Organized Confusion​—Why?

Today, in 1989, Protestantism has crumbled into so many sects and denominations that it would be impossible to determine the total number. Before a person could finish counting, new groups would have been formed or others would have disappeared.

Nevertheless, the World Christian Encyclopedia does the “impossible” by dividing Christendom (as of 1980) into “20,780 distinct Christian denominations,” the vast majority of which are Protestant.a They include 7,889 classic Protestant groups, 10,065 mostly Protestant nonwhite indigenous religions, 225 Anglican denominations, and 1,345 marginal Protestant groups.

In explanation of how this confusing diversity, called both “a sign of health and of sickness,” came about, the book Protestant Christianity mentions that it “may be due to human creativity and human finitude; even more it may be due to prideful men who think too highly of their own outlook upon life.”

How true! Without giving sufficient consideration to divine truth, prideful men offer new alternatives for finding salvation, liberation, or fulfillment. Religious pluralism finds no support in the Bible.

In promoting religious pluralism, Protestantism seems to imply that God has no set guidelines according to which he is to be worshiped. Is such organized confusion consistent with a God of truth, who the Bible says “is a God, not of disorder, but of peace”? Is the often heard Protestant go-to-the-church-of-your-choice mentality any different from the independent thinking that led Adam and Eve into erroneous belief and subsequent trouble?​—1 Corinthians 14:33; see Genesis 2:9; 3:17-19.

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Early Children of the Reformation

ANGLICAN COMMUNION: 25 autonomous churches and 6 other bodies sharing doctrine, polity, and liturgy with the Church of England and recognizing the titular leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Encyclopedia of Religion says Anglicanism “has kept faith in the apostolic succession of bishops and has retained many pre-Reformation practices.” Central to its worship is The Book of Common Prayer, “the only vernacular liturgy of the Reformation period still in use.” Anglicans in the United States, who broke with the Church of England and formed the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1789, once again broke with tradition in February 1989 by installing the first female bishop in Anglican history.

BAPTIST CHURCHES: 369 denominations (1970) originating with the 16th-century Anabaptists, who stressed adult baptism by immersion. The Encyclopedia of Religion says Baptists have “found it difficult to maintain organizational or theological unity,” adding that “the Baptist family in the United States is large, . . . but, as in many another large family, some members do not speak to other members.”

LUTHERAN CHURCHES: 240 denominations (1970), boasting the largest total membership of any Protestant group. They are “still somewhat divided along ethnic lines (German, Swede, etc),” says The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1988, adding, however, that the “main divisions are between fundamentalists and liberals.” The division of Lutherans into nationalistic camps became quite apparent during World War II, when, as E. W. Gritsch of Lutheran Theological Seminary, U.S.A., says, “a small minority of Lutheran pastors and congregations [in Germany] resisted Hitler, but the great majority of Lutherans either remained silent or actively cooperated with the Nazi regime.”

METHODIST CHURCHES: 188 denominations (1970) arising from a movement within the Church of England that was founded in 1738 by John Wesley. After his death it broke off as a separate group; Wesley defined a Methodist as “one that lives according to the method laid down in the Bible.”

REFORMED AND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES: Reformed churches (354 denominations as of 1970) in doctrine are Calvinistic, rather than Lutheran, and view themselves as the “Catholic Church, reformed.” “Presbyterian” designates a church government by elders (presbyters); all Presbyterian churches are Reformed churches, but not all Reformed churches have a presbyterian form of government.