Is it possible for a new Christian denomination to attract large parts of Christendom post 1700?

Similar to Protestantism after the Reformation? Or was it too late at that point for these kinds of large scale religious changes in the West?

There is Mormonism, for example, which only came into existence in the 19th century, but it never attracted more than a relatively small minority in the US. Outside of the US it‘s practically unknown to most people. Is there a way to make it more successful?

Or some kind of effort to turn Deism, or some other form of ‚enlightened‘ Christianity, into an actual denomination, if such a thing is even possible?

Could some kind of ‚prophet‘ still be taken seriously post 1700, enough to spawn a whole new branch of Christianity across the West? Similar to Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, but on a larger scale?
 

Philip

Donor
While Dispensationalism is more a method than a denomination, it isn't hard to construct a scenario where it is one. The same goes for Fundamentalism as we know it today. I guess you could say the same of the several denominations that have branched over a liberal/conservative split in the XX and XXI Centuries.
 
How large are we talking here?

As i said, comparable to Protestantism, which means a following of hundreds of millions of people (at least today).

Methodism OTL did just that

Isn‘t Methodism just another Protestant denomination? It is also too small, though it seems to be growing rapidly these days, in South Korea, for example. I‘m talking about a massive shift here, similar to the Reformation itself.
 
Outside of the US it‘s practically unknown to most people. Is there a way to make it more successful?

The Mormon church down the street from where my grandparents lived in a small provincial backwater in an armpit of the world in South africa begs to differ
 
Pentecostalism. The word you're looking for here is Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism was founded in 1906, and yet today it has almost 300,000,000 adherents and growing rapidly.
 
As i said, comparable to Protestantism, which means a following of hundreds of millions of people (at least today).



Isn‘t Methodism just another Protestant denomination? It is also too small, though it seems to be growing rapidly these days, in South Korea, for example. I‘m talking about a massive shift here, similar to the Reformation itself.

methodism has maybe 80 million people worldwide which is pretty impressive considering they started in the 1700s.

Protestantism is an umbrella term meaning reformed movements within western christianity which is realistically the place where you can get such massive conversions, i doubt its feasible to have something like mormonism replace a huge sector of christendom because of just how entrenched these beliefs were, getting millions to accept a new prophet in 1700s christendom seems like something only possible with a massive cataclysmic event, established society was just too strong.

just look at the example of mormonism, they were fairly succesful and have millions of survivors, but they had to run to the mountains to escape a christian population who were happy to commit ethnic cleansing against them.
 
Protestantism is so diverse that it is actually hard for anything new in Western Christianity not to be covered under its wider umbrella unless it is a proper Catholic schism (of which there were several). Of course, you could conceive a way where the huge paradigm shift in Christianity that revolved around Modernity takes a more denominational form (partly it happened in North America with the divide between "Mainline" and "Evangelical/Pentecostal" Protestant traditions, but it never actually became a matter of denominations with both areas being theologically very divided). A Modernist Catholic separate denomination may happen in the right circumstances I guess.
 
There is Mormonism, for example, which only came into existence in the 19th century, but it never attracted more than a relatively small minority in the US. Outside of the US it‘s practically unknown to most people.

There are over 14 million members of the LDS church worldwide with roughly 6 million of them in the US, meaning a majority of LDS members are not Americans.

Pentecostalism. The word you're looking for here is Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism was founded in 1906, and yet today it has almost 300,000,000 adherents and growing rapidly.

I think that's the best answer for a latecomer. And that's not even considering Pentecostal influence on nondenominational movements and churches that reject labels.
 
What about if episcopal (Lutheran, Anglican etc.) and non-episcopal (e.g. Calvinism, Methodism, Baptist etc.) Protestantism are considered distinct from one another, instead of being lumped together as "Protestant" (a term which doesn't really mean much beyond "Is not Catholic or Orthodox").
 
In case the Taiping rebels succeed in conquering most of China in the mid-19th century, how large could their sect become?

that's a very interesting scenario. i know its not a valid comparison, but looking at how Christianity has spread in south Korea the potential conversion could be in the hundreds of millions.
 
Uh Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses those two are really large and entirely from the 19th century.
 
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