File talk:Historical Branches and Sects of Christianity.png

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I strongly believe that this chart suffers from serious problems as it stands, and should not be used in its current form. The issues are as follows:

  • Listing "Protestantism" as one single branch despite the large number of very different Protestant groups (some of whom are very significant historically and demographically, with tens of millions of followers).
  • Listing the Old Believers as a separate branch which split from Eastern Orthodoxy. In fact they are a split from the Moscow Patriarchate, which is a subdivision of Eastern Orthodoxy (in other words, the Old Believers do not necessarily have a conflict with the other subdivisions of Eastern Orthodoxy). Furthermore, there are many splinter groups that departed from the mainstream of Eastern Orthodoxy over the years (for example the old calendarists, etc.), just as there are splinter groups from the Catholic Church (e.g. the Society of St. Pius X) and others. There is no justification for showing the Old Believers but not showing the other such splinter groups (and showing them all would massively complicate the chart, so I would suggest showing none).
  • Iconoclasm was not a separate branch of Christianity, it was a dispute within the Church in the Byzantine Empire. No separate "Iconoclast Church" ever existed.
  • Including Gnosticism, Manicheanism and Mandeanism as branches of Christianity is controversial in the extreme, and misleading. They may or may not have had the same origins as Christianity, but they certainly did not originate from Christianity. Manicheanism in particular most likely originated from Zoroastrianism and incorporated Christian elements later, while Mandeanism rejects Jesus of Nazareth as a false prophet, and thus cannot be said to have a Christian origin (it has a Jewish origin, of course, which it shares with Christianity).

So I would suggest removing Gnosticism, Manicheanism, Mandeanism, Iconoclasm and the Old Believers from the chart, and expanding Protestantism to show its various divisions. Ohff (talk) 00:18, 24 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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