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There have been widely different groups of Christians since the time of Christ himself. I'll describe some major groups and their beliefs. Keep in mind, this is by no means going to come close to including them all.

From the start, there were Christian Jews, Gnostics, and what I would call Mainstream Christians. Christian Jews were Jews who believed Christ was the messiah, but continued doing things like Jews. Gnostics believed Christ was divine and that his teachings were more important than his death and resurrection, and his teachings were meant to inspire personal truth. Mainstream Christians continued to follow the teachings of Peter, Paul, and other disciples after Christ's death.

Eventually, the Christian Jews faded out. The Mainstream Church was established in Rome by emperor Constantine. The leaders of the mainstream church met and decided how to standardize their teachings and practices, as there were many religious leaders, each with their own ideas. After this, there was one mainstream church soon known as the Roman Catholic Church. United, they literally hunted and killed the Gnostics, whose teachings they saw as heresy.

The first major division was when leaders in Greece disagreed with the leaders in Rome. This led to The Great Schism and resulted in Eastern Orthodox, which is centered in Greece.

The next major division was called the Protestant Reformation, and came when a Catholic Monk, Martin Luther, grew disillusioned with the hypocrisies of the Catholic Church. He declared that Christians should follow the Bible and not extraneous Church doctrine. Protestant Churches each claim to follow their specific view of the Bible.

There were no other major divisions, but another group needs to be mentioned. Several times, other Christan groups have risen that don't have roots in these other movements. Both the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons each claim that their leaders received direct instructions from God to start their churches. These groups are often called "cult" or "inspired" Christians.

So the major groups we have are Jewish Christians, Gnostic, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Inspired.

Hopefully someone can better explain the subtle differences between Protestant groups, but I hope that helped you understand the reason we have different major groups.

If you have any more questions, I can answer them. I love this topic. wink

There's many cases of Christians killing each other throughout the last 2000 years. Remember the witch hunts in Europe? We have evidence that shows that it was people who converted to protestantism in catholic countries and vice-versa that were the most commonly targeted and accused.

The Knights Templar, holy Catholic knights who guarded pilgrimages to the holy land during the Crusades, were eventually declared heretics, accused of worshiping the demon Baphomet, and killed by the Church.

More recently, the Mormons fled to Utah after receiving death-threats from two or three different cities in the US.

Now I'm not telling you this to make you think badly of Christians. I think everyone should be aware of both the good and the bad parts of history. Christianity today is alot more accepting than it ever was in the past. Yes, there is still alot of prejudice, and some groups still claim to be better than others, but progress is being made.

It's wrong to hold any group responsible today. There's no one alive anymore from when these atrocities were committed, and why blame the child for the sins of the father? the Catholic Church has publicly apologized for many things they've done, and I'm sure other groups have too.

Yeah, the Gnostics were by-and-large hunted down and killed for being "heretics" - a label that the RCC (Roman Catholic Church) used throughout the ages to hunt down rival sects that they saw as a threat (be it spiritually, temporally, or whatever).

There are also a variety of Oriental (and at least one African) Christian sects - basically when the Christian Jews fled Palestine during the Roman occupation, there were also groups that went in other directions besides west. Most of these remained comparatively small for a variety of reasons.

To ask why there are so many branches of Christianity... one might as well expand the question to why there are so many modes of human belief in general for they share the same core answer.

If I were to hold a pencil up to a group of, say, twelve people and ask them to describe it to me on a sheet of paper, what do you think the chances are their repsonses would be exactly identical? Each individual sees and perceives in a way that is, while similar, not identical to any other individual in that room. Because we can only see with our own set of sensory instruments and only perceive with our own brains, our perspective on the world is limited to that of our own senses and perceptions. From that people can come to totally different conclusions when they observe what we'd often call the same object. One person says the pencil is yellow. Another says it's used for writing. Another still says it's made of wood, graphite, metal, and rubber. Who is right? Everybody and nobody.

Out of this sort of thing emerges many, many modes of belief. No matter if a person falls under the exact same denomination of Christianity or the same variety of Buddhism... their paths will NOT be identical and they will have their own personal takes and variations on those beliefs. Overarching generalizations are useful but only to a point. Because of that I think it is important, particularly when discussing worldviews (religious or otherwise) to be aware that you need to be careful about making assumptions. Just because someone self-identifies as Christian, for instance, doesn't mean they do or do not believe in the practice of infant baptism, the innerancy of the Bible, or that women shouldn't be clergy.

Because presumably, the priest (or pastor, rabbi, mullah, etc) has had specific training in doctrinal issues. While their opinions do often influence their presentation of those doctrines and liturgy, it is assumed that they speak with some authority, not only because they are religious scholars, but also because they were chosen by their respective organizations to serve as a representative of the faith/order.

I know that in many Christian denominations (Catholic, Episcopalian, and Protestant), the clergy receive 'orders' and interpretations of doctrine from their superiors - so that presumably one church of any given denomination is much like any other of the same denomination.

It's also kinda that you should listen to your elders and those who know their stuff. Not everybody has the time to be a full time theologian and when you don't have the time to do all the digging for yourself, you trust those who know more than you to tell you what's what. That happens in things other than just religion; it happens in science all the time. Most of us own a computer if we're here on Gaia Online, for example, but how many of us are devoted to actually understanding how a computer works from the hardware up to the software? When we have trouble with our computer, usually we hand it off to the experts. Clergy are like the experts of their particular religion and they should be there to help you.

The clergy don't stop you from doing your own seeking as well, however. wink

This is exactly why I posted this. I mean, so many. This is what I knew before; I knew there were three main branches in modern Christianity: Orthodox, Catholic, and Prostant.