Why does Christianity have the most sectarianism?

We like to shop around.

It’s like a buffet…the more options, the more customers.

The definition of what it means to be Christian has changed incredibly since its birth. Different people have different definitions. Those definitions also have tendency to change over time; as society changes. This phenomenon, in that regard, is more prevalent in the USA than any where else.

@Shippy: “We like to shop around.”

Hey. I thought you weren’t a Christian. :)

Personally, what I found, is that each sect has a different way of going about things, and preachers often put their own ‘spin’ on the Bible.

A Southern Baptist preacher who had been our preacher since I was a child, called my mom a ‘whore’ for wanting to start a Christian singles group in our church.

My grandparents were Fundamental Baptists, and women were definately second or third class peoples in my opinion. Women wore dresses and spoke quietly, men ruled the church. I had to wear shorts under my dresses until I was 12 or 13 years old.

My mom goes to a Baptist Church now, and my husband and I went once, it was okay but the preacher was the Hellfire & Brimstone type, that kind of screamed his sermon.

AOG Churches here vary a lot, too. Some believe in speaking in tongues, some believe there must be an interpreter (like the Bible says.)

The Catholic Churches in my area are really great, help the community a lot, most Catholics go to one of six churches, whichever is convenient, as they are more interchangeable.

It’s all very difficult to decipher unless you’re familiar, but as you can see, all churches and all preachers are not created equal.

@tom_g Glad to see you are on top of things :P

I don’t like labels. I refuse to have them. Somewhere there is logic in there.

Islam is the name of a religion.
Islamism is Islamic fundamentalism.
I think that was a typo.

Particularly in America, Christianity is a lucrative business. The idea is to get as many people into YOUR pews as possible. The more people, the more tithes, the more offerings, the bigger the church you can build and the more people you can get in the pews, more tithes, more offerings, bigger church….

And since it’s a tax-free business, well, who doesn’t want a slice of that pie!

As all good Capitalists know, the thing that sets you apart on the free market is competition. Sure, there’s a Pentecostal church, but we’re the Oneness Pentecostal church, where we know that there’s really only one god and that trinity stuff is the devil’s work. Now one church has become two.

But the Oneness Pentecostals have a schism as well (because the two brothers who ran the joint just can’t get along) and now one preaches that women shouldn’t be allowed on the pulpit!

And then the anti-women-on-the-pulpit church divides when one group decides that the demons are climbing through television to eat your children’s souls, so everyone who isn’t willing to give up their Saturday Morning Cartoons has to make a NEW church!

It would be hilarious if it weren’t true.

I see it as a manifestation of competition for market share and bragging rights.

@Seek_Kolinahr & @Dr_Lawrence I hate to agree with you, but more than likely, you’re correct. Which is why church attendence is so low, we’re all realizing it finally. :(

My Guess is because Christianity functions on absolute and revealed truth.

Revealed to who? Did Abraham have it right? Jesus? Joseph Smith?
And if the truth is absolute, what room is there for discussion?

So you have a ton of people who think God spoke directly to them and told them the true and absolute reality and built sects because everyone else has it wrong and they are the true faith.

My guess is it has to do with the threat of Hell, eternal torture and the all or nothing approach of the religion. If you do not get it completely right, you burn. So when someone thinks his personal interpretation of certain passages, all who disagree will burn in hell, so you make your own sect and then try to convert people to yours.

It has the greatest number of adherents and therefore the greatest number of schisms?

Because one mans sin is another mans salvation.

@Shippy So it would appear. But why do Christians like shopping around so much more than all the other major faiths?

@Plucky Sectarianism was actually well along before the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to it and embarked on a campaign of terror to convert everyone to his idea of the one true way, killing all those who refused. Even after the Roman Empire collapsed, popes remained secular rulers with great power, able to raise armies to defend “the one true way”. Witness the crusades and the Spanish Inquisition as just a couple of examples. The sectarianism bottle wasn’t really uncorked for Christians again till the time of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. But it’s certainly been alive and well since the days of Luther.

You’re probably right that the US is at the forefront of splintering “the one true way” but there are plenty of other nations close on our heals. I’ll leave it to someone who has the time on their hands to track down all 41,000 Christian sects and figure out what percentage came into being in the USA. :-)

@KNOWITALL That’s a good recitation of the “what” regarding the prevalence of Christian sectarianism, but it doesn’t seem to address the OP which is “Why?”

@bookish1 I was just taken to school (quite properly) by @ragingloli regarding context being more important than simplistic dictionary definitions when dealing with a word in a debate. “Here’s”: my lame defense of the dictionary and here’s Raginglol’s rigorous rebuttal. But in this case, I not only have context on my side (it’s in the midst of a list of other…isms) but I have the dictionary to back me up. The number 1 definition in The Merriam-Webster Dictionary is the one I am using.

@Seek_Kolinahr Totally great answer.

@Dr_Lawrence Why would the demand for market share be so much higher among Christians than among other major religions, even those that worship the same god?

@sinscriven Islam, Judiasm and a large collection of other religions function on revealed truth as well. The person doing the revealing differs faith to faith, but the basic principle is pretty common. And yet in other major religions, it doesn’t produce the massive fragmentation we see in Christianity.

@ragingloli Now that makes some sense. May well be.

@rojo I think the numbers are such that you can’t make that theory work. Christians are outnumber by more than 2 to 1 by all other religions, yet Christians have way more sects than all the world’s other major religions combined.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies True, but true for all mankind, so it can’t explain the excessive level of fragmentation found it Christian worship.

Because they Bible is infallible but since each and every one of them has their own interpretation of what the Bible actually says and each and every one of them believes their view/version is the correct one then we should be greatful that there are not even more sects?

The Koran is infallible. The Upanishads… There are plenty of religious texts asserting this claim. So again, why do Christians behave so differently from other major religions, even those inspired by the same “infallible” book.

All the religions with infallible text also have schisms? So, the Christians don’t behave differently, they are just better at it.

@rojo You know what the OP asked, right. Why are you tap dancing all around it?

Or, to put it another way, One of the reasons may be that Christians are open to and encourage interpretation of the Bible. Over time, new insight is developed and understanding of the Bible can change.

From what I understand of other religions is that they tend to only follow interpretations by the intellectual elite and doctrine is controlled by the few at the head of the religion. This would also explain why so many Christian denominations were formed during and after the Reformation and splits from Rome’s authority over the churches.

Yes? No? Maybe?

The Baha’i Faith has a very clear administrative order in place to prevent schism. In addition, without clergy or individuals in religious leadership roles, there are not the same financial and self/ego-driven motivations to splinter.

The human ego and the need of these religious entrepreneurs to feel like they’re something special. People always want others to think that they have special knowledge which others don’t have. I highly doubt that financial reasons were the main reason behind creating all of these denominations, though some may have been. Does Joel Olsteen count as a denominaton, or David Stewart?

@Paradox25 I agree with you on that. I think TV preachers are a whole different breed personally. Ever listen to the Vietnamese preacher, he’s interesting!

@rojo Thanks for the clarification. That makes perfect sense to me.

@Cupcake Thank you for that info. The Bahá’í Faith is one religion I have to admit I know too little about. If that’s how it is structured, I follow what you are saying.

@Paradox25 But that, again, comes back to basic human nature, which should be equally at play in any of the great religions. It has to be things specific to Christian beliefs.

@KNOWITALL What Vietnamese preacher? Can you please post a link to a YouTube cideo of a sermon?

Because there’s no list of formalized laws like in Judaism or Islam. The basis in Christianity is the life of Jesus. But what does his life mean for us today? Well, there are thousands of interpretations for this. This is why, according to David Barrett, we have 33000+ Christian denominations, see http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/a106.htm – and in modern times they have learned to co-exist without resorting to violence. Europe finally had enough after what happened between 1618 and 1648. Violent conflicts today like in Northern Ireland are fought in the name of nationalism, not religion. The same applies to the Kurds, but not what happens in Iraq and Pakistan with Muslims killing Muslims in the name of Islam.

@ETpro I’m not sure of his name, he’s on the same network as Joel Olsteen, but I can’t find it on Google.

@KNOWITALL It’s not just the tv preachers, but many religious folks criticize another’s interpretation of Christianity or denomination as well.

@ETpro Christianity has had a great deal of influence, and there are a great deal of older pagan beliefs/customs incorporated into that religion as well. Jesus was not the first savior to claim that they were the way, the truth and the life, so the messages associated with Christianity do not seem to be as clear cut (as anyone who’s read the Bible can tell you) as they seem to be when compared to other religions. That’s my guess anyways.

@Paradox25 Trust me, I know that very very well. My general philosophy is to live and let live, I don’t really care what anyone does, but I try to be the best person I can be. And I learned a long time ago that it’s not my place to judge anyone. Not all ‘religious people’ get that, but I learned the hard way.

@KNOWITALL Well thanks for trying to look it up.

@mattbrowne That makes a great deal of sense. But Buddhism and Hinduism also allow for such interpretation and Buddhism even relates to the life and teachings of a single man.

@Paradox25 Perhaps that is it.

@ETpro I don’t know and I’m just guessing, but think about the following. In some parts of the New Testament Jesus is God, while in other parts he clearly isn’t. The Godhead of the trinity concept just by itself is enough to make Christianity confusing. Also, in some parts of the Bible (Old and New Testament) works decides who goes to ‘heaven’, not faith. In other parts it is obvious that faith determines where one will go upon passing. I could go on and on here, but I feel that the answer to your question is the way that the Bible was written is what makes Christianity so confusing, so I would blame this for there being so many denominations. Most other religions seem to be more clearer in their philosophy.

@Paradox25 I think you just hit the jackpot.

Very interesting question. Thanks to OP.

Where to begin? The big question in the early days was who in the world Jesus was. This brought varying interpretations, most of which were much more similar to each other than different. But the question was crucial: it was a question Jesus had apparently asked others of himself – and asks today, it is said – and appears to be the reason he was executed [the answer{s} being unacceptable to the rulers]. Trying to get this right brought varying emphases. The Eastern churches tended to emphasize the divine nature of Christ over the human, the Western appearing in contrast to emphasize the human over divine. But they both emphasize[d] both. Still, this occasioned many controversies early on, and unfortunately for the most part, governments got involved. But to the greater degree Christians were essentially in agreement worldwide. Politics, culture, language are always factors [Coptic, Syrian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Catholic, etc]. The first Great Schism was in 1076, I think – Catholic and Orthodox. I think this was mostly political/cultural, i.e. partially regrettable and avoidable, partially inevitable.
As someone else noted, true Christian sectarianism seems rooted in the Reformation – one of the fears of the Catholic Church, and not merely for political reasons, I think [Augustine – and St. Paul – thought of schism with horror]. Once you open the “democratic doors”, i.e. my view is just as good as yours, there we go. If you can read a reputable Bible translation, you have a green light.
One way that I prefer to look at it is that God is not shamed by diversity [of practice or expression], only by lack of charity among the faithful. The Holy Spirit seems to speak in various ways through various peoples. They express themselves differently. There is nothing necessarily wrong with a “sect” as such, if it is not heretical [aha]. God seems to work in various, and mysterious ways. Diversity seems to me a strength, not a weakness. Every member of the “family” [Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Pentecostal; Chinese, African, European, etc.] contributes something quite unique and beautiful. If, as the book of Revelation says, there will be representatives from every tribe and nation in the world in heaven, and all will be praising God in their own unique ways, imagine what a wondrous thing that will be – the best music from every people in all the world, with apparently the best reason to sing, and the best One to sing for. Who wouldn’t want to be there for that? [sorry for length]

Addendum: ETPro [?] has a good point. The Bible itself has varying emphases in different places, which is one reason Christians have worked very hard to “get it right.” “Answers” will vary.