This is the no true Scotsman fallacy. This is their interpretation of the bible and Christianity. It is exactly dealing with the religious beliefs and how they interpret them. There are over 40,000 different denominations of Christianity. How do you know you picked the right one? What criteria do you use to determine this?
It is not "no true Scotsman fallacy". You can't make up your own "interpretation" without having something to base it on. Also, your 40,000 is incorrect and is misleading:
The source
does refer to
33000+ total "Christian" denominations, but it defines the word "denomination" as an organized Christian group
within a specific country:
“
Denominations. A denomination is defined in this Encyclopedia as an organized aggregate of worship centers or congregations of similar ecclesiastical tradition
within a specific country; i.e. as an organized Christian church or tradition or religious group or community of believers,
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. As defined here, world Christianity consists of 6 major ecclesiastico-cultural blocs, divided into 300 major ecclesiastical traditions,
composed of over 33,000 distinct denominations in 238 countries, these denominations themselves being composed of over 3,400,000 worship centers, churches or congregations.” (Barrett et al, volume 1, page 16, Table 1-5,
emphasis added)
So we have, according to Barrett's
Encyclopedia:
- a denomination is defined as existing within a specific country
- there are 33,000+ total of these "Christian denominations" in 238 total countries
These
33,000 are subdivided into "6 major ecclesiastico-cultural mega-blocs", and ordering them by denomination size we have (I am rounding up or down slightly for convenience, using year 2000 figures) :
So the
33,000 number is from the total of these 6 mega-blocs:
22000 + 9000 + 1600 + 781 + 242 + 168 = 33,000+
That's where the
33,000 figure comes from. If you count the "mega-bloc" of "Protestants"
only it is 9000 / 33000 or
27% of the total. However, if you combine Protestants with
Independents and
Anglicans ( [22000 + 9000 + 168] / 33000) it is
94% of the total or
31,000+ . We will see below that most (about
97%) of the
"Independent" churches are indeed
Protestants. Now that we have that settled, I will examine what the source says about each of these "mega-blocs." All of the information below is found on pages 16-18 (volume 1) of the
World Christian Encyclopedia (2001, 2nd edition).
http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/a106.htm
