Thus, I have listed Calvary in Table 1 as being opposed to the idea of compatibility between evolution and its faith. Calvary does not maintain membership numbers, but there are approximately 1, Calvary Chapels in the United States, with membership ranging from only 20—30 families up to 10,—15, members personal communication, Calvary Chapel Outreach Fellowship Office, April The 3. Note: The Vineyard, which broke away from the Calvary movement above in the early s, is similar in allowing a diversity of worship styles and approaches, but it is perhaps more diverse and less constrained than Calvary.
Within the Vineyard one can find a wide range of stances on the topic of evolution and creation, from liberal or progressive advocates who see evolution as an act of and expression of God to more evangelical advocates who would not embrace that view personal communication, Kris Miller, The Vineyard USA National Office, October The membership estimate , to , was given to me by Pam Trautmann of the Vineyard National Office personal communication, April Note: A relatively recent phenomenon in Protestant Christianity is the rise of extremely large, usually non-denominational churches, particularly in the United States.
These churches tend to be evangelical or Pentecostal, and they may be independent of mainline Protestant denominations that are similar in name. Because these churches probably constitute a significant but currently unknown percentage of the U. I queried each church that appeared in the top 10 list about the compatibility of their faith with evolutionary biology, and the results are below. The name of the church is followed by the number of weekly attendees and their position if known based on their reply or on known affiliations.
North Point Community Church Alpharetta, Georgia , 22,, Unknown e-mail indicating a broad acceptance of, and appreciation for, diversity. The above numbers are not included in Table 1. Some of these churches, such as those affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention Second Baptist, Saddleback or with Calvary Chapel Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale may have been included in the membership estimates of mainstream denominations given earlier.
There is also a lot of volatility in the membership of these large churches; the number 6 and 7 churches on the list did not make the top 10 in There are a number of important caveats that must be considered when comparing the data summarized in Table 1. First, as noted earlier, it is difficult to find accurate estimates of membership numbers for many religious groups and organizations.
Some groups do not maintain membership figures, some use attendance figures, and some have no central governing body or headquarters. Some denominations did not respond to my queries, and some websites and related documents I located appear to be old and might not reflect current thinking.
Second, not all of the estimated 1, Christian denominations in the U. The sheer number of Christian groups means that there are likely to be some large groups not known to me and thus not represented here. Denominations have come and gone over the years, especially in the U. Names have changed, groups have merged and split, and there is apparently no single source that tracks all of these changes, although several do a respectable job of maintaining lists of U.
Third, not all groups have a statement or position on what they believe as concerns science, faith, and evolution. Some offer clear statements about their beliefs on this topic while others do not, and some offer statements that are slightly ambiguous. Fourth, many Christians in the U. This unknown but undoubtedly significant number of Christians probably is not represented in the membership counts of mainstream denominations, although some of them are see earlier.
Such statements, if they exist, might not reflect the opinions of, and might not even be known by, the general membership of the group. I know Presbyterians who are creationists and Baptists who are not. Table 1 is at best a generalization. Yet even with all of the above qualifications noted, it seems clear that acceptance of evolution as being compatible with faith is a majority, and not a minority, view among Christians as represented by their denominations , even in the United States.
Even so, these numbers dispel the myth that it is all Christians, or even a clear majority, that are opposed to teaching evolution or feel that it is in conflict with their faith.
Perhaps this is not surprising. According to geneticist Dr. In fact, the majority of Christian seminaries do not teach a Biblical literalist creation. In the United States and Canada, one tends to find Biblical literalist beliefs being promoted most strongly in small, independent denominations, where it is not uncommon for the leader to have little or no formal theological training. The exception is the very large Southern Baptist Convention, a well-organized denomination with a very large membership that is against compatibility.
These data could be helpful in teaching evolutionary biology by dispelling the myth that persons of faith, and specifically Christians in the United States, are opposed to it on religious grounds.
Beyond these figures, a more interesting and more telling statistic is that, within a denomination, it appears that at least in some cases it is the more theologically educated leaders pastoral staff who accept evolution, more so than the less educated members at large. Footnote 7 It would be interesting to see if this pattern holds true for the other mainstream Protestant denominations. If so, it would allow the following, and rather strong, argument to be made: Among Christians, those who have received a deeper theological education are more likely to understand evolution as being compatible with their faith.
In the absence of additional studies for other denominations, such a statement is currently premature, although I am also unaware of any data that would contradict it. For example, Gibbons , chart on p. Other references e. Other sources for estimates of the number of Christians overall and within each denomination include: Time Almanac , p. Plattner, and Philip J. The June General Assembly of the UUA "…urges the Board of Trustees and President of the Association, member societies, and Unitarian Universalists in the United States to: … oppose efforts to compromise the integrity of public school teaching by the introduction of sectarian religious doctrines, such as "scientific creationism," and by exclusion of educational materials on sectarian grounds".
Additional statements from a wide variety of religious groups Christian and non-Christian that support the acceptance of evolutionary biology as being compatible with their faith can be found on the website of the National Center for Science Education www. Religious bodies of the world with at least 1 million adherents; Accessed 26 January Accessed 4 January World Christian encyclopedia, 2nd edition: a comparative survey of churches and religions in the modern world.
I: the world by countries: religionists, churches, ministries. New York: Oxford University Press; Curry A. Creationist beliefs persist in Europe. Martin JW. The prism and the rainbow: a Christian explains why evolution is not a threat. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; Google Scholar. Mazur A. Believers and disbelievers in evolution. Polit Life Sci.
Article Google Scholar. Numbers RL. The creationists: from scientific creationism to intelligent design, expanded edition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; Accessed 22 February Sager C. Voices for evolution. Also, according to United Nations there were over 23, competing and often contradictory denominations world-wide World Census of Religious Activities [U. Information Center, NY, ].
Schaeffer is Orthodox. Fahlbusch, et al. The present net increase is denominations each year five new ones a week. Now, this is where the figures ultimately come from. As we see, this is untrue: they come from these sources. This ultimately led to my own skeptical position, and caused me to change my opinion only a short while after I wrote my paper, upon further reflection and to remove the paper from my website.
Strangely enough, one person who helped convince me to change my mind was the anti-Catholic Eric Svendsen who despises my work and thinks little of me even on a personal level. Eric made a good argument, that I found compelling. I have posed this question over and over again to many different Roman Catholic apologists, none of whom were able to verify the source with certainty. In most cases, one Roman Catholic apologist would claim he obtained the figure from another Roman Catholic apologist.
When I would ask the latter Roman Catholic apologist about the figure, it was not uncommon for that apologist to point to the former apologist as his source for the figure, creating a circle with no actual beginning. As usual, Svendsen paints with too broad a brush.
He states that this is from his book Upon This Slippery Rock , dated My paper was online in March and my withdrawal of it occurred not long afterwards. But at least two apologists cited their sources with great particularity and accuracy. Ironies never cease where anti-Catholics are concerned. I have only recently been able to locate the source of this figure.
I say the source because in fact there is only one source that mentions this figure independently. All other secondary sources to which Roman Catholics sometimes make appeal ultimately cite the same original source. That source is David A. David A. This work is both comprehensive and painstakingly detailed; and its contents are quite enlightening. And as we see, this is the work that Al and I cited. Now here is where Eric starts to make a good point about denominational criteria:. As an example, Baptist denominations comprise approximately of the total Protestant figure.
In other words, if there are ten Independent Baptist churches in a given city, even though all of them are identical in belief and practice, each one is counted as a separate denomination due to its autonomy in jurisdiction. So why does Christianity have so many branches? A cursory look shows that differences in belief, power grabs and corruption all had a part to play.
But on some level, differentiation and variety have been markers of Christianity since the very beginning, according to Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor emeritus of church history at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Related: Was Jesus a magician? The early church, which spans from the start of Jesus' ministry, in A. Worship styles and interpretations of Jesus' teachings varied based on regional cultures and customs, according to Bruce Gordon, a professor of ecclesiastical history at Yale Divinity School.
But there were also major breaks, or schisms, over Christian theology during this time. One of the most notable early schisms, the Arian controversy in the early fourth century, divided the church on Jesus' relationship with God.
Arius, a priest from Alexandria, Egypt, claimed that because Jesus was "begotten," or brought about by God, he was a lesser divinity than God. But Athanasius, an Alexandrian theologian, claimed that Jesus was God incarnate. But despite the church's official view, Christians continued to be divided on the subject for more than a century. The two groups disagreed on the taking of the sacraments — religious symbols believed to transmit divine grace to the believer.
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