Find a tradition
Each tradition below opens a deep page covering beliefs, practice, internal diversity, and contested areas.
- Catholic The largest Christian tradition globally and in the US. The seven sacraments, the Magisterium and papal authority, the deuterocanonical canon, Mary and the saints, the liturgical year. Internal diversity across traditionalist and mainstream Catholicism, the twenty-two Eastern Catholic Churches in communion, Hispanic and immigrant Catholic communities. Contested areas treated per Decision 10.
- Orthodox The Eastern Christian tradition (~220M globally, 1-2M US). The seven Ecumenical Councils, the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, the seven Holy Mysteries, the iconographic and architectural heritage, theosis as the framing of salvation. Autocephalous jurisdictional structure (Greek, Russian, Antiochian, OCA, Serbian, others), the calendar question (Revised Julian vs. Old Calendar), the substantial convert-to-Orthodoxy phenomenon in US Orthodox life.
- Anglican / Episcopal The Anglican Communion (~85M globally) and the substantial US Anglican bodies: the Episcopal Church (TEC, ~1.7M), the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA, ~130K), and the Continuing Anglican bodies. The Book of Common Prayer (multiple editions), the via media articulating a middle way between Rome and Geneva, the threefold ministry preserving apostolic succession, the substantial Anglo-Catholic / broad-church / Evangelical internal breadth, and the post-2009 TEC/ACNA division.
- Mainline Protestant The historic "seven sisters" of US Protestantism (UMC, ELCA, PCUSA, UCC, ABCUSA, DOC, RCA) and their conservative-split counterparts (LCMS, WELS, PCA, OPC, EPC, ECO, GMC, others). The recent UMC/GMC division (2022-2024), the observable demographic decline, the substantial ecumenical engagement, the social-gospel inheritance, and the contested questions across the Mainline / conservative-Protestant divide.
- Evangelical The largest US Christian tradition family (~25-30% of US adults). Hub index to five Evangelical sub-tradition deep pages: African-American Evangelical (the historic Black Baptist conventions, COGIC, AME family), Baptist (SBC ~13M, ABCUSA, CBF, Independent Baptists), Non-denominational (the fastest-growing US Christian category: megachurches, multi-site, network churches), Pentecostal (Assemblies of God, Foursquare, COG Cleveland, UPCI, Charismatic), and Reformed Evangelical (Reformed Baptist, PCA OPC EPC, The Gospel Coalition, 9Marks, the MacArthur orientation). The Bebbington quadrilateral as the working definition; the political-religious overlap question treated observationally per Decision 10.
What these pages do not currently cover
The five major tradition families above cover approximately 95% of US Christian identification. Smaller and non-Trinitarian traditions (Latter-day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Seventh-day Adventists, Unitarian Universalists) are not treated in these pages; the principal Trinitarian Christian families are the scope.
Within each major tradition, the deep page treats the principal US expressions; smaller bodies within each tradition are named where significant but not given separate page treatment.