 January 1988: 44,790 baptized members (2023), in full altar and pulpit fellowship with the LCMS. Not the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, which is the ELCA's sister.

Self-government made it a body; it did not move its row. Its own account is that it has 'no substantial theological divisions from LCMS', and every cell the pages read is `lcms`'s: quia subscription, closed communion, men only in the ministry, and an advisory synod over self-governing congregations.

Lutheran Church – Canada — Wikipedia

founded 1988 from LCMS congregations; 'no substantial theological divisions from LCMS'; closed communion; 44,790 members (2023)

Structure — Lutheran Church–Canada

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Argentina

Aka

• IELA
• Iglesia Evangélica Luterana Argentina

Missouri Synod mission work from 1905, first in the Brazilian District and then an Argentine District of its own from 1926/27, and an independent church body from 1986: about 27,900 members in 231 congregations, and a member of the International Lutheran Council. Not the Evangelical Church of the River Plate, the Lutheran World Federation body in Argentina.

Self-government made it a body; it did not move its row. The cells the pages read are `lcms`'s: a confessional synod holding the Book of Concord, and congregational autonomy under an advisory synod.

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Argentina — Wikipedia

LCMS mission 1905, independent 1986, confessional, ILC, ~27,890 members

En qué creemos — Iglesia Evangélica Luterana Argentina

Ancient Church of the East

Aka

• Ancient Holy Apostolic Catholic Church of the East

The party that would not accept Patriarch Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII's reforms of March 1964 — the Gregorian calendar and a shortened Lent — nor the hereditary patriarchate, elected Mar Thoma Darmo catholicos-patriarch at Baghdad in October 1968. Its patriarchs have been elected by synod ever since. It took the Gregorian date of Christmas in 2010, but reunion talks failed in 2015 and again in 2022, on the calendar and on the make-up of the two hierarchies, and it has elected two patriarchs of its own since.

Its rubric row is `east431`'s, unchanged. By its own account it baptizes infants by immersion at forty days, gives communion in both kinds, invokes the saints, uses no icons but the cross, and confesses the Christology of the Church of the East. The division is a real one — two patriarchates out of communion — but it is over a calendar and a succession, which the parent lane already carries in its 1964 and c. 1450 marks, not over anything the rubric scores differently.

Sacraments — St Zaia Cathedral (Ancient Church of the East), Sydney

the church's own statement of its sacraments, which the row is read on

Our History — St Zaia Cathedral

"According to synodical rules the Patriarch is elected"

Ancient Church of the East — Wikipedia

1964, 1968, the 2010 Christmas date and the 2022 failure of reunion

Farewell to Mar Addai II — Fides

Macedonian Orthodox Church – Ohrid Archbishopric

Aka

• Macedonian Orthodox Church
• Archbishopric of Ohrid
• MOC-OA

Autonomous within the Serbian church from 1959, it proclaimed autocephaly unilaterally in 1967, was condemned as schismatic, and stayed out of communion with every canonical church for 55 years, until Constantinople received it on 9 May 2022 and the Serbian church granted a tomos on 5 June 2022. About 1.35 million members. The quarrel was over who governs the church in Macedonia, not over anything the rubric scores: the theology, the Byzantine Rite and the synodal episcopate are `orthodox`'s own, so the row is its parent's unchanged. It hangs from `orthodox` because the Serbian church it left is one of the churches that lane stands for; unlike them, it spent 55 years out of communion, which is why it is drawn as a division rather than counted as a unit.

Macedonian Orthodox Church — Wikipedia

1959 autonomy within the Serbian church, the 1967 unilateral autocephaly condemned as schismatic, 55 years unrecognised, and recognition in May–June 2022

Macedonian Orthodox Church — OrthodoxWiki

Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate

Aka

• UOC-KP
• Kyivan Patriarchate

Metropolitan Filaret's see declared autocephaly against Moscow in 1992 and was recognized by no Orthodox church for 26 years. By adherents it was the largest Orthodox body in Ukraine, 44% of the Orthodox before 2018, and on 15 December 2018 it dissolved into the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The quarrel was over which patriarch Ukraine belongs to, the same shape as the OCU it became, and nothing the rubric scores departs from `orthodox`. A remnant reclaimed under Filaret on 20 June 2019, with under 1,500 members and recognized by no one, is not drawn. No membership figure is carried: the only current one belongs to that remnant.

Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate — Wikipedia

the 1992 unilateral autocephaly, non-recognition, the 2018 dissolution into the OCU, the 2019 remnant and its membership

Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate — OrthodoxWiki

Orthodox Church of Ukraine — Wikipedia

Anglican Church of Tanzania

Aka

• ACT
• Kanisa la Anglikana la Tanzania
• Church of the Province of Tanzania

A self-governing province since 1970, when it seceded from the Province of East Africa and that province divided into Kenya and Tanzania — the same event that founds `ack`, its sibling. It was the Church of the Province of Tanzania until 1997. Twenty-eight dioceses, 27 on the mainland and one on Zanzibar, under an archbishop who is both metropolitan and primate; the three orders of deacon, priest and bishop; a local variant of the Book of Common Prayer. F2: eight dioceses now ordain women priests, Tabora the latest in 2024 — `anglican`'s own rung, not a different one. In 2006 it declared itself in "impaired communion" with the Episcopal Church, and it is a GAFCON and Global South member; fellowship moved, and no criterion in the row did. Membership is given as 2.5 million (2002), 2 million (2016) and 3,318,000 (2017); the latest is carried.

Anglican Church of Tanzania — Wikipedia

the 1970 secession from the Province of East Africa; metropolitan primate; women priests in eight dioceses; the membership figures

Anglican Church of Tanzania — official site

Anglican Church of Rwanda

Aka

• Église anglicane du Rwanda
• Itorero Angilikani mu Rwanda
• Province de l'Eglise Anglicane au Rwanda (PEAR)
• Province of the Episcopal Church of Rwanda

A self-governing province of the Anglican Communion since 7 June 1992, when seven dioceses formed the Province of the Episcopal Church of Rwanda under Archbishop Augustin Nshamihigo. Before that its dioceses sat in the Province of Rwanda, Burundi and Boga-Zaire, out of a Church Missionary Society mission begun in 1914. Thirteen dioceses today, under an archbishop who is both metropolitan and primate; deacons, priests and bishops; a local variant of the Book of Common Prayer. F2: women may be ordained deacon and priest but not bishop — `anglican`'s own rung, which turns on women serving as elders, not on the episcopate. It is a GAFCON province and founded the Anglican Mission in the Americas, which became part of ACNA; that is fellowship, and no criterion in the row moves. "Over one million" in 2025 (the infobox gives 1,500,000).

Anglican Church of Rwanda — Wikipedia

the province formed 7 June 1992; metropolitan primate; women deacons and priests, not bishops; over one million in 2025. The History section carries a no-citations banner

Anglican Church of South America

Aka

• Iglesia Anglicana de Sudamérica
• Province of the Southern Cone of America
• Iglesia Anglicana del Cono Sur
• Anglican Province of the Southern Cone

A self-governing province since 1981, when the dioceses of Argentina, Northern Argentina, Peru and Bolivia, Chile and Paraguay came together; until 1974 they had been missionary dioceses under the Archbishop of Canterbury's metropolitical oversight. It was the Province of the Southern Cone of America until September 2014, and Chile left in 2018 to become a province of its own. About 35,000 members, most of them in Argentina; a GAFCON province. F2: the province has opposed women priests on grounds of headship, but Bolivia ordained a woman priest in 2015 and Uruguay followed the same year — a diocesan option, `anglican`'s own rung, as on `acna`. Its largest diocese, Argentina, receives the Thirty-Nine Articles and the 1662 book as its standard, as `anglican` does (that statement is one diocese's, and its page is not carried here because it is served over http). No criterion in the row differs from `anglican`'s.

Anglican Church of South America — Wikipedia

formed 1981; 35,000 members; renamed 2014; women priests in Bolivia and Uruguay from 2015

Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland

Aka

• Kościół Ewangelicko-Augsburski w Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej

The Lutheran church of the Polish lands since the Reformation (its first Lutheran dean was called to Breslau in 1523): about 61,000 members (2018), the largest Protestant body in Poland, governed by a House of Bishops, a synod and a consistory, and a member of the Lutheran World Federation. It has ordained women as pastors since 2022.

It is one of the national churches the `lutheran` lane is made of, and it never divided from that family. Its women's ordination is the family practice the lane's 1970 mark already carries, so nothing it practices moves the lane's row.

Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland — Wikipedia

Reformation origin, episcopal-synodal structure, 61,217 adherents (2018), women ordained 2022

Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland — Wikidata

Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovakia

Aka

• ECAV
• Evanjelická cirkev augsburského vyznania na Slovensku

The only Lutheran church in Slovakia: 286,907 members in 326 congregations, organized in 1918 when Austria-Hungary broke up, persecuted after 1948, and given a new constitution in 1993. It ordains women and is a member of the Lutheran World Federation.

It is the Lutheran family's national church in Slovakia, organized along a new border rather than divided from anything, and nothing it practices departs from the `lutheran` lane beyond what the lane's own marks carry.

Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovakia — Wikipedia

established 1918; the only Lutheran church in Slovakia; LWF; women ordained; 286,907 members

Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovakia — Wikidata

Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Denmark

Aka

• Church of Denmark
• Folkekirken
• Danish People's Church

The Danish state church since the Reformation of 1536: about 4.2 million members (70% of the population, 2026), governed by the monarch and Parliament. It has ordained women since 1948, and its priests may marry same-sex couples at their own discretion.

It is one of the national churches the `lutheran` lane is made of, and never divided from it. Its establishment is what the lane's 1555 mark draws and its women's ordination is on the 1970 mark.

Church of Denmark — Wikipedia

Reformation of 1536; state government; women ordained since 1948; 4,217,476 members (January 2026)

Church of Denmark — Wikidata

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland

Aka

• Suomen evankelis-luterilainen kirkko

Part of the Church of Sweden until 1809, when Finland passed to Russia and it became a distinct state church under the Grand Duchy: about 3.5 million members (2024), a member of the Porvoo Communion and the Lutheran World Federation.

It is a national unit of the `lutheran` lane, separated from Sweden by a border, not by a practice. The pages show no F1 departure: its 2010 decision allows prayers after a civil same-sex union, and the pages show it neither marrying same-sex couples nor ordaining clergy in same-sex unions.

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland — Wikipedia

part of the Church of Sweden until 1809; 3,508,082 members (2024); 2010 decision on prayers after civil unions

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland — Wikidata

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland

Aka

• Church of Iceland
• Þjóðkirkjan

The national church of Iceland since the Reformation the Danish crown enforced in 1540: about 223,000 members (2025). Its bishops were consecrated by Danish bishops until 1908, and it has had a woman bishop since 2012.

It is a national unit of the `lutheran` lane and never divided from it; its women's ordination is the family practice the lane's 1970 mark carries.

Church of Iceland — Wikipedia

1540 Reformation, Danish consecrations until 1908, 222,888 members (2025)

Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil

Aka

• IECLB
• Igreja Evangélica de Confissão Luterana no Brasil

The German-immigrant Lutheran church of Brazil, formed from the regional synods that grew out of the settlements of 1824: 634,286 registered members (about 1.02 million adherents), a member of the Lutheran World Federation since 1952. It ordains women, and neither marries same-sex couples nor ordains clergy in same-sex unions.

It is one of the Lutheran family's national churches, not a division from it. It is not the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil, the Missouri Synod's daughter, which is drawn separately off `lcms`.

Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil — Wikipedia

origin 1824, a merger of synods, LWF 1952, women ordained, 634,286 members

Lutheran Church in Chile

Aka

• ILCH
• Iglesia Luterana en Chile

Twenty-three bilingual German and Spanish communities that separated from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chile (IELCH) in 1975 over its pastors' and bishops' political stance under Pinochet; a member of the Lutheran World Federation since 1991. No membership figure is given.

The division was political and personal. Both churches stayed in the Lutheran World Federation, and nothing the rubric scores moved; it is small, and one of the family's national churches.

Lutheran Church in Chile — Wikipedia

the 1975 political separation from the IELCH; LWF 1991; 23 communities

Confesión de Augsburgo — Iglesia Luterana en Chile

Bolivian Evangelical Lutheran Church

Aka

• Iglesia Evangélica Luterana Boliviana
• Iglesia Evangélica Luterana en Bolivia

Grown from the World Mission Prayer League's mission of 1938, and under full Bolivian control from 1972: about 8,500 baptized in 107 congregations, the largest Amerindian Lutheran church in South America.

It is a national Lutheran church that never divided from the family, one of the churches the `lutheran` lane already stands for, and nothing in the sources moves a criterion.

Bolivian Evangelical Lutheran Church — Wikipedia

constituted 1972, governance by assembly, 8,526 baptized

La I.E.L.B. y su Historia — IELB

Documentos Confesionales — IELB

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Colombia

Aka

• IELCO
• Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de Colombia

A national Lutheran church with its seat in Bogotá, led by an obispo presidente, and a member of the Lutheran World Federation since 1966: about 2,100 members (LWF, 2023). Its beginning is the Lutheran mission that settled in Boyacá from 1938 and gathered in Bogotá at the end of 1948; the year it was constituted as a church has not been found, and 1938 is the mission's date.

It is a national Lutheran church that never divided from the family, a unit of the `lutheran` lane, and nothing in the sources moves a criterion.

Iglesia Evangélica Luterana de Colombia

its women's and youth ministry pages: the missionaries' evangelistic work, and the move to Bogotá at the end of 1948

LWF Membership Statistics 2023 — The Lutheran World Federation (PDF)

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Colombia — Wikipedia

Evangelical Lutheran Church in Congo

Aka

• Église évangélique luthérienne au Congo
• Evangelical Lutheran Church of Zaïre

A national Lutheran church of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, once called the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Zaïre: about 122,000 members, a member of the Lutheran World Federation since 1986. Its founding is dated only approximately, to about 1960.

It is a unit of the `lutheran` lane, and no page consulted describes a practice that would move it.

List of Lutheran denominations — Wikipedia

c. 1960, 122,055 members (LWF table)

Evangelical Lutheran Church in Congo — Wikipedia

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ghana

Aka

• ELCG
• Lutheran Church Ghana

Established in 1958 by Missouri Synod missionaries: about 6,550 baptized in 12 congregations and 108 preaching stations, and a member of the International Lutheran Council. It joined the Lutheran World Federation in 2004 and later left; the sources give no date or grounds for leaving.

It was planted rather than divided, so it is a unit of the `lutheran` lane, and no source gives a practice that moves a criterion. Why it left the Lutheran World Federation is the open question, and the reason this entry is provisional.

Ghana — International Lutheran Council

established 1958 by LCMS missionaries; 6,553 baptized

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ghana — Wikipedia

India Evangelical Lutheran Church

Aka

• IELC
• Lutheran Church India
• Missouri Evangelical Lutheran India Mission

Grown from the Missouri Synod's India mission of 1894/5 and registered as an independent church in 1959: about 115,000 baptized in 764 congregations and three synods (Ambur, Nagercoil and Trivandrum), in altar and pulpit fellowship with the LCMS.

It was planted rather than divided, and it belongs to the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches as well as the International Lutheran Council, fellowships the LCMS does not keep. It is a national unit of the `lutheran` lane, and no source moves a criterion.

India Evangelical Lutheran Church — Wikipedia

LCMS mission 1894/5, independent 1959, ILC + LWF + WCC, 115,000 baptized

Mexican Lutheran Church

Aka

• Iglesia Luterana Mexicana
• ILM
• Lutheran Church Mexico

The American Lutheran Church's mission of 1947 became a church ten years later, in 1957, the year it joined the Lutheran World Federation: about 1,200 to 1,500 members in 11 congregations. It has ordained women since 2009.

It is a national Lutheran church that never divided from the family, a unit of the `lutheran` lane. Its 1960s division produced the Lutheran Synod of Mexico (LCMS-aligned) and the IELC (WELS-aligned), which are separate bodies and not this entry.

Lutheranism in Mexico — Wikipedia

the ALC mission 1947, the ILM founded ten years later, women ordained 2009, and the separate origins of the SLM and IELC

Mexican Lutheran Church — LWF

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Paraguay

Aka

• Iglesia Evangélica Luterana del Paraguay
• IELPA

Founded in 1983: about 4,100 members, a member of the International Lutheran Council and a partner church of the Missouri Synod.

It was planted rather than divided, so it is a unit of the `lutheran` lane, and no source gives a practice that moves a criterion. The membership figure is from a list retrieved in 2018, the only one available.

List of Lutheran denominations — Wikipedia

founded 1983, 4,079 members (ILC section)

El Libro de la Concordia — IELPA (archived)

Paraguay — LCMS partner church bodies

Evangelical Lutheran Church in Peru

Aka

• Iglesia Evangélica Luterana en el Perú
• Deutschsprachige Evangelisch lutherische Kirche in Peru
• Christuskirche

Founded in Lima in 1924 by German pastors working with the Evangelical Church in Germany, and a member of the Lutheran World Federation since 1957; it worships in German and Spanish. No membership figure is given.

It is a national Lutheran church, a unit of the `lutheran` lane, and nothing in the sources moves a criterion. Not the Evangelical Lutheran Church – Peru of Arequipa (Norwegian Lutheran Mission, 1978, independent 1995), a separate body.

Evangelical Lutheran Church in Peru — Wikipedia

1924, Lima, German pastors with the EKD, LWF 1957, Christuskirche

Evangelical Lutheran Church – Peru — Wikipedia

Lutheran Church of Rwanda

Aka

• Itorero Ry' Abalutheri Ry' Urwanda
• Église luthérienne du Rwanda
• LCR

Founded in 1995 by Rwandan refugees returning from Tanzania after the genocide: about 8,000 people in 60 mostly rural congregations under a bishop, and a member of the Lutheran World Federation since 2002.

Its congregations are led mainly by evangelists who are not ordained, but as a stage toward ordination, so B3 does not move. It is a national Lutheran church, a unit of the `lutheran` lane. (Wikipedia gives 1994 as its founding; the bishop, quoted in the Living Lutheran article, gives 1995.)

Lutheran Church of Rwanda Hopes New Seminary Can Support Growing Faith — Living Lutheran

formed 1995; 8,000 in 60 congregations; evangelists and ordination

Lutheran Church of Rwanda — Wikipedia

Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania

Aka

• ELCT
• Kanisa la Kiinjili la Kilutheri Tanzania

The second-largest Lutheran church in the world, about 8.5 million members (LWF, 2023), formed on 19 June 1963 by merging the seven churches of the Federation of Lutheran Churches in Tanganyika (1938), which grew from German missions begun in 1887. A presiding bishop leads 28 dioceses.

It is a national Lutheran church that never divided from the family, the clearest case of a unit of the `lutheran` lane, and its polity (a presiding bishop over diocesan bishops) is the composite's.

Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania — Wikipedia

formed by merger on 19 June 1963; presiding bishop and 28 dioceses; modified episcopal polity

Lutheran World Federation — Wikipedia

Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Albania

Aka

• Albanian Orthodox Church
• Orthodox Church of Albania
• Kisha Ortodokse Autoqefale e Shqipërisë

Autocephaly declared at the Congress of Berat in 1922 and recognized by Constantinople in 1937; about 500,000–550,000 faithful in 909 parishes, revived after 1991. It is one of the self-governing churches the `orthodox` lane is made of, in full communion with the rest, not a division from it, and nothing the rubric scores departs from the family: an archbishop-primate with a Holy Synod, and the Byzantine Rite.

Albanian Orthodox Church — Wikipedia

1922 Berat, 1937 recognition, full communion with the other Orthodox churches, 500,000–550,000 faithful

Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa

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