Matt, I hope you understand just how amazing this series was. A family tree of Christian denominations is something that people with an interest in Christian history have wanted for a very long time, and you've put together something that is more thorough and more accurate than anything else that has been done before! I know this wasn't easy, but thank you for all your work on this. I look forward to seeing your future videos on the family trees of other religions.
Right? It pains me to see the comments immediately begging for the next chart when this is genuinely a monumental development in religious education. (that being said, a Buddhism chart would be absolutely sick...)
I suspect that the Universities of Oxford or Harvard or Paris have Matt's entire channel beat hands down; However, I am equally sure that most people won't set foot on the campuses of the Universities of Oxford, Harvard, or Paris and therefore wouldn't know the names of the library buildings and would have a challenge tracking down the last time someone made a reasonably comprehensive artifact cataloging the information. Certainly it is at least a new convenience to have this on RUclips in the format it is in as helpful as the creation of the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings epics are for people who just lack as much access to primary sources and the ability to parse them quickly. I would bet that the US Census Bureau documents up to 10 times as many religions. I would bet a great deal of money that nobody wants to read the version used by the US census bureau as it is most likely far too boring and confusing to understand. This chart certainly is incredibly helpful but probably not unique. I would honestly be a little frightened if genuine leaders of world religions did not have access to better ones with the original recordings of when certain groups were identified to exist and given names. This version is certainly what you would put in a classroom for new students though. Mr. Baker I am very curious how exactly you did the research for this one. Was it truly as simple as Wikipedia? If it is that easy..... Then you are very good for being the one to bother to simply knock it out, but it would be slightly embarrassing if it just about always could have been done for the last 10 years only nobody ever bothered before. I think it must have been more than Wikipedia.
@@KalebPeters99 I would say you would have to include Yoga and Hinduism on that chart ... perhaps even Taoism, because they share a lot of spiritual ideas and lineage.
I really appreciate the breakdown of Rabbinic Judaism at the end, along with the explanation of how Jews that are atheists are still considered Jews by those who believe in God. For some reason the tribalism of Judaism as the reason for that had never occurred to me.
Yeah I had wondered about the comparisons between Jewish atheists and Messianic Jews, and it even seemed to me that Jewish Buddhists were more accepted by other Jews than Messianic Jews were. But when he explained that Judaism is defined by not being Christian, it started to make sense
Matt's explanation was not quite correct. Unlike Christianity and Islam, Judaism is not a universal religion. Judaism is a tribal religion, meaning that Judaism is the religion of the Jews. That is, the Jews are a people (or a nation, or an ethnicity) that has its own unique religion -- the two go together. A Jew who converts to another religion loses his or her status as a Jew by faith, but maintains his or her status as a Jew by birth, albeit as a Jew living in sin and thus outside the community (or tribe) of Jews -- in other words, as a functional gentile and has the same status as any other gentile. Conversely, a gentile who converts to Judaism not only takes on the faith of the Jews, but gains status as a member of the Jewish people and thus is no longer a gentile.
Someone who is born Jewish, but becomes a Messianic Jew, is still considered Jewish in the Jewish Orthodox tradition. They're seen as apostates and non-believers, but still as a person with a Jewish soul. They're often seen as less educated Jews (that is, less knowledgable about their own Jewish religion and tradition) who were tricked into becoming Christians by the non-Jewish members of Messianic Judaism, so much more of a sad situation than anything else. So not quite what UsefulCharts said. But his point about Judaism of all denominations as a tribal religion defining itself in part as in opposition to Chrisitianity is very much true. That is why culturally it is much more acceptable to be a Jewish atheist or a Buddhist Jew.
@@tomtomtrent Jews who converted to Buddhism, are no longer Jews. Even the very fee Jews that practice some aspects of Buddhism, does not believe in the Buddhist gods, and thus, are Jews.
This is such a massive accomplishment. I'm sure not everyone is 100% happy with the end result, but I think you've walked the fine line perfectly here. You've included as much as you could, within reason, and without too much editorializing. And you've taken audience advice/criticism along the way and let it generate revisions and guide the direction of the project. Congratulations on a job well done.
UsefulCharts, can you please make a video on the family tree of not only Muslim denominations (Sunni, Shia, Ibadi), but also Muslim madhhabs (schools of thought, such as Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, etc). Thank you very much.
Excellent work. The one thing I would've liked to see included is the Manichaeism religion (unrelated to mandaeism). Manicheaism is a religion founded in 3rd century Iran that incorporates Christian, Pagan, Zoroastrian and Buddhist philosphies and considers the prophet Mani to be the final prophet after Zoroaster, Buddah and Jesus. At its height it spread from Western Europe to China and was a major competitor to Christianity. Today it is reportedly still discretely practiced in a couple of villages in Fujian, China with a surviving active temple in the village of Cao'an. I can't fault your work though, this poster is excellent, I'll just draw it on my copy with a pen.
me too. it was very brave of Mr Baker to take this sort of thing on, and I can only imagine the scrutiny of the comment section has been arduous, and ongoing
Even if Scientology is real, it starts and descends from L. Ron Hubbard not Jesus Christ. Thus it would make more sense to refer to it as a sect of Hubbardism not Christianity. I was going to suggest Xenuism, but from what I understand, the bulk of Scientologists are at levels below that teaching.
Something people need to understand about phenomena like Scientology is that if you're in some Western initiatic esoteric movements like the Golden Dawn, when you get to a certain grade your work is to create your own cult, religion or sect. L. Ron was a member of one or two (can't remember which) and after a certain point of navy work and terrible science fiction, up pops Dianetics. I have to wonder how many more of these dodgy modern cults are a product of the same process. I was just struck by mention of how you would only be taught about Xenu at a certain level of initiation; that revealing-different-'truths'-to-members-as-they-ascend pattern is absolutely typical of initiatic orders and secret societies.
This is your best work yet. I've looked forward to every episode and really liked how you used feedback from viewers along the way. I also really liked exploring the more recent sects, as I've learned the basics of early church schisms and mainline protestant denominations, but I knew nothing of modern African and Asian churches.
I would appreciate a similar coverage of the Eastern faiths (Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, etc). This Christian series was incredibly insightful and well-done.
A lot of Eastern faiths did not have clear-cut, easily distinguished denominations though. For instance, whether the Celestial Master Daoism or the Great Peace Movement was the initial Daoist group - these two had very different theologies regarding ways of redemption - is still a matter of scholarly debate.
Not according to the professor of Hinduism at Cambridge. Until the 19th century, adherents of those various religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikh, and Jainism) did not tend to label themselves as in opposition to each other, but "perceived themselves as belonging to the same extended cultural family." Hindus: their religious beliefs and practices, Julis Lipner, (1998)
As a traditional Jewish person living in a Chrisitan-majority country, I really enjoyed your series on Christian denominations. I learned a HUGE amount, and I feel like I can better understand the history. Way more helpful than the history I learned from going to public schools my entire childhood. Very excited for the future family trees of religions videos! Now that the chart is done, I wonder if you could do a shorter summary video of Christianity hitting the major points. I think it would be incredibly popular.
It's strange how Christianity loves to splinter into more and more sects - often over seemingly petty differences. Imagine is Jews behaved this way in history? A Hasid quarrelling with the Karaite over a mitzvah? ... Okay, well perhaps that's entirely conceivable. Lol But there's almost always this attitude in judaism that "a Jew is a Jew" - reform or orthodox
This series and it's corresponding poster has to be the best thing you've done so far. The amount of research and comprehensiveness that has gone into these timelines is just brilliant. I've collected various historical timeline posters in the past, but this one is going to be front and centre of my collection. Well done.
It really is a fantastic project! BTW if anyone is interested in these earliest Unitarian movements based in Eastern Europe mentioned at 2:15, search for Polish Brethren and the Unitarian Church of Transylvania.
HISTORICALLY for the IGLESIA ni CRISTO in the Philippines: their Founder Felix Manalo was a former member of the Independent Church of Christ/ Christian Churches (Stone-Campbell Movement) in the Philippines introduced by American Missionaries around 1904; then around 1914-ish he (Felix Manalo) broke away from the group/ teachings and started a different "Denomination" where they don't believe in the Trinity, erected cathedrals you normally see around the Philippines, and then declared himself as "Sugo ng Diyos" which means "(The Last) Messiah/messenger of God" based on Isaiah 43:5 (literal interpretation of Messenger from the East) which is way off the teachings of the original Churches of Christ/ Christian Churches (Restoration Movement). Thank you UsefulCharts! Keep it up!
A chart of the different divisions/sects within Hinduism would be interesting as well since it's hardly talked about in the West; we tend to lump all Hindus under one umbrella but there's so much diversity it's insane. The chart might be absolutely huge though
Yeah from my understanding, Hinduism isn’t so much a unified religion as it was several related religions that were grouped together by the British because they weren’t Christian, Muslim or Buddhist. Even the name pretty much just means “religion of India.” Maybe that’s not completely correct, but I think a video would be good to help others learn
@@tomtomtrent've heard that some Hindus even consider Buddhism to just be one of the many branches of Hindu philosophy. I think they have more of an attitude to religion of not finding what's the absolute truth in the universe but finding the philosophy that feels true to you so they tolerate a lot of different sects
@@SirBenjifuldefinitely would love to see this, especially considering they often influenced each other at different times in different ways. would be a very technical video if done in depth, but i’m sure it would be great
Fabulous job! Thank you for being so clear in showing the connections and the differences between denominations. And thank you for including Unitarian-Universalism! Even though we aren't exactly Christian now, our roots were.
As a Roman Catholic. I appreciate you being able to do what you did with this video. Thank you for showing the world a great historical background of Christianity. God be with you and his children. 😊
As a Roman Catholic this series of videos has been kinda like being the first one in class to do my presentation and enjoying watching everyone else do theirs later.
I've never in the past been particularly interested in religious history like this, but this series was fantastic and absolutely fascinating! History in the west makes a whole lot more sense when you have a deeper understanding of where Christianity was at the time. Great work, Matt!
Though he might have been a little too positive about its lack of bias, it's definitely the most famous part of Christian Science and I agree it will likely become their legacy, which is probably more than Eddy deserves considering their beliefs on medicine.
Greetings from Srilanka and blessings on your indefatigable work. Wasn't aware that you had spent a considerable time in my country in the teaching profession. Suggest you do a similar chart for Buddhism incorporating the branching to Mahayana and Heenayana, also incorporating the Great Councils held during the reigns of Kings Ashoka, Kanishka and others.
These charts look fantastic! I was hoping you would have included the still existing Bible Students denomination to show the divisions among early Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I still can’t wait until I own this. Thank you for all your hard work and research.
I grew up in basically non-practicing Christian Science household. I always described it as Jedi with Jesus. Now I realize how close that was to the truth. Since Mesmerism really sounds like the Force the way you were describing it. Thank you for including INC from the Philippines. Was worried you were not going to. I do think in general given this was focused on English speaking churches and those directly related to them that more should have been done for the larger non-Catholic movements in PH that don't fit under already mentioned groups. Final note I would really like to see you add Buddhist to the other religions getting a family tree. It really founds out the major religions you mentioned outside of Christianity. And has had a lot of influence in America outside of ethnic groups associated with it who came to America.
This series has been so useful to me. When you belong to any Christian community, the number of names and words and terms thrown around feels very alienating and impenetrable. This has really helped me understand some things, and become relevant and applicable to my real life multiple times as episodes came out!
Really pleased about the collaboration with Ready to Harvest. Shows a great willingness to collaborate, even with those who have fewer subscribers. Subscribing because of that! :)
Yes Matt, I totally get it about Rabbinical Judaism and Messianic Judaism. I myself am a non Jewish Christian that, at one point, during my teenage and early to mid twenties was discipled by people who were Messianic Jews and others involved in the Messianic Jewish Movement. I believe there should be a distantion between being a Jew ethnically and religiously. I know the history is out of sync by almost two thousand years, but I gained a special love and appreciation of Jews, no matter religiously they are rabbinic, messianic, or something else. I think of people who become part of different religions: they are blank religion and blank ethnicity. I converted Catholic in Latin America. I am from the USA. I am not a Latino Catholic. I am an American Catholic with a mix European ethnicity and alittle Native American (North American) that lives in Central America and attend Mass in Spanish. By the way I am not trying offend anyone just pointing out the differences. I love all Jews, no matter the religion, and have respect for Israel (not always their politics, but I am not Israeli .... so I do not judge).
I love Useful Charts and all of Matt Baker's content. It is very well-researched as well as clear and concise, which is not always easy to do with information collected from numerous sources about numerous topics. However, this video series in particular has been my favorite thus far. As a Christian who has taken a keen interest over the years in learning church history and the ideas passed down from the patristic era to modernity, seeing that particular progression unfold in such a manner as this video series has been one of the greatest fillers of the gaps in my understanding. I appreciate good, quality scientific research, and it's clear this was a fine example with how methodically its information has been revealed, edited as new information became available, and how it has been finished. It is indeed a great story in and of itself, as it finished with the very premise of its beginning; a poetry of hard work and learning. I applaud Matt Baker and Useful Charts for enhancing the amount of good scholarship on RUclips.
Yes, Matt has put in a lot of work into these charts and should be commended for that. But some of his summaries of various groups leaves me scratching my head. For example, with the Swedenborgianism he states "[they] believed that humans become either angels or demons after death and that previous humans, now living in the form of spirits, are all around us on a daily basis, trying to guide ... ". However, those beliefs are not unique to Swedenborgianism, and the ancient idea of the _deification of Christians_ is an old belief traced back to Paul, and it has manifested itself in many ways.
A tremendous work of scholarship! I am a non-religious Jew (you totally nailed the “what is a Jew, really” concept with delightful brevity) and generally anti-clerical but inquisitive; and I’ve always been incredibly confused about Christian denominations. I’m still confused, but much less so. Thank you, Matt- this was a college course in a nutshell! Kudos to you and UsefulCharts!
Could you do a chart of the family trees of Hasidic rabbinical dynasties? They share a lot in common with royal family trees, but add in the twist of religious trends and influences crossing family lines as well.
I would like to add my input on Messianic Judaism being Messianic Jewish myself. We consider ourselves to be Jewish Christian because we are followers of Christ and are therefore Christian but we are also Jewish as we have Jewish ethnicities and Jewish practices. When seeing us at our synagogues it’s easy to mistake us for any other type of Jewish. Yes we read the New Testament but that doesn’t mean we don’t follow the commandments of the Torah. I’m adding my input not to start an argument or debate on whether we are Jewish or not but to simply add another point of view in the conversation. If you have questions I’m happy to answer them as long as they remain respectful.
As someone who used to be apart of the 'two by two' group, we never called them 'go preachers' at least for as long as my parents remember (who were also part of the group), they were called workers.
Thank you so much Matt for this amazing series. It was really very interesting as educative and definitely a very important history lesson that every Christian should watch. I was born and raised early on in my childhood as a catholic in Germany as well as shortly attending a white garment church with my Nigerian father in Munich before we moved to Nigeria. During my teenage years living in Nigeria, I had to attend various Pentecostal churches including the Redeem church you mentioned. And like you already noted it is one of the biggest churches amongst the Yoruba Christians. The Igbos are mainly Catholics or Anglicans and other tribes if I remember correctly choose freely which church or denomination they want to follow. Except the northern part of Nigeria which is predominantly Muslim. When I moved back to Germany, I then decided to become a Jehovas witness which lasted for a few years until I left and sort of adapted a more liberal view as those of an agonist. I then decided to have a more direct contact to church again and joined a charismatic church during my time I lived in England. I’m now back in Germany again 😂. Having gone to all these different churches and denominations in different countries I realized that our notion of truth is mainly based and shaped on where we were born, how we grew up, our life experiences and our very own understanding as what we perceive as truth. This may be for a short while until we find our next truth or we remain with this one truth for a lifetime. I’ve seen and experienced many misconceptions in the various Christian churches I attended as well as the ones I did not. However, there is one truth that does unite us all. As Christians we believe in one true God, in Jesus and the Holy Spirit. This alone should unite us and not divide us regardless of our cultural differences and separated beliefs. After all we’re all Christians. I also respect other religions and I look forward to watching your videos on those. God bless us all.
Purchased a copy for my sister who teaches religion and is a United Methodist minister. Should be a great classroom decoration. Loved the video series!
Im so excited to own this! I think you did an excellent job! One key group I feel you should've included or maybe add later in the Metaphysical Category is "The Community of Christians" they are a trinitarian group based on Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy. They're located in over 35 nations and have hundreds of thousands of members worldwide. The well known Waldorf Schools (child education Anthroposophy) has over 1000 schools around the world.
Excellent series, Matt! I lived in China for a few years, and love that you included the Chinese churches! I look forward to having this poster on my wall!
Thank You. I am in no way religious, but I love this series and how you have shown the evolution and relation between all the different Christian beliefs.
I went back and re-watched one of the earlier videos the other day and realised that there is a wealth of information in your script that is not in the chart! I know it would be a lot of work, but a compilation of your scripts would also make for a saleable item. Probably lightly edited to turn them all into one document, remove references to narrating a video and clean up inconsistencies between episodes. Add all the extra pics, and maybe it would be publishable as a book? Because I'd buy one!
This was so detailed and informative! Your dedication and passion for sharing information shows. One smaller group that I would be curious to know more about are the so-called "snake handling" churches of southern Appalachia, also sometimes called the Church of Jesus Christ with Signs Following. I'm told that my great-great grandmother's siblings were all heavily involved, though she "thought the whole thing was ridiculous" and was a primitive Baptist.
Congratulations and a good work to Matt and team, as well as to everyone in the community for putting together and helping out map this big ride through history.
Fantastic piece of research and execution. It goes to show how many people believe to be right and try to force it on others. Believers fail to see that for those outside their group, they look as crazy and invalid as they see the rest of the world.
Thank you for explaining Messianic Judaism and specifically the lines that separate it from Judaism. Your explanation helped me understand what I previously could not quite wrap my brain around. Thank you!
That’s implying that Rabbinic Judaism did not separate from Ancient Judaism as a continuation but Christianity is yet both of them claiming to be a continuation of the ancient faith. It’s a bias on this guys part especially since he himself is Jewish as if to say that the prophecies fulfilled that Christians accept is not what true Judaism is.
I am well acquainted with the Swedenborgians as a major splinter group of theirs, Academy of the New Church, has its headquarters in Bryn Athyn, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia. I grew up in Philly and still live in the suburbs nearby. I’ve taken a tour of their cathedral. It’s beautiful. I would even call it stunning. Matt, you explained this group to me even more clearly than someone I asked who is in the church!
Very nice! In theory, the Unitarian line would have passed through meta physical group on it's way to becoming the UUA, as the church was quite influenced by the transcendentalist, which contributed to it's decline as a brick and mortal church.
I wish you had talked more about the Messianics being developed by a member of the Venture Church Networks to more fully outline its roots, but I'm glad you've at least pointed out they're Christians.
I grew up as a UU...Unitarian Universalist but i personally lean agnostic. :) I would not count myself as christian. Its nice to see Unitarian Universalism Represented :)
I can only imagine how much of a wild ride the Judaism one will be, I'm going to take a random guess that you would probably start at the return from exile? This has been a fantastic series overall and I'm looking forward to plenty more of it all.
Matt, allow me to start with a thanks for your work product of such high quality. Secondly, after hearing you share your experiences in whatever you call it (churches, cults, fake religious) I can certainly appreciate why you are now an agnostic. We share much common ground in some of our history (experiences), as children who cut our teeth on pews. That said, never once, did I read the Bible, just influenced by sermons based upon non-contextual verses to support the preachers opinion, the majority fakes. My path through university deadened my thought on the matter and never gave it much thought until almost 50YO. With a rebellious teen in house, we reached out for any help and wound up in a Mega church simply because we assumed there was a large group of youths. The pastor was a prosperity promoter who was personally extremely rich speaking largely to an audience of poor blacks. Shockingly, the leader of the music was a gifted musician (guitarist and singer) from Broadway and while he sang, both my wife and I experienced an epiphany and gave our lives to Jesus. He has proven Himself as the most humble, gentle, patient, loving and tolerant Savior ever thought. Since then we have met a few that I would say really live the life, Jesus exampled as an humble and meek servant. For me, can’t say I’ve proven to be much of a model but hope He will show Himself gentle to me as David mentions when He judges me. I’ll remember you in my prayers today and hope you too, find His love. Forget all the dis-unity exhibited here in your charts. This was foretold long ago and (two types of ministers; motivated by 1. love or 2. greed and selfish ambition) anticipated. Don’t let the liars deceive and influence you away from what is in your heart and mind.
Asking for a family tree of Apostolic and patristic church fathers! That would be very helpful in my studies of early church history. Seeing how everyone is connected to each other and when they lived makes study simpler
Matt, there are so many white garment churches in Nigeria. Since you talked about Cherubim and Seraphim, you should have also talked about Olumba Olumba Ogbu popularly known as OOO. There is also the Holy Sabbath church too.
Tantalizing series, I binged all episodes. Impressive knowledge and work, totally in awe. Ps: As novice Microsoft Visio user I can only imagine the hard work organizing that chart 👍💪 fantastic.
I really appreciate the explanations and effort gone into this poster, which are absolutely self-evident. I wasn't a part of the premiere of these videos and posters but one thing that I feel were some missed opportunities would be the Bethal church (that I believe came out of Assemblies of God) and other "hyper-charismatic" churches.
I'm sure this would be a huge undertaking, but I'd love to see a family tree of all the major religions. Like, you could group together the Abrahamic religions vs the Dharmic religions vs traditional polytheistic religions. You'd have to greatly simplify things. For instance, you obviously couldn't include all the little denominations of Christianity. But, I think it would be cool to see a visual representation of the world religions and how they relate to each other.
Under the Christian Science category, I think you could add those Christians in the Word-Faith Movement. There was a woman in Chicago named the Rev. Johnnie Colemon who taught metaphysics, teaching her followers that sickness was in the mind. Rev. T.L. Barrett is a follower of Coleman. The televangelist Rev. Ike was into metaphysics.. Preachers such as Kenneth Hagin, Frederick Price, and Benny Hinn, Bill Winston and others in the Word-Faith Movement have also incorporated Christian Science principles into their doctrine, but they won't admit it. They claim to be teaching orthodox Nicean biblical doctrines. Thank you for your thorough research. I have shown these videos in your denominations series to several of my friends.
Oh neat, you're going to make a similar video and charts for other religions including Hinduism (a nonAbrahmic religion)! Awesome! I might remind my friends who do Sunday school at UU congregations/fellowships about this (or tell them if they don't already follow your channel). I'm sure they'd like the posters for their classrooms since I know some of them have been looking forward to this one on Christianity. As a practicing Hindu, I'm definitely intrigued to see the Hindu one because while I've certainly read a lot about the various sampradayas beyond my own, I haven't really ever understood how they all interconnect since often the information I've found usually presents the sampradayas as almost being stand alone things or makes mentions of other sampradayas without specifying how they relate. I'll admit that my curiousity about religions beyond the Abrahamic about their histories, denominations, etc is something I enjoy learning about whenever I can. Though it's still good to learn more about the Abrahamic religions beyond Christianity, too. Living in a rural community in the US with lots of churches, I can usually find out some information about how the denominations interconnect by asking church leaders, but it's still great to learn more about denominations I know very little about or have never heard of before. Beyond the denominations present in my community where I grew up or where I live now, the only time it really expanded was when living in a suburb of a big metropolitan city in my state that had lots of different Christian denominations as well as other religions...including how I made friends with people who are UU. So I always appreciate channels and other sources who provide unbiased info about these things. I've enjoyed this series! Thanks for making it!
Speaking of Christianity in China, it’s be interesting to see how it might have developed there if history had gone differently. Many influential people in early 20th century China were Christians, such as Sun Yat-Sen, who led the revolution against the emperor, and Chiang Kai-Shek, the Nationalist leader during WW2 who subsequently lost to the Communists and fled to Taiwan. Given, Taiwan only is about 4% Christian now, which is probably comparable to mainland China, but who knows. My favorite Chinese Christian character is Feng Yuxiang, a socialist-leaning warlord who reputedly liked to mass-baptize his troops with a fire hose 😂 (it’s probably not true, but a funny mental image nonetheless)
Growing up in Taiwan in a catholic family, the series is very "mesmerizing". I have encountered many different Christian missionaries and never understood their relationship and the history behind each denomination. It is so surprising to learn so many "creative" ways to interpret a common religion. I would like to follow up series for other religions. However, I would really want one related to Buddhism. The branches of Buddhism are relatively structured (compare to Taoism). It would be interesting to learn how Buddhism goes separate ways.
There’s a pretty interesting story about the magician Harry Houdini - spiritualism was popular in his lifetime, and he put a lot of effort into debunking it. When he died, he had his wife try to contact his spirit every year, and no responses ever came. He was still debunking spiritualism from beyond the grave.
Just want to say thank you, Matt for all the work u've put in in this series. Christianity (and especially Protestant Christianity) is prolly the most complex religion to debunk thus Ik it hasn't been easy. Hence I appreciate all the effort put in to educate us on all this denominations. Suggestion: perhaps u could make a small tree (not necessarily in this format) that kind of summarises all this; without having to include these many examples of churches (i.e to just show the branches and denominations). Otherwise this is a great series. I've binge-watched all of them. Lol
Buy the poster:
usefulcharts.com/products/christian-denominations-family-tree
I’ll be sure to.
How long will it remain available?
Matt. We purchased one before Father’s Day and it’s still not going to be here till next week. What’s going on with it?
Are they foldable?
@@ScottBub You'd have to contact help via the website. Depends on where you live. US shipments take up to 2 weeks.
Matt, I hope you understand just how amazing this series was. A family tree of Christian denominations is something that people with an interest in Christian history have wanted for a very long time, and you've put together something that is more thorough and more accurate than anything else that has been done before! I know this wasn't easy, but thank you for all your work on this. I look forward to seeing your future videos on the family trees of other religions.
Right? It pains me to see the comments immediately begging for the next chart when this is genuinely a monumental development in religious education.
(that being said, a Buddhism chart would be absolutely sick...)
I suspect that the Universities of Oxford or Harvard or Paris have Matt's entire channel beat hands down;
However, I am equally sure that most people won't set foot on the campuses of the Universities of Oxford, Harvard, or Paris and therefore wouldn't know the names of the library buildings and would have a challenge tracking down the last time someone made a reasonably comprehensive artifact cataloging the information.
Certainly it is at least a new convenience to have this on RUclips in the format it is in as helpful as the creation of the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings epics are for people who just lack as much access to primary sources and the ability to parse them quickly.
I would bet that the US Census Bureau documents up to 10 times as many religions.
I would bet a great deal of money that nobody wants to read the version used by the US census bureau as it is most likely far too boring and confusing to understand.
This chart certainly is incredibly helpful but probably not unique. I would honestly be a little frightened if genuine leaders of world religions did not have access to better ones with the original recordings of when certain groups were identified to exist and given names.
This version is certainly what you would put in a classroom for new students though.
Mr. Baker I am very curious how exactly you did the research for this one. Was it truly as simple as Wikipedia? If it is that easy.....
Then you are very good for being the one to bother to simply knock it out, but it would be slightly embarrassing if it just about always could have been done for the last 10 years only nobody ever bothered before.
I think it must have been more than Wikipedia.
@@KalebPeters99 I would say you would have to include Yoga and Hinduism on that chart ... perhaps even Taoism, because they share a lot of spiritual ideas and lineage.
I would love it if you could create a chart of Catholic religious orders such as Franciscans, Carmelites, Trappists, etc?
Exactly, or Catholic Rites Even
Yes,it would be awesome
It would be cool to see all 24 catholic churches
@@cjaoun23240 yes
@@cjaoun23240That many?I know three. But all of these ideas are awesome.
I really appreciate the breakdown of Rabbinic Judaism at the end, along with the explanation of how Jews that are atheists are still considered Jews by those who believe in God. For some reason the tribalism of Judaism as the reason for that had never occurred to me.
Yeah I had wondered about the comparisons between Jewish atheists and Messianic Jews, and it even seemed to me that Jewish Buddhists were more accepted by other Jews than Messianic Jews were. But when he explained that Judaism is defined by not being Christian, it started to make sense
Matt's explanation was not quite correct. Unlike Christianity and Islam, Judaism is not a universal religion. Judaism is a tribal religion, meaning that Judaism is the religion of the Jews. That is, the Jews are a people (or a nation, or an ethnicity) that has its own unique religion -- the two go together. A Jew who converts to another religion loses his or her status as a Jew by faith, but maintains his or her status as a Jew by birth, albeit as a Jew living in sin and thus outside the community (or tribe) of Jews -- in other words, as a functional gentile and has the same status as any other gentile. Conversely, a gentile who converts to Judaism not only takes on the faith of the Jews, but gains status as a member of the Jewish people and thus is no longer a gentile.
Someone who is born Jewish, but becomes a Messianic Jew, is still considered Jewish in the Jewish Orthodox tradition. They're seen as apostates and non-believers, but still as a person with a Jewish soul. They're often seen as less educated Jews (that is, less knowledgable about their own Jewish religion and tradition) who were tricked into becoming Christians by the non-Jewish members of Messianic Judaism, so much more of a sad situation than anything else.
So not quite what UsefulCharts said. But his point about Judaism of all denominations as a tribal religion defining itself in part as in opposition to Chrisitianity is very much true. That is why culturally it is much more acceptable to be a Jewish atheist or a Buddhist Jew.
In other words, instead of "tribal", Judaism is not a religion. That's an Ethnoreligion.
The Jews are an ethnoreligious group and a nation.
@@tomtomtrent
Jews who converted to Buddhism, are no longer Jews.
Even the very fee Jews that practice some aspects of Buddhism, does not believe in the Buddhist gods, and thus, are Jews.
This is such a massive accomplishment. I'm sure not everyone is 100% happy with the end result, but I think you've walked the fine line perfectly here. You've included as much as you could, within reason, and without too much editorializing. And you've taken audience advice/criticism along the way and let it generate revisions and guide the direction of the project. Congratulations on a job well done.
UsefulCharts, can you please make a video on the family tree of not only Muslim denominations (Sunni, Shia, Ibadi), but also Muslim madhhabs (schools of thought, such as Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, etc). Thank you very much.
Then can you throw that on this chart to make a religious denomination family tree?
Al Muqaddimah is going to help with that.
@@UsefulCharts That's awesome, can't wait!
@@UsefulCharts cannot wait!
@@The-one-person-you-remember***Abrahamic
But no, it will look too messy. Standalone will be better
Excellent work. The one thing I would've liked to see included is the Manichaeism religion (unrelated to mandaeism). Manicheaism is a religion founded in 3rd century Iran that incorporates Christian, Pagan, Zoroastrian and Buddhist philosphies and considers the prophet Mani to be the final prophet after Zoroaster, Buddah and Jesus. At its height it spread from Western Europe to China and was a major competitor to Christianity. Today it is reportedly still discretely practiced in a couple of villages in Fujian, China with a surviving active temple in the village of Cao'an. I can't fault your work though, this poster is excellent, I'll just draw it on my copy with a pen.
Buddhism has a variety of denominations, too, it would be great to cover them!
Would love to watch it. Because there are so many, that is hard to understand the differences.
Might as well make it an indo-iranian religion chart in general
Buddhism is considered a branch of Hinduism
@@taylernorris5647 yeah my point is to include zoroastrianism, hinduism and buddhism all in one chart
@@taylernorris5647 no it's not. you need to research more, there are some similarity but not same.
As a history nerd and a agnostic I LOVED this series.
So did I
Curious what you mean by agnostic.
@@moonshoes11probably what it means, he doesn’t give a 💩about any of this nonsense
me too. it was very brave of Mr Baker to take this sort of thing on,
and I can only imagine the scrutiny of the comment section has been arduous,
and ongoing
@@danhess2extremely rude of you to say that
LOL. Matt basically passes no judgment about the religions. Saying "they believe" and "according to them" but scientology? Nah, all made up.
Couldn't help it.
Even if Scientology is real, it starts and descends from L. Ron Hubbard not Jesus Christ. Thus it would make more sense to refer to it as a sect of Hubbardism not Christianity. I was going to suggest Xenuism, but from what I understand, the bulk of Scientologists are at levels below that teaching.
Something people need to understand about phenomena like Scientology is that if you're in some Western initiatic esoteric movements like the Golden Dawn, when you get to a certain grade your work is to create your own cult, religion or sect. L. Ron was a member of one or two (can't remember which) and after a certain point of navy work and terrible science fiction, up pops Dianetics. I have to wonder how many more of these dodgy modern cults are a product of the same process. I was just struck by mention of how you would only be taught about Xenu at a certain level of initiation; that revealing-different-'truths'-to-members-as-they-ascend pattern is absolutely typical of initiatic orders and secret societies.
Would have loved a similar comment about Joseph Smith during the Mormonism part but hey, probably too divisive
as are, arguably, *all* religions.
This is your best work yet. I've looked forward to every episode and really liked how you used feedback from viewers along the way. I also really liked exploring the more recent sects, as I've learned the basics of early church schisms and mainline protestant denominations, but I knew nothing of modern African and Asian churches.
I would appreciate a similar coverage of the Eastern faiths (Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, etc). This Christian series was incredibly insightful and well-done.
A lot of Eastern faiths did not have clear-cut, easily distinguished denominations though. For instance, whether the Celestial Master Daoism or the Great Peace Movement was the initial Daoist group - these two had very different theologies regarding ways of redemption - is still a matter of scholarly debate.
Buddhism is considered a branch of Hinduism
@@taylernorris5647 Ah! See, a chart would help me understand that 😉
@@taylernorris5647it is not
Not according to the professor of Hinduism at Cambridge.
Until the 19th century, adherents of those various religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikh, and Jainism) did not tend to label themselves as in opposition to each other, but "perceived themselves as belonging to the same extended cultural family."
Hindus: their religious beliefs and practices, Julis Lipner, (1998)
As a traditional Jewish person living in a Chrisitan-majority country, I really enjoyed your series on Christian denominations. I learned a HUGE amount, and I feel like I can better understand the history. Way more helpful than the history I learned from going to public schools my entire childhood. Very excited for the future family trees of religions videos!
Now that the chart is done, I wonder if you could do a shorter summary video of Christianity hitting the major points. I think it would be incredibly popular.
If you liked that, I highly recommend the channel of Sam Aronow.
He is actually a friend of Matt Baker.
The additional videos from Ready to Harvest are these summary videos.
It's strange how Christianity loves to splinter into more and more sects - often over seemingly petty differences.
Imagine is Jews behaved this way in history? A Hasid quarrelling with the Karaite over a mitzvah? ... Okay, well perhaps that's entirely conceivable. Lol
But there's almost always this attitude in judaism that "a Jew is a Jew" - reform or orthodox
This series and it's corresponding poster has to be the best thing you've done so far. The amount of research and comprehensiveness that has gone into these timelines is just brilliant. I've collected various historical timeline posters in the past, but this one is going to be front and centre of my collection. Well done.
It really is a fantastic project!
BTW if anyone is interested in these earliest Unitarian movements based in Eastern Europe mentioned at 2:15, search for Polish Brethren and the Unitarian Church of Transylvania.
Universalism is not "no one is going to hell", but rather "no one will remain in hell for eternity"
But of course it depends on how you define "hell"
HISTORICALLY for the IGLESIA ni CRISTO in the Philippines: their Founder Felix Manalo was a former member of the Independent Church of Christ/ Christian Churches (Stone-Campbell Movement) in the Philippines introduced by American Missionaries around 1904; then around 1914-ish he (Felix Manalo) broke away from the group/ teachings and started a different "Denomination" where they don't believe in the Trinity, erected cathedrals you normally see around the Philippines, and then declared himself as "Sugo ng Diyos" which means "(The Last) Messiah/messenger of God" based on Isaiah 43:5 (literal interpretation of Messenger from the East) which is way off the teachings of the original Churches of Christ/ Christian Churches (Restoration Movement).
Thank you UsefulCharts! Keep it up!
A chart of the different divisions/sects within Hinduism would be interesting as well since it's hardly talked about in the West; we tend to lump all Hindus under one umbrella but there's so much diversity it's insane. The chart might be absolutely huge though
Yeah from my understanding, Hinduism isn’t so much a unified religion as it was several related religions that were grouped together by the British because they weren’t Christian, Muslim or Buddhist. Even the name pretty much just means “religion of India.” Maybe that’s not completely correct, but I think a video would be good to help others learn
@@tomtomtrent've heard that some Hindus even consider Buddhism to just be one of the many branches of Hindu philosophy. I think they have more of an attitude to religion of not finding what's the absolute truth in the universe but finding the philosophy that feels true to you so they tolerate a lot of different sects
You could even have a Dharmic religions chart which includes all the religions in that family such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism.
@@SirBenjiful Even better
@@SirBenjifuldefinitely would love to see this, especially considering they often influenced each other at different times in different ways. would be a very technical video if done in depth, but i’m sure it would be great
Man, the sheer amount of work you put into this project is amazing
Fabulous job! Thank you for being so clear in showing the connections and the differences between denominations. And thank you for including Unitarian-Universalism! Even though we aren't exactly Christian now, our roots were.
As a Roman Catholic. I appreciate you being able to do what you did with this video. Thank you for showing the world a great historical background of Christianity. God be with you and his children. 😊
As a Roman Catholic this series of videos has been kinda like being the first one in class to do my presentation and enjoying watching everyone else do theirs later.
I've never in the past been particularly interested in religious history like this, but this series was fantastic and absolutely fascinating! History in the west makes a whole lot more sense when you have a deeper understanding of where Christianity was at the time. Great work, Matt!
I'm glad you mentioned the Monitor, it's a good paper and will probably be the church's lasting legacy given its current numbers.
Though he might have been a little too positive about its lack of bias, it's definitely the most famous part of Christian Science and I agree it will likely become their legacy, which is probably more than Eddy deserves considering their beliefs on medicine.
Greetings from Srilanka and blessings on your indefatigable work. Wasn't aware that you had spent a considerable time in my country in the teaching profession.
Suggest you do a similar chart for Buddhism incorporating the branching to Mahayana and Heenayana, also incorporating the Great Councils held during the reigns of Kings Ashoka, Kanishka and others.
Thank you for adding the Lutheran Church of Finland to this poster.
And the Finnish Orthodox Church, too!
These charts look fantastic! I was hoping you would have included the still existing Bible Students denomination to show the divisions among early Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I still can’t wait until I own this. Thank you for all your hard work and research.
My exact thoughts, Also, Kitawala ain't included
I grew up in basically non-practicing Christian Science household. I always described it as Jedi with Jesus. Now I realize how close that was to the truth. Since Mesmerism really sounds like the Force the way you were describing it.
Thank you for including INC from the Philippines. Was worried you were not going to. I do think in general given this was focused on English speaking churches and those directly related to them that more should have been done for the larger non-Catholic movements in PH that don't fit under already mentioned groups.
Final note I would really like to see you add Buddhist to the other religions getting a family tree. It really founds out the major religions you mentioned outside of Christianity. And has had a lot of influence in America outside of ethnic groups associated with it who came to America.
This series has been so useful to me. When you belong to any Christian community, the number of names and words and terms thrown around feels very alienating and impenetrable. This has really helped me understand some things, and become relevant and applicable to my real life multiple times as episodes came out!
Really pleased about the collaboration with Ready to Harvest. Shows a great willingness to collaborate, even with those who have fewer subscribers. Subscribing because of that! :)
This is a top quality University presentation I’d definitely pay for!
Yes Matt, I totally get it about Rabbinical Judaism and Messianic Judaism. I myself am a non Jewish Christian that, at one point, during my teenage and early to mid twenties was discipled by people who were Messianic Jews and others involved in the Messianic Jewish Movement. I believe there should be a distantion between being a Jew ethnically and religiously. I know the history is out of sync by almost two thousand years, but I gained a special love and appreciation of Jews, no matter religiously they are rabbinic, messianic, or something else. I think of people who become part of different religions: they are blank religion and blank ethnicity. I converted Catholic in Latin America. I am from the USA. I am not a Latino Catholic. I am an American Catholic with a mix European ethnicity and alittle Native American (North American) that lives in Central America and attend Mass in Spanish. By the way I am not trying offend anyone just pointing out the differences. I love all Jews, no matter the religion, and have respect for Israel (not always their politics, but I am not Israeli .... so I do not judge).
The thing is, that if Jews were like that, they would be extinct as an ethnic group.
Judaism is not a religion. It's an Ethnoreligion and a nation.
I love Useful Charts and all of Matt Baker's content. It is very well-researched as well as clear and concise, which is not always easy to do with information collected from numerous sources about numerous topics. However, this video series in particular has been my favorite thus far. As a Christian who has taken a keen interest over the years in learning church history and the ideas passed down from the patristic era to modernity, seeing that particular progression unfold in such a manner as this video series has been one of the greatest fillers of the gaps in my understanding. I appreciate good, quality scientific research, and it's clear this was a fine example with how methodically its information has been revealed, edited as new information became available, and how it has been finished. It is indeed a great story in and of itself, as it finished with the very premise of its beginning; a poetry of hard work and learning. I applaud Matt Baker and Useful Charts for enhancing the amount of good scholarship on RUclips.
Yes, Matt has put in a lot of work into these charts and should be commended for that. But some of his summaries of various groups leaves me scratching my head. For example, with the Swedenborgianism he states "[they] believed that humans become either angels or demons after death and that previous humans, now living in the form of spirits, are all around us on a daily basis, trying to guide ... ". However, those beliefs are not unique to Swedenborgianism, and the ancient idea of the _deification of Christians_ is an old belief traced back to Paul, and it has manifested itself in many ways.
A tremendous work of scholarship! I am a non-religious Jew (you totally nailed the “what is a Jew, really” concept with delightful brevity) and generally anti-clerical but inquisitive; and I’ve always been incredibly confused about Christian denominations. I’m still confused, but much less so. Thank you, Matt- this was a college course in a nutshell! Kudos to you and UsefulCharts!
This was a great series! I listened to it all in 1 day. It was presented with respect and knowledge. I learned a lot. Thank you, and I love the charts
Could you do a chart of the family trees of Hasidic rabbinical dynasties? They share a lot in common with royal family trees, but add in the twist of religious trends and influences crossing family lines as well.
I would like to add my input on Messianic Judaism being Messianic Jewish myself. We consider ourselves to be Jewish Christian because we are followers of Christ and are therefore Christian but we are also Jewish as we have Jewish ethnicities and Jewish practices. When seeing us at our synagogues it’s easy to mistake us for any other type of Jewish. Yes we read the New Testament but that doesn’t mean we don’t follow the commandments of the Torah. I’m adding my input not to start an argument or debate on whether we are Jewish or not but to simply add another point of view in the conversation. If you have questions I’m happy to answer them as long as they remain respectful.
This has been my favorite RUclips series ever, both due to the topic and your presentation/temperament. Thank you, Matt!
So appreciate your work Matt you are gifted from above. I wish I had 10% of your brains I would have evangelized all communities.
As someone who used to be apart of the 'two by two' group, we never called them 'go preachers' at least for as long as my parents remember (who were also part of the group), they were called workers.
Thank you so much Matt for this amazing series. It was really very interesting as educative and definitely a very important history lesson that every Christian should watch.
I was born and raised early on in my childhood as a catholic in Germany as well as shortly attending a white garment church with my Nigerian father in Munich before we moved to Nigeria. During my teenage years living in Nigeria, I had to attend various Pentecostal churches including the Redeem church you mentioned. And like you already noted it is one of the biggest churches amongst the Yoruba Christians. The Igbos are mainly Catholics or Anglicans and other tribes if I remember correctly choose freely which church or denomination they want to follow. Except the northern part of Nigeria which is predominantly Muslim. When I moved back to Germany, I then decided to become a Jehovas witness which lasted for a few years until I left and sort of adapted a more liberal view as those of an agonist. I then decided to have a more direct contact to church again and joined a charismatic church during my time I lived in England. I’m now back in Germany again 😂. Having gone to all these different churches and denominations in different countries I realized that our notion of truth is mainly based and shaped on where we were born, how we grew up, our life experiences and our very own understanding as what we perceive as truth. This may be for a short while until we find our next truth or we remain with this one truth for a lifetime. I’ve seen and experienced many misconceptions in the various Christian churches I attended as well as the ones I did not. However, there is one truth that does unite us all. As Christians we believe in one true God, in Jesus and the Holy Spirit. This alone should unite us and not divide us regardless of our cultural differences and separated beliefs. After all we’re all Christians. I also respect other religions and I look forward to watching your videos on those. God bless us all.
Really enjoyed the entire series. Very interesting seeing the hundreds of various denominations and how they relate to each other.
Wow this series has been really fantastic and has answered so many questions I've had over the years. Cannot imagine how much work was involved!
Purchased a copy for my sister who teaches religion and is a United Methodist minister. Should be a great classroom decoration. Loved the video series!
I purchased 10 charts early today!! Thank you for all you do!!!
If at all possible, a timeline/chart of Buddhist sects would be awesome as well! This series on Christianity was great.
This whole series was/is amazing! Really looking forward to the other family trees!
Thank you for talking about the 2x2s! It breaks some of the secretiveness of it ❤ I was born and raised there
Im so excited to own this! I think you did an excellent job! One key group I feel you should've included or maybe add later in the Metaphysical Category is "The Community of Christians" they are a trinitarian group based on Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy. They're located in over 35 nations and have hundreds of thousands of members worldwide. The well known Waldorf Schools (child education Anthroposophy) has over 1000 schools around the world.
Thank you Matt and Ready to Harvest for this marvellous work!
Excellent series, Matt! I lived in China for a few years, and love that you included the Chinese churches! I look forward to having this poster on my wall!
This has been a wonderful journey! Thank you so much Matt!! I’ve learned so much and my friends are sick of it but it’s all so fascinating.
Thank You. I am in no way religious, but I love this series and how you have shown the evolution and relation between all the different Christian beliefs.
Thanks for the history of the Jewish and Christian religion it's been very helpful.
Well, so far, I've only mentioned Jewish history up to 70 CE. The history from then on will be coming in my July 14 video.
I went back and re-watched one of the earlier videos the other day and realised that there is a wealth of information in your script that is not in the chart! I know it would be a lot of work, but a compilation of your scripts would also make for a saleable item. Probably lightly edited to turn them all into one document, remove references to narrating a video and clean up inconsistencies between episodes. Add all the extra pics, and maybe it would be publishable as a book? Because I'd buy one!
It really speaks to the number of denominations that even this kind of thorough treatment just has to leave some of them out.
This was so detailed and informative! Your dedication and passion for sharing information shows.
One smaller group that I would be curious to know more about are the so-called "snake handling" churches of southern Appalachia, also sometimes called the Church of Jesus Christ with Signs Following. I'm told that my great-great grandmother's siblings were all heavily involved, though she "thought the whole thing was ridiculous" and was a primitive Baptist.
Congratulations and a good work to Matt and team, as well as to everyone in the community for putting together and helping out map this big ride through history.
Thanks for one of my favorite informational series on RUclips. Personally, I love learning about Christian denominations like this.
Fantastic piece of research and execution. It goes to show how many people believe to be right and try to force it on others. Believers fail to see that for those outside their group, they look as crazy and invalid as they see the rest of the world.
Thank you for explaining Messianic Judaism and specifically the lines that separate it from Judaism. Your explanation helped me understand what I previously could not quite wrap my brain around. Thank you!
That’s implying that Rabbinic Judaism did not separate from Ancient Judaism as a continuation but Christianity is yet both of them claiming to be a continuation of the ancient faith. It’s a bias on this guys part especially since he himself is Jewish as if to say that the prophecies fulfilled that Christians accept is not what true Judaism is.
If you're including cults it would have been interesting to include the group behind the Taipei Rebellion in 1850 China
taiping, not taipei
I am more of a Messianic Jew than anything else I Love my Hebrew roots and I Love Jesus my Messiah!!
Excellent job with both the chart and the video. Congratulations.
and looking forward to the next entries, hoped you would do them.
I am well acquainted with the Swedenborgians as a major splinter group of theirs, Academy of the New Church, has its headquarters in Bryn Athyn, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia. I grew up in Philly and still live in the suburbs nearby. I’ve taken a tour of their cathedral. It’s beautiful. I would even call it stunning.
Matt, you explained this group to me even more clearly than someone I asked who is in the church!
My great grandmother was raised in the New Church but left as an adult, so it is always interesting for me to learn about Swedenborgianism.
I Like your series very much! Thank you and blessings.
I lived 2 blocks from the Inglisia Christo church and across the street from the Swedenborg church in Toronto Canada.
Very nice! In theory, the Unitarian line would have passed through meta physical group on it's way to becoming the UUA, as the church was quite influenced by the transcendentalist, which contributed to it's decline as a brick and mortal church.
I wish you had talked more about the Messianics being developed by a member of the Venture Church Networks to more fully outline its roots, but I'm glad you've at least pointed out they're Christians.
Fantastic series. Loved all the episodes.
I grew up as a UU...Unitarian Universalist but i personally lean agnostic. :) I would not count myself as christian. Its nice to see Unitarian Universalism Represented :)
I can only imagine how much of a wild ride the Judaism one will be, I'm going to take a random guess that you would probably start at the return from exile? This has been a fantastic series overall and I'm looking forward to plenty more of it all.
FINALLY, I've been waiting for this!
Matt, allow me to start with a thanks for your work product of such high quality. Secondly, after hearing you share your experiences in whatever you call it (churches, cults, fake religious) I can certainly appreciate why you are now an agnostic.
We share much common ground in some of our history (experiences), as children who cut our teeth on pews. That said, never once, did I read the Bible, just influenced by sermons based upon non-contextual verses to support the preachers opinion, the majority fakes. My path through university deadened my thought on the matter and never gave it much thought until almost 50YO. With a rebellious teen in house, we reached out for any help and wound up in a Mega church simply because we assumed there was a large group of youths. The pastor was a prosperity promoter who was personally extremely rich speaking largely to an audience of poor blacks.
Shockingly, the leader of the music was a gifted musician (guitarist and singer) from Broadway and while he sang, both my wife and I experienced an epiphany and gave our lives to Jesus. He has proven Himself as the most humble, gentle, patient, loving and tolerant Savior ever thought. Since then we have met a few that I would say really live the life, Jesus exampled as an humble and meek servant. For me, can’t say I’ve proven to be much of a model but hope He will show Himself gentle to me as David mentions when He judges me.
I’ll remember you in my prayers today and hope you too, find His love. Forget all the dis-unity exhibited here in your charts. This was foretold long ago and (two types of ministers; motivated by 1. love or 2. greed and selfish ambition) anticipated. Don’t let the liars deceive and influence you away from what is in your heart and mind.
10:19 I like how he just says that outright in this case and doesn't pussyfoot around it at all.
Hey my church made it into this chart! MCC is an amazing denomination
Asking for a family tree of Apostolic and patristic church fathers! That would be very helpful in my studies of early church history. Seeing how everyone is connected to each other and when they lived makes study simpler
Matt, there are so many white garment churches in Nigeria. Since you talked about Cherubim and Seraphim, you should have also talked about Olumba Olumba Ogbu popularly known as OOO. There is also the Holy Sabbath church too.
Tantalizing series, I binged all episodes. Impressive knowledge and work, totally in awe. Ps: As novice Microsoft Visio user I can only imagine the hard work organizing that chart 👍💪 fantastic.
I really appreciate the explanations and effort gone into this poster, which are absolutely self-evident. I wasn't a part of the premiere of these videos and posters but one thing that I feel were some missed opportunities would be the Bethal church (that I believe came out of Assemblies of God) and other "hyper-charismatic" churches.
Great job! Thanks so very much! Excellent explanation of Messianic Judaism too. I am really looking forward to the Jewish chart!
What is the emoji for "Standing Ovation"? Excellent work, as always.
I'm sure this would be a huge undertaking, but I'd love to see a family tree of all the major religions. Like, you could group together the Abrahamic religions vs the Dharmic religions vs traditional polytheistic religions. You'd have to greatly simplify things. For instance, you obviously couldn't include all the little denominations of Christianity. But, I think it would be cool to see a visual representation of the world religions and how they relate to each other.
Under the Christian Science category, I think you could add those Christians in the Word-Faith Movement.
There was a woman in Chicago named the Rev. Johnnie Colemon who taught metaphysics, teaching her followers that sickness was in the mind. Rev. T.L. Barrett is a follower of Coleman.
The televangelist Rev. Ike was into metaphysics..
Preachers such as Kenneth Hagin, Frederick Price, and Benny Hinn, Bill Winston and others in the Word-Faith Movement have also incorporated Christian Science principles into their doctrine, but they won't admit it. They claim to be teaching orthodox Nicean biblical doctrines.
Thank you for your thorough research. I have shown these videos in your denominations series to several of my friends.
This has been a great series
Oh neat, you're going to make a similar video and charts for other religions including Hinduism (a nonAbrahmic religion)! Awesome! I might remind my friends who do Sunday school at UU congregations/fellowships about this (or tell them if they don't already follow your channel). I'm sure they'd like the posters for their classrooms since I know some of them have been looking forward to this one on Christianity. As a practicing Hindu, I'm definitely intrigued to see the Hindu one because while I've certainly read a lot about the various sampradayas beyond my own, I haven't really ever understood how they all interconnect since often the information I've found usually presents the sampradayas as almost being stand alone things or makes mentions of other sampradayas without specifying how they relate. I'll admit that my curiousity about religions beyond the Abrahamic about their histories, denominations, etc is something I enjoy learning about whenever I can. Though it's still good to learn more about the Abrahamic religions beyond Christianity, too. Living in a rural community in the US with lots of churches, I can usually find out some information about how the denominations interconnect by asking church leaders, but it's still great to learn more about denominations I know very little about or have never heard of before. Beyond the denominations present in my community where I grew up or where I live now, the only time it really expanded was when living in a suburb of a big metropolitan city in my state that had lots of different Christian denominations as well as other religions...including how I made friends with people who are UU. So I always appreciate channels and other sources who provide unbiased info about these things. I've enjoyed this series! Thanks for making it!
Love your videos. I think you should make a video on the third dynasty of UR. A very influential dynasty and time period in Ancient Sumer.
You have done a marvelous work, God bless you.
Really loved this series and definitely gonna buy the chart. I never knew how diverse Christian groups were
All kudos for this master work of UC. I've entirely joined all episodes.
Speaking of Christianity in China, it’s be interesting to see how it might have developed there if history had gone differently. Many influential people in early 20th century China were Christians, such as Sun Yat-Sen, who led the revolution against the emperor, and Chiang Kai-Shek, the Nationalist leader during WW2 who subsequently lost to the Communists and fled to Taiwan. Given, Taiwan only is about 4% Christian now, which is probably comparable to mainland China, but who knows.
My favorite Chinese Christian character is Feng Yuxiang, a socialist-leaning warlord who reputedly liked to mass-baptize his troops with a fire hose 😂 (it’s probably not true, but a funny mental image nonetheless)
Sorry but the Taipei government is the legitimate government of all China (including the mainland. The communists are the criminal rebels
My guess is it was partly caused their rejection of the long existence system
the "Three Self church" is considered illegitimate by underground churches, because it is government controlled
This is fascinating. I was wondering if you could do a Buddhism tree similar to this.
Growing up in Taiwan in a catholic family, the series is very "mesmerizing". I have encountered many different Christian missionaries and never understood their relationship and the history behind each denomination. It is so surprising to learn so many "creative" ways to interpret a common religion.
I would like to follow up series for other religions. However, I would really want one related to Buddhism. The branches of Buddhism are relatively structured (compare to Taoism). It would be interesting to learn how Buddhism goes separate ways.
An amazing project thank you for the hard work.
A great effort and chart showing hundeds of permutations of crazy (and/or greed) found in humans.
There’s a pretty interesting story about the magician Harry Houdini - spiritualism was popular in his lifetime, and he put a lot of effort into debunking it. When he died, he had his wife try to contact his spirit every year, and no responses ever came. He was still debunking spiritualism from beyond the grave.
Thank you so much for sharing your passion for knowledge with us
Just want to say thank you, Matt for all the work u've put in in this series. Christianity (and especially Protestant Christianity) is prolly the most complex religion to debunk thus Ik it hasn't been easy. Hence I appreciate all the effort put in to educate us on all this denominations. Suggestion: perhaps u could make a small tree (not necessarily in this format) that kind of summarises all this; without having to include these many examples of churches (i.e to just show the branches and denominations). Otherwise this is a great series. I've binge-watched all of them. Lol
Also appreciate you pointing out Unitarian universalism being a non-christian religion. (As they deny the trinity as well as Jesus' divinity)
Was kinda excited to see UNITY in this one. Didn't think where I grew up had enough people to make the list.
More of an agnostic/ humanist now.