History of Anabaptists & Quakers 

Check out Ready to Harvest’s video on Mennonites here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Dy_Uyc3_b0s.html

The fact that you have to do an extensive section on corrections and additions as you interweave more groups into the chart, or better contextualize existing groups demonstrates how complex the history of Christianity is, and it's one of my favourite parts of this project.

As a Hicksite Quaker I'm always happy to see somebody mention us who doesn't think we look like an oatmeal box. Thanks!

If I could make one suggestion, I'd add an "other" section in the "Ten Largest Christian Communions" so we can get an idea for how much of Christianity worldwide is accounted for in the top 10.

Episode 2: "Wow this chart is already getting so complicated." Episode 3: Martin Luther: "Hold my beer."

Might I just add, I knew Christianity is a complex beast, but the Protestant branch IS OFF THE CHARTS! Still cant wrap my head around all the branches (must have been a nightmare to research!), especially considering most of these denominations arent more then a couple of centuries old! And are yet so divergent and numerous!! Hoped to learn more about the Baptists, but ill be patient until the next time. Great vid as usual!!

I'm happy you chose to add Korean Presbyterian churches in the chart, mainly because I belong to one of them, but I did think it was worth being mentioned as it consists the largest bodies of prebysterian churches in the world... thank you for mentioning

As a British Quaker, it's a would be nice if the chart included a bit more of the Quakers in Britain (especially since that's where it's started!). It would be interesting to explore a bit more about what happened to the Friends in Britain since George Fox and how they evolved separately to Friends in the US. It would also be good to include bits about Friends outside of these two countries, like in Kenya, for instance - it would be a shame to reduce such a diverse group down to just those found in a single country. Besides that, I've really been enjoying this series so far!

So glad you mentioned Flushing, Queens and the Flushing Remonstrance. The Flushing Quaker meeting is still alive and well, in its original 17th century meeting house in Queens, NYC. As a member of Brooklyn Meeting it is great to have our New York roots acknowledged.

It seems you forgot to add Lebanon in your map of denominations. It should be yellow. According to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) Lebanon is 44.36% Christian and 31.76% Catholic (25.52% Maronite; 5.62% Melkite; 0.62% Armenian Catholic plus some few others that are too small to be counted) (Edit) I forgot to mention nowadays there are more Catholics than Protestants in Germany

I like how he addressed the Big Elephant on the Room. The Quaker Oats 😅

you could also add the shakers to the chart! from what i understand they were an offshoot of the quakers (occuring in england, then migrating to the American colonies also seeking religious freedom). supposedly Maine is the most significant region for them, but there is a former shaker village here in kentucky! there are only 2 shakers remaining today, mostly because they are entirely celibate, only gaining members through conversion. they also allowed women to hold spiritual leadership roles.

I'm no expert, but having dealt indirectly with a number of Hutterite colonies in Alberta, I think it's worth noting a few things. Firstly, that, at least from what I've seen, heard, and ready, their theology is not based on a rejection of modern technology in the same way as the Amish; their focus is instead on communal living and sharing resources (though dress, etc. is still very traditional as mentioned). The Hutterite colonies I knew of definitely have cell phones as you mention, as well as computers, Internet access, heavy machinery, cars and trucks, etc. What really distinguishes them is that none of these things are owned by individuals; they're owned by the colony as a whole. Most are mass-scale farms with all the trappings of modern agriculture. I always found them particularly fascinating.

While I don't consider myself a "religious" person, I am fascinated by this series. Having grown up between an area settled by Anabaptists and an area settled by the Presbyterian and having both in my background, as well as having been around many other churches. It was also a very ecumenical community and remains so today. We have always celebrated together. I also find the connections between the various groups and why the area has developed historically as it has fascinating.

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As a direct line descendant of Alexander Mack, I literally squealed when he was mentioned. Thank you so much for making this easy to understand. Interestingly, there is a camp named after Alexander in northern Indiana near a large Amish and Mennonite population.

One of my neighbours is an agnostic Quaker, he's always really friendly and polite. Super laid back. I would protect him with my life. Interestingly, he only ever says 'morning' or 'evening', it's never 'good morning' or 'good evening'. And always makes an effort to see how I'm doing, which I find really nice.

As a family genealogist with Friends ancestors, I found this quite useful. Thank you.

You should add the Old Lutherans to the lutheran section of your chart. They were founded in 1830 in Prussia (Germany) in protest against the state sponsored union with reformed christians. They still exist in Germany as an own denomination.

Extremely interesting series! As what would be considered a conservative mennonite, hearing the complete history of Christianity has been fascinating!

Fascinating. I wonder if the Shakers should be added, though? I know you have to draw the line somewhere, but they were a pretty big part of colonial America as well.

This is my favorite series on RU-vid right now. Excellent job. Thank you!

My Oma and Opa were members of a Brethren Church. I never knew Brethren were a 'peace church,' which is ironic to me because they were good conservative war hawks. Overall I am loving this series!

I’m disappointed you didn’t add the Doukhobors! And Russian Folk-Protestants in general :(! After being basically exiled from the Russian Empire around 9000 moved to western Canada, mostly Saskatchewan and BC, where they still are today. They are super interesting! Even forgoing the bible in-favour of Hymns only, they also had a split around WW1 which formed the Freedomites. They are sometimes called one of the Peace Churches so I expected them here 😢 otherwise this series is truly wonderful by the way, I love it I just wanted to see this group

As someone who's always been fascinated by this sort of thing, I'm quite grateful for this whole series!

Thanks so much for amending the Georgian church entry. I love your channel and would love to see some Georgian content. Bagrationi family tree would be amazing

Staying tuned for episode 7. 5th generation A/G girl here! I’m excited to see your attention to detail applied to the varied branches of the Pentecostal beliefs. A fun point if you haven’t considered yet, Church of God in Christ - the Pentecostal denomination Denzel Washington and his family follow - broke from the A/G over racial issues back in the early 20th century.

Good vid,and the last segment about chocolate-making Quaker families [Cadbury,Fry,Rowntree] could also lead to a future family tree,showing their marriage alliances,as they all still exist as British high society/landed gentry families,along with their family links to the Quaker-led banking sector,via the Gurneys,Lloyds[of Dolobran] and Barclays. 👌👍

I always love the difference in rhetoric in America vs Europe. In America, the movement of religious denominations from Europe to America is characterized as people escaping persecution while in Europe it’s characterized as religious fanatics leaving to practice their crazy beliefs somewhere else.

i discovered this channel and series about an hour and a half ago and just binged all of them in a row. fantastic!!! so much amazing research and wonderful history storytelling. thanks to all the team and matt!! i know every decision on the map must be such a painstaking one to make (esp with all the wonderful and thoughtfully made edits), so much thanks!!

I just went through Cedar Rapids, Iowa yesterday and saw the world's largest cereal mill - their Quaker Oats plant.

I can't wait when the chart is complete to buy this chart❤

Wow this is really good. As a Christian this is really helpful for me to see where different beliefs and denominations come from. So this is much appreciated. Also you and Ready to Harvest are the perfect compliment to each other on this subject. He dives into specifics of beliefs, whereas your chart helps me to visualize how they are connected. Well done.

I really do appreciate your attention to detail, as well as your willingness to consistently correct/adjust your chart as you continue to work on it.

Glad to see the Scottish Episcopal Church on the map both because it's independent (and not tiny) but also exactly for the reason you stated: Their connection to the US Episcopal Church, felt weird having them coming from the english church (though obviously they have roots there) given the history.

This is awesome work. But there must be at least 8 episodes. There is branches of oldbelievers, and some denominations originated in Russia( but now they are in , for example, Canada and Brasil)

As a Baptist I’m hyped for the next episode

I'm so excited for the poster to drop Matt, the work you're putting in is so impressive!!

Glad to hear you will be covering the Latter Day Saints / Mormons. I'm doing genealogy for my family, and am learning that one branch is heavily Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. (That is a mouthful of a denomination name.) RLDS, now knows as the Community of Christ.

This series, should be a Netflix series or PBS. Even CTV and Cbc can certainly play it. People can learn something very interesting!

as always, excellent presentation. Looking forward for the next to follow and subsequently buying several copies of the physical charts.

Enjoying this series... but now I need to see some sort of "history of chocolate" chart.

Great series of videos. I've been looking forward to each new part of this series. Well done Matt and team.

I have been watching this series of videos on Christian denominations just recently, and I find it thoroughly engrossing! Thank you for making these videos and this chart. I look forward to more!

Hi! I absolutely LOVE your content! I can literally binge watch your RU-vid channel. Your charts and videos are so incredibly informative and unbiased. We need more people like you who are well-educated and present information in an unbiased manner. And frankly, if I could, I would get ALL of your charts, because that’s how much I love your work and devotion. As a linguist, and someone who also loves history, timelines, etc., your material never gets old. So, thank you so much for all you do!!!

Interesting video, considering I live in Pennsylvania with these various groups living around me. My best friend in school was Brethern, while Amish and Mennonites are in various nearby communities. Many places are named Quaker this and that in the area. Nice to see how they all relate to each other.

Been waiting for this, a great series!

This was such an interesting video in an already interesting series! Thank you! Great work!

i like how you are still adding stuff to the older sections. :)

The Lollards: I was missing you! Good to see you recognised again.

Love this series!!!

Another great video! Loving the series!

Great series, thank you for this and for all your content. “Who Write the Bible?” was particularly profound for me, as well as the various myth/legend/history content. It’s like I couldn’t quite put my finger on what I missing until those videos opened my eyes. They were very meaningful to me. Thanks again!!

Amazing work so far! I'd suggest you add the Shakers(broke off the quakers) since they are historically significant and down to 2 members and will soon be extinct. I would also suggest you add to your upcoming Baptist Episode the Independent Fundamental Baptists (IFB) who broke off the Southern Baptist Convention during and after the Fundamentalist-Modernist debate due to a disagreement with perceived liberal theology in the SBC and the New Independent Fundamental Baptists (NIFB) who broke off of the IFB and were founded by Stephen Anderson in 2017(or Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist church in the mid to late 1950s depending on how you look at it as they share ideology but not all points of theology since Phelps didn't call himself NIFB and is technicality from the primitive Baptist tradition not the SBC and identifies as a Calvinist/Reformed and Anderson isn't Calvinist/Reformed) due to perceived liberalism in the IFB since he and the Westboro Baptist church are also very significant in current events. Perhaps a dotted line from both primitive Baptist and IFB to the NIFB? Thanks and I look forward to the other videos and buying the chart!

As someone who has strong Quaker leanings, I found this video rather interesting, ta. 🙂 Any plans to cover the Unitarains?

Matt, much kudos on the script. Each time you dive into an area where there is a classic case of narrative and counter-narrative, you manage to choose the most neutral and objective words. You thus minimize risk of getting into the fray while providing viewers with factually accurate information, regardless. That may happen once by accident. But after several times it's more than obvious you are very aware of the controversies and have made deliberate and careful word choices. So, again, kudos.

great video matt, please keep up your amazing work!!!

I love this kind of series. Thank you for spending the time to research it! It would be amazing if you could do a similar video for other religions. I’d love to see a video series on Jewish denominations/movements

My great-grandfather broke from the River Brethren. We’re not River Brethren but we still interact with my paternal relatives in Lancaster. The River Brethren name comes from the Susquehanna River in Lancaster

Truly fantastic work. Kudos/Props to you and your team. Looking forward to more...keep it coming.

aww yeah, i’ve been waiting for this one!

This is a fascinating series! Thank you! I'd be interested in learning more about the Quakers in America, and how the American Friends Service Committee fits into the chart.

My mother's family is Mennonite, they settled in the US by way of Ukraine. I didn't know there were different kinds of Mennonite, but it's cool to see here.

Thank you for doing these videos, they are very informative.

Hi mat I’m very excited I’m commenting even before watching, I wanted to comment about the mistakes u already fixed in the first episode after reading the comments, but I didnt because I didnt expect you would fix them… good job man 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Not sure if this is mentioned yet, but may you consider adding the Personal Ordinariate (aka Anglican Ordinariate)? Made up of Anglicans, Episcopalians, and Methodists that have reentered communion with the Catholic Church. Although they’re incorporated into the Latin Church, they retain much of their Anglican culture, practices, and spirituality whilst accepting Catholic theology and recognising the pope as head of the Church. They also use a modified form of the Roman liturgical rite known as Divine Worship, formerly and still colloquially called Anglican Use.

14:01 I think one area that is missing is the congregations of 2 Missionary Churches in North America which formed from the Mennonites who embraced pietism and revivalism. The Missionary Church and the Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada are often forgot about but their 600+ congregations in North America are an important part of the Anabaptist fabric that exists today! Thanks Matt for another great video.

Absolutely love the videos amazing work! Loving the religious studies content!

Hi, Matt, very interesting series you've got here. Great job. I just want to point out two things about two small denominations which may be too small for your chart but I would like to mention them anyway, since they are in my country. So I am Faroese and we have two denominations that you arguably could call unique. Or unique-ish. Anyway, in 2007 the Lutheran Faroese People's Church split from the Danish Lutheran Church and has thus become probably the smallest national church today. It's still pretty similar to the Danish Lutheran Church and while I don't think it'll ever become incompatible with it there are some interesting features to it. For instance, it's common that priests aren't always at a sermon and that it's usually a non-ecclestical deacon that just reads an old sermon as part of the main idea. It's hard to explain in detail but it's something that should be experienced I think. The second is what I thought was going to be today's topic but I see that it isn't. So the Plymouth Brethren and the Open Brethren at that has a daughter denomination in the Faroe Islands. In the late 19th or early 20th century a Scottish missionary came to the Faroes and started spreading the Brethren here. As a result the Brethren (which we call Brøðrasamkoman) is the 2nd largest denomination in the Faroe Islands at around 10-12%. Interestingly, they are also called Baptists but as I can see from this they don't exactly fall under that label. But still interesting. I know these are still small and I don't know if they will appear on your chart but hopefully you are seeing this and will at least find the info interesting. Keep up the good work!

You should add the Shakers as well, a fun offspring of the Quaker church focused on gender equality in the church

this is such a brilliant and interesting series. It blows my mind how many branches, denominations, schisms etc that have developed.

I'm a big fan of this series, and am really glad to hear that you'll be touching on medieval church sects, because growing up Lutheran and knowing a seminary professor that taught Ecumenical and Interfaith Studies, I had a decent understanding of the Reformation and the Hussite church, early Christian schisms like gnostic churches, and the Great Schism and Chalcaedonian Schism, but I never learned much on those medieval churches outside of, a bit embarrassingly, stuff like Crusader Kings where most of what I'm familiar with them is how they were implemented mechanically in the game, so looking forward to that.

Fantastic video keep it up you're doing amazing things 😁👍

I'm very early in the video but I just wanted to express how hyped I am for the inclusion of Lollards in the chart! Learned of their existence from Crusader Kings 2 and did some research and found myself very quickly ranking them as basically my favourite "flavour" of Christianity.

As a Pennsylvanian from birth, I’ve obviously been aware of our Quaker origins with religious freedom and the abundance of Mennonites and Amish here, but I guess I never really fully made the connection of that being why those Anabaptist groups ended up here… always lover learning something new!

I’m so excited when these drop

Just to make clear the Scottish episcopal Church is still going and is still independent of the church of England.

Great! Would love to see the Avignon schism and more Gnostic and ante-Nicene detail represented :)

I am in awe of your work.......

Thanks Matt 🙏❤

Slightly disappointed you didn't add the Anglican Ordinariate to the chart in this episode. I don't know if you saw my comment on the last video, but to remind you, Pope Benedict XVI established it on November 4, 2009 with Anglicanorum Coetibus as a way for Anglican parishes to convert to Catholicism while retaining their liturgical traditions. I assume you had so much to add that this flew under the radar.

Bravo. Enjoy seeing how the chronological math visually displays history in your videos. Hopefully, scholars will One day accept your work as being requisite in the same manner as The Peoples History of the United States. Would really like to see you take on a Timeline of Caesar’s Messiah.

Can't wait for this chart to be available

Fantastic work

I recommend adding the date the groups went extinct to the chart!

You should add the shakers officially the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. They broke off from Quakers and actually even prevented anyone else from joining them meaning theres only 2 left in the present day

Another good one, very informative, Matt.

I cant wait for the second coming, then this tree can be slimmed down a bit

Even though there are literally only 2 left, it’s a shame you didn’t mention the Shakers (“shaking quakers”)

When discussing the Quakers, I was hoping you would bring up the Shakers. I know they are a small group, but they were an important part of the history of my area. These days, Shakers are nearly extinct, but they were more numerous in the past.

As always, neat and tidy, and open to critiques. Thanks Matt for the consistent quality deliveries! I just wish I lived nearby so that I could buy some of your posters I like a lot!

Great video!!

You could also put manicheism, next to mandaeism. It came from gnosticism and was once a big religion that even competed with christianity, today it is still practiced in fujian.

The Hicksite schism wasn't because of slavery, which had already been condemned by the Friends General meetings in America. It was doctrinal. Elias Hicks taught that the Holy Spirit present in meeting has priority even over Holy Scripture, a very contentious belief.

Graduate of BBC in Springfield Mo and look forward to hearing what you say about the BBFI. Love the channel!

love this well done

@usefulcharts Minor and somewhat pedantic correction; The Seventh-day Adventist Church uses a hyphen and doesn't capitalize "day." I'm a communication professional who used to work for the church headquarters and we were very particular about the naming convention. :)

The podcast Dan Carlin's Hardcore History did cover a group of Anabaptists who took over the German town of Munster in the 1530s. They locked the town down and were planning on the imminent return of Christ. The town wound up starving and they were forced out by enemy soldiers sneaking in overnight. The leaders faced brutal execution and the cages their corpses were displayed in are still there as a warning to others.

This is a genuinely fascinating series! My favorite one you have done so far. Thanks for handling it with such poise and intelligence. I would love other series on other religions such as Islam or Hinduism if that’s something you’re interested in!

This is phenomenal! Thank you.