Bad apologists say: Sola scriptura has led to 33,000 Protestant denominations.

ne of the marks of excep­tion­al­ly bad apolo­get­ics is a claim that can’t with­stand a jot or tit­tle of scruti­ny. Nobody helps the pur­suit of truth by mak­ing claims like that. We still believe truth mat­ters, don’t we? But the “33,000 Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions” myth has a tenac­i­ty that seems to be direct­ly pro­por­tion­al to its eas­i­ness to dis­prove. I’m not sure who first shack­led Catholic apolo­get­ics to this absurd­ly large ball of a num­ber, though Steve Ray’s name comes up a lot. He duti­ful­ly drags it around, as though he thinks it’s a truth divine­ly revealed. The good news is that, more and more, Catholics are dis­own­ing it and cut­ting them­selves loose. If you Google “33,000 denom­i­na­tions,” the first arti­cle that comes up is my own, from the Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter in 2016. Go down the list a lit­tle and you will find oth­er Catholics reject­ing it, such as K. Albert Lit­tle. If you search around a while more, you’ll find this arti­cle by Stephen Beale and this one by Ben­jamin Bax­ter. You have to go far down the list before you find any­thing by Steve Ray. But as recent­ly as May 18 of this year, still bound fast to the mythol­o­gy, he once more pro­mot­ed this sar­cas­tic apol­o­gy from a few years ago, when he “con­ced­ed” that there are real­ly only 31,121 and he should­n’t have over­stat­ed the num­ber. But no soon­er did he say that, than he added that his source was many years out of date and prob­a­bly the true num­ber is “well over 40,000.” He even projects that, by 2025, there will be close to 61,000 of them. That’s Steve Ray; he has many fol­low­ers and true believ­ers.

His source is the World Chris­t­ian Ency­clo­pe­dia (WCE) of 2001. (The third edi­tion is sched­uled for release lat­er this year.) Give it but a glance and you’ll find more than a few prob­lems with the “33,000 Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions” claim. Here’s where that num­ber comes up in the source:

World Chris­tian­ity con­sists of 6 major eccle­si­as­ti­co-​cul­tur­al blocs, divid­ed into 300 major eccle­si­as­ti­cal tra­di­tions, com­posed [sic] of over 33,000 dis­tinct denom­i­na­tions in 238 coun­tries.

But that’s “world Chris­tian­i­ty,” not Protes­tantism. That’s every­thing. Mr. Ray and those who par­rot him can’t just con­vert “world Chris­tian­i­ty” into “Protes­tantism.” It does­n’t work that way. WCE is help­ful and breaks down that large num­ber into its com­pos­ite groups:

• Inde­pen­dents: 22,000 denom­i­na­tions
• Protes­tants: 9,000 denom­i­na­tions
• Mar­gin­als: 1,600 denom­i­na­tions
• Ortho­dox: 781 denom­i­na­tions
• Catholics: 242 denom­i­na­tions
• Angli­cans: 168 denom­i­na­tions

Now maybe Mr. Ray has a much more sub­tle mind than I do and can peer more deeply into the mys­ter­ies, but I only see 9,000 denom­i­na­tions of Protes­tants list­ed here. That’s indeed a high num­ber, but it is nowhere near 33,000. And is one per­mit­ted to ask at this point how the WCE comes up with 242 denom­i­na­tions of Catholics? Look into the details and you will find the WCE cit­ing Latin Rite Catholics, Byzan­tine Rite Catholics, Melkites, Copts, Maronites, and so on, as sep­a­rate Catholic denom­i­na­tions. But these are rites, not denom­i­na­tions. They’re all equal­ly in com­mu­nion with Rome. Did this not raise alarm bells with Mr. Ray? Did he not think: You know, this source is being a bit loose and free with the word “denom­i­na­tion”? Indeed, here’s how WCE defines it:

an orga­nized aggre­gate of wor­ship cen­ters or con­gre­ga­tions of sim­i­lar eccle­si­as­ti­cal tra­di­tion with­in a spe­cific coun­try … whose com­po­nent con­gre­ga­tions and mem­bers are called by the same denom­i­na­tional name in dif­fer­ent areas, regard­ing them­selves as one autonomous Chris­t­ian church dis­tinct from oth­er denom­i­na­tions, church­es, and tra­di­tions.

“With­in a spe­cif­ic coun­try” … did you catch that? Do you know what that means? That means you could have a Pres­by­ter­ian denom­i­na­tion in the Unit­ed States and in Cana­da, which is unit­ed in every­thing else, but the WCE will count them as two dif­fer­ent denom­i­na­tions. Now that, dear read­er, is a recipe for inflat­ed num­bers. The edi­tors come right out and admit this to us:

As a sta­tis­ti­cal unit in this Ency­clo­pe­dia, a “denom­i­na­tion” always refers to one sin­gle coun­try. Thus the Roman Catholic Church, although a sin­gle orga­ni­za­tion, is described here as con­sist­ing of 236 denom­i­na­tions in the world’s 238 coun­tries.

This is not a mean­ing­ful enough def­i­n­i­tion of the word “denom­i­na­tion” to allow us to answer the ques­tion Mr. Ray claims he’s answered—namely, the amount of Chris­t­ian divi­sion caused by sola scrip­tura. Allow­ing your­self to count Catholic church­es in dif­fer­ent coun­tries as dif­fer­ent denom­i­na­tions, even though they’re all in union with Rome, is a way of skew­ing the num­bers toward large­ness. Giv­en that, how can we say there are even 9,000 Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions? That num­ber must also be inflat­ed.

And why does Mr. Ray insist on lump­ing in “Inde­pen­dents” and “Mar­gin­als” as though they are some­how Protes­tant? Does he have a defense of that? Well, he tries:

Inde­pen­dent groups made up 22,148 “denom­i­na­tions” [That’s a huge chunk of 33,000] and includ­ed groups like Inde­pen­dent Bap­tist, Ply­mouth Brethren, Inde­pen­dent Methodist, Inde­pen­dent Luther­an, Apos­tolic Con­gre­ga­tions, Charis­mat­ic denom­i­na­tions, Pen­te­costal—

 

[Not all Pen­te­costals are even Chris­t­ian. One­ness Pen­te­costals deny the Trin­i­ty and dis­qual­i­fy them­selves on that basis alone.]

 

—oth­er Adven­tists, Reformed Angli­cans, Inde­pen­dent Reformed Pres­by­ter­ian, Old Catholic, and many more (see the chart). Now, if you cut these out and say they are not “[P]rotestant” then my num­bers are false. But even though they are list­ed as “Inde­pen­dent” they are every bit “[P]rotestant denom­i­na­tions.”

There’s some bravu­ra for you right there. The source may say Inde­pen­dent, but they’re Protes­tant! But it’s utter­ly disingenuous—Mr. Ray cher­ry picks groups that sound Protes­tant as though they rep­re­sent the whole. Also among the Inde­pen­dents and Mar­gin­als are groups you would have a hard time clas­si­fy­ing as Chris­t­ian, let alone Protes­tant. I cit­ed a bunch of them in my arti­cle for the Reg­is­ter four years ago:

They include Mor­mons (122 denom­i­na­tions), Jehovah’s Wit­nesses (229 denom­i­na­tions), Masons (28 denom­i­na­tions), Chris­tadel­phi­ans (21 denom­i­na­tions) Uni­tar­i­ans (29 denom­i­na­tions), Chris­t­ian Sci­ence (59 denom­i­na­tions), Theosophists (3 more denom­i­na­tions), British Israelites (8 denom­i­na­tions), Pros­per­ity Gospel groups (27 denom­i­na­tions), One­ness Pen­te­costals (680 denom­i­na­tions), “Hid­den Bud­dhist Believ­ers in Christ” (9 denom­i­na­tions), wan­der­ing bish­ops (12 denom­i­na­tions), Inde­pen­dent Nesto­ri­ans (5 denom­i­na­tions), occultists (3 denom­i­na­tions), spiri­tists (20 denom­i­na­tions), Zion­ists (159 denom­i­na­tions), even “Arab radio/​TV net­work” (19 denom­i­na­tions), “gay/​homosexual tra­di­tion” (2 denom­i­na­tions), and schis­matic Catholics (435 denom­i­na­tions). It is a strange and eclec­tic list.

How does Mr. Ray know that all this eclec­tic divi­sion is due to sola scrip­tura? That is his claim: “Sola scrip­tura has been a huge fac­tor in caus­ing, or at least, facil­i­tat­ing this scan­dalous sit­u­a­tion.” Has it? Mr. Ray nev­er tells us how he knows this; he just asserts it. How many of these groups claim to believe in sola scrip­tura in the first place? Evi­dent­ly Mr. Ray thinks, after pri­vate con­sul­ta­tion with him­self, Gosh, must be sola scrip­tura. Ego locu­tus sum.” Does he ask him­self: What are the dis­tinc­tives of Protes­tantism? How many of these eclec­tic groups can real­ly be said to qual­i­fy? Does he ask him­self: If the WCE can list Mor­mons and Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness­es as Chris­t­ian, how can I be sure that it knows what a Protes­tant is? (Does Mr. Ray know what a Protes­tant is? I can’t tell.)

The WCE is far too flawed a source for any­one to be cit­ing in these dis­cus­sions. I’m guess­ing here, but I sus­pect the rea­son some peo­ple get so attached to a num­ber like 33,000—and then want to go beyond it and say, “Well, that was twen­ty years ago; it’s prob­a­bly clos­ing in on 60,000 now”—is because they think a grandiose num­ber will make a Protes­tant feel par­tic­u­lar­ly embar­rassed and speech­less. “And it’s all due to sola scrip­tura!” the Catholic will tri­umphant­ly crow.

Any Protes­tant who actu­al­ly is embar­rassed and speech­less at this point is green. Those who aren’t roll their eyes and think, Not this again. It does­n’t get you any­where. It does­n’t con­vince any­one of any­thing, except that you don’t know what you’re talk­ing about.

Stop cit­ing this dumb num­ber of 33,000—and don’t make it high­er, either. Don’t flock to the third edi­tion when it comes out lat­er this year and hun­gri­ly search for some out­ra­geous new num­ber to eat and vom­it back out again. We don’t care how many Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions there are; it does­n’t mat­ter. We should focus on explain­ing why sola scrip­tura is false. (It’s not false because it has sup­pos­ed­ly led to 33,000 denom­i­na­tions; it would be false even if there were three.) We should focus on the neces­si­ty of Chris­t­ian uni­ty, the scan­dal of divi­sion, and Eph­esians 4:4 (which says there’s one Church). We don’t need to fix­ate upon dubi­ous num­bers as though that con­sti­tutes a mean­ing­ful argu­ment. Stop it.