Fractured Christianity

what is the highest amount of fractures that can happen within Christianity into distinct (acknowledged if not accepted) churches, counting the various east European orthodox churches as one 'fraction' as they mainly (AFAIK) differ in nationality, while still having roughly the same amount of Christians in Our Time?
 
Well I guess if the Great Western Schism happened, as well as a German pope, then a reformation came, you would be looking at 3 different types of Catholics alone.
 
And then if some modified form of Catholicism takes hold in China, like the OTL failed Taiping Revolution tried to accomplish, that's another type.
 
And then if some modified form of Catholicism takes hold in China, like the OTL failed Taiping Revolution tried to accomplish, that's another type.

Honestly the taiping where such a weird group religiously that classifying them as Christian feels off. In my opinion the religion preached by the Taiping would qualify as its own separate religion in the abrahamic tradition.
 

katchen

Banned
And if the Albigensian Crusade was stopped dead in it's tracks---maybe by Mongol conquest.
 
Taiping Christianity is basically like Mormonism, or Rastafarianism, or what have you. You can have as many really fractured and different sects as you like but it doesn't really matter unless they are in large numbers/influence.
 
How about some of the early heresies like gnosticism, arianism, ebionites. Another possibility is celtic christianity retaining it's differences from Roman Catholicism.
 

katchen

Banned
The Mongol conquest does not have to last long term to give Catharism a chance to prosper as the religion of an independent Occitania. Or maybe evolve into a Christo-Vajrayana Buddhism in Occitania. And especially if the Mongols prevented the College of Cardinals from ever electing a new Pope, they might force the evolution or devolution of Catholicism into a number of national Catholic Churches. The Franco-Catholic Church. The Italio-Catholic Church. The Castilo-Catholic Church. The Aragono-Catholic Church. The Anglo-Catholic Church, the Kayserrieich Catholic Church. The Danno Catholic Church . The Svensko Catholic Church. The PortoCatholic Church. The NavarroCatholic Church. All developing along different lines.
 
The Mongol conquest does not have to last long term to give Catharism a chance to prosper as the religion of an independent Occitania. Or maybe evolve into a Christo-Vajrayana Buddhism in Occitania. And especially if the Mongols prevented the College of Cardinals from ever electing a new Pope, they might force the evolution or devolution of Catholicism into a number of national Catholic Churches. The Franco-Catholic Church. The Italio-Catholic Church. The Castilo-Catholic Church. The Aragono-Catholic Church. The Anglo-Catholic Church, the Kayserrieich Catholic Church. The Danno Catholic Church . The Svensko Catholic Church. The PortoCatholic Church. The NavarroCatholic Church. All developing along different lines.

Except heres the problem I see, Batu Khan is not immortal, dude died before they had taken much of Hungary. He is going to die and leave whatever expedition he's leading leaderless and forced to retreat to choose a new Khan well before he's done stomping down German resistance (which would be massive and hard for him to deal with given how Germany is not the kind of terriotry that is as favorable for a mongol army). Even a Mongol conquest of Hungary would probably be ephemeral and only last a couple of years before they reassert their independence.
 

katchen

Banned
True, but where does that leave a Catholic Church with no Pope and no College of Cardinals to elect a Pope since the Mongols kidnapped them in 1291 back to Karakorum and they haven't been heard from ever again?
Probably with each Archbishop in charge of his own archdioces and every king now loathe to let his Archbishops out of his realm to elect a new Pope. A permanent Interregnum, like a permanently occulted Imam in Shia Islam, would suit the Kings and Princes of Europe now just fine.
 
True, but where does that leave a Catholic Church with no Pope and no College of Cardinals to elect a Pope since the Mongols kidnapped them in 1291 back to Karakorum and they haven't been heard from ever again?
Probably with each Archbishop in charge of his own archdioces and every king now loathe to let his Archbishops out of his realm to elect a new Pope. A permanent Interregnum, like a permanently occulted Imam in Shia Islam, would suit the Kings and Princes of Europe now just fine.

No, they would have a synod of bishops to elect the new pope. The church was devoted enough to unity at the time and it served enough benefit that most european feudal lords would want to send their bishop if only so that they got a say in who the next pope. And you do need to realize that the catholic church was not just something monarchs payed lip service to, a lot of European feudal lords where legimately devout and would not want the church to be allowed to fall apart without a leader.
 
How about some of the early heresies like gnosticism, arianism, ebionites. Another possibility is celtic christianity retaining it's differences from Roman Catholicism.

Eliminating I think the best bet would be an early and messier collapse of the Western Roman Empire before Constantine with a couple of successor kingdoms combined with barbarian kingdoms all believing a variety of Christianity
 
Suggesting the latest PoD so far:

Let the Papacy crumble completely in the age of the Reformation!

The following potential reasons come to my mind:

  • worse economic and military situation of the Papal State itself,
  • (some) spread of the ideas of the Reformation into Italy,
  • no such staunch, willing, and powerful defender of the Church as Charles V. IOTL.

And I am envisioning the following consequences:

  • lacking a clear leader on the Catholic side, no clear alliance behind the traditional creed builds - most princes take a neutral/observant/tolerant position (IOTL some did, like Bavaria),
  • princes backing the traditional belief obtain not even support in words from the Pope - because of timidity in the face of Protestants at the gate, or because of other business (a demanding war). Perhaps he even does the Catholic princes some harm, say, by power interests in combination with the war (all of this seems plausible given that the Pope IOTL did not understand the momentousness of the events at all),
  • optionally: a dethronement of the Pope - either a (short) Protestant revolution/invasion in Rome, or any other period of sede vacante - not very long but too long in such important times;
  • in any case, even the princes most loyal to the traditional lore of the Church cannot refer to the Pope as there is none, or there is one impairing their position like a bull in a china shop,
  • by lack of a clear leader (Pope, Emperor, or King), each *Catholic prince has to cope with the new challenge on their own. Of course, alliances are possible when it comes to upheavals or military conflicts, but there is no central authority in religious matters.
  • What is valid for *Catholic princes also applies to bishops and abbots who will have to face these challenges as well.
  • As the threat to *Protestants from "the other side" is not monolithic as IOTL, there is a lot less reason to ally, and there will also be significant centrifugal powers in early *Protestantism.
  • When the dust has settled, we will see a wide variety of different *Christian creeds, but all (or most) of them easily recognizable from OTL's Christianity.


This may look unusual, but I do think that this is a very plausible scenario. At first, while many historical "key" events are, at second glace, just symptoms of much larger processes and despite the Reformation being such an event that would definitely happen some way or other, a lot depends on the detail choices of few people - most prominently, Luther and Charles V.

Moreover, it took many decades for the Catholic Church to reorganize IOTL, until it could actually provide some counterbalance both on an intellectual level and in a, um, PR sense (aka known as Counter-Reformation).

Finally, even as of 1618, the individual Catholic bishops/bishoprics were a lot more autonomous than they have been in the last one and a half century. IOTL, there were even Cathedral chapters of mixed creed, who would take turns in electing Catholic and Protestant bishops. This was only stopped by military force in the TYW. In this ATL, things could become even more chaotic.

Centrifugal powers will be stronger in this scenario than IOTL, but the, um, convex hull of the theological systems among Christian creeds will not be extremely larger (or away) from those existent IOTL. It might be interesting that in some cases, theologians might cherish the memory of the Popes of yore, as well as the principle of Papacy - without recognizing the one or those who claim that position at their time. For some, "Pope" may become an honorable role that, alas, is no longer filled - like the Apostles'.
 
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