50 Fun Facts About Christian Denominations

At Latter-day Saint Sunday services, the bread-and-cup ordinance passed on trays to the congregation uses which liquid?

Water stands for the blood of Christ in a set prayer, and Latter-day Saints hold the bread and water to be symbols rather than the actual body and blood. Whatever is left over is simply discarded after the meeting.

The Salvation Army, which calls its ministers officers and its leader the General, leaves what out of worship?

The sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion are not celebrated, because the Booths feared Christians had come to rely on outward signs rather than on grace itself. The movement began in London's East End in 1865.

Which breakfast food was created in 1894 for patients at the Adventist-run Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan?

Corn flakes began as a batch of wheat dough that John Harvey Kellogg left standing overnight; his brother Will worked out how to flake it reliably and went on to found the Kellogg Company.

Which musician behind 'Purple Rain' became a Jehovah's Witness in 2001 through his friendship with bassist Larry Graham?

Prince took up the faith in 2001 under the influence of Larry Graham, a fellow Witness who had played bass for Sly and the Family Stone.

Which singer, raised in an Assembly of God church in Tupelo, won all three of his Grammys for gospel records?

Elvis Presley found his first inspiration as a singer in the Pentecostal congregation his family attended, and his competitive Grammy wins came for 'How Great Thou Art' and 'He Touched Me' out of fourteen nominations.

Which star of Forrest Gump and Cast Away converted to Greek Orthodoxy before marrying his Greek-descended actress wife?

Tom Hanks took his wife Rita's faith before their wedding; she is of Greek and Bulgarian descent and a member of the Greek Orthodox Church. The two have been married since the late 1980s.

Who, at 43 the youngest person ever elected US president, was also the first Catholic to win the office?

John F. Kennedy won in 1960, thirty-two years after Al Smith, the first Catholic nominee of a major party, had lost to Herbert Hoover. Theodore Roosevelt was younger when he took office, but he succeeded to it rather than being elected.

Which US president taught Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, into his nineties?

Jimmy Carter first taught Sunday school at Maranatha at 18 and was still occasionally taking the class in 2019, when he was 94. He announced his grandson's death to the class in 2015.

Which Christmas carol was written by Charles Wesley, the Methodist co-founder credited with over 6,500 hymns?

Hark the Herald Angels Sing sits among some 150 Wesley hymns in the Methodist hymnal Hymns and Psalms, beside 'Love Divine, All Loves Excelling' and 'And Can It Be'. Some counts put his output as high as 10,000 hymn texts.

Orthodox churches that keep the Julian calendar, such as Russia's, celebrate Christmas on which Gregorian date?

7 January is simply 25 December on the Julian calendar, and after the 2022 invasion Ukraine moved its official Christmas to 25 December to distance itself from the Russian church. The two calendars currently differ by thirteen days.

The Latter-day Saint health code, the Word of Wisdom, bars 'hot drinks', read as coffee and which other drink?

Tea and coffee are read as the 'hot drinks' of the revelation, and the church teaches the ban applies whether or not the drink is actually hot; herbal tea and hot chocolate are generally allowed.

Which successor to Joseph Smith led the Latter-day Saint pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley on 24 July 1847?

Brigham Young's arrival on 24 July 1847 is kept in Utah as Pioneer Day; the valley then belonged to Mexico, and he served as church president from 1847 until his death in 1877. The trek had staged through Winter Quarters in Nebraska.

Which 2012 Republican presidential nominee served as Latter-day Saint bishop of a ward in Belmont, Massachusetts?

Mitt Romney led the Belmont ward from 1981 to 1986 and then presided over the church's Boston area, with more than a dozen wards and almost 4,000 members, from 1986 to 1994.

Which civil rights leader served until his death as co-pastor with his father at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church?

Martin Luther King Jr. shared the Ebenezer pulpit with his father, and at his widow's request his last sermon there, given on 4 February 1968, was played at his own funeral. His maternal grandfather had become the church's pastor in 1894.

Mount Athos, the self-governing Orthodox monastic peninsula in Greece, bars which group by Greek law and tradition?

All women are prohibited from entering the area governed by the monks, which tradition holds was consecrated as the garden of the Mother of God. The ban is written into Greek law as well as monastic custom.

Churches of Christ, heirs of America's 19th-century Stone–Campbell movement, are known for banning what from worship?

Musical instruments are absent because the New Testament never mentions them in worship, so congregations worship a cappella, often pitched from a pitch pipe and led by a song-leader. Alexander Campbell himself opposed their use.

In 1917 some 250 Salvation Army volunteers went to US soldiers' camps in France and became famous for frying what?

Doughnuts served to the troops earned the volunteers the nickname 'Doughnut Lassies', and they are credited with popularising the treat in the United States. The feat is remembered each June on National Doughnut Day.

Which Nobel Peace laureate was Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, the first Black African in the post?

Desmond Tutu had already been the first Black Bishop of Johannesburg, and more than 1,300 people attended his enthronement at St George's Cathedral on 7 September 1986.

Who, once England's chief nursing officer, became the first female Archbishop of Canterbury in 2026?

Sarah Mullally, the 106th archbishop, had been the first female Bishop of London from 2018 and was confirmed in the post at St Paul's Cathedral early in 2026. She is only the second holder since the Middle Ages without an Oxbridge degree.

The 'Holy Club' of John and Charles Wesley, whose methodical piety gave Methodists their name, met at which university?

Oxford's Lincoln College had John Wesley as a fellow and later a lecturer, and George Whitefield, the great open-air preacher, was another Holy Club member. The label began as mockery of the club's disciplined routine.

Jehovah's Witnesses, known for evangelising with The Watchtower, call their plain, unadorned meeting places what?

Kingdom Halls are deliberately functional buildings without religious symbols, and several congregations often share one. Weddings can be held there too, though throwing rice or wishing good luck is banned as pagan.

In the Western liturgical colour scheme, which colour is set for Pentecost Sunday and may also be used for ordinations?

Red marks Pentecost Sunday and serves for ordinations, church anniversaries and memorials for ordained clergy, while green covers the long stretches of Ordinary Time. The Coptic tradition, by contrast, uses only one vestment colour.

Which Seventh-day Adventist co-founder left extensive writings that the church still holds in high regard today?

Ellen G. White, with her husband James and Joseph Bates, was among the church's most prominent early figures, and her writings remain central to Adventist teaching. The denomination was formally established in 1863.

Which practice, modelled on Acts chapters 2 and 4, sets the Hutterites apart from the Amish and Mennonites?

Community of goods, developed under Jakob Hutter between 1530 and 1535, has been abandoned and restored more than once during the group's centuries of wandering. Colonies still hold property in common today.

Old Order Amish church districts of 20 to 40 families hold worship every other week in what kind of place?

A member's home or barn hosts the district in turn, whereas the car-driving Beachy Amish meet every week in church buildings. Bishops, ministers and deacons serve each district without pay.

The Lambeth Conference, first called by Archbishop Longley in 1867, gathers the Anglican Communion's bishops how often?

Every ten years or so the Archbishop of Canterbury calls the bishops together; 76 attended the first four-day meeting in 1867, which sat in private. Recent conferences have met on the University of Kent campus at Canterbury.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant body in the United States, is administered from which city?

Nashville also houses the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, the official depository for the denomination's records. Texas supplies the convention's largest state membership, at about 2.75 million.

Southern Baptists split from the north over slaveholding in 1845 at the First Baptist Church of which Georgia city?

Augusta hosted the May 1845 meeting after the northern-led Triennial Convention would not treat slaveholders as fit for mission work, and the northern side is today's American Baptist Churches USA.

Roger Williams founded the first Baptist church in America in 1638, two years after founding which city?

Providence, founded by Williams in 1636, still has the First Baptist Meetinghouse on North Main Street, the oldest church in Rhode Island. Williams had held services in his own house for nearly a year before forming the congregation.

Modern Baptists descend from John Smyth's exiled English congregation, which adopted believer's baptism in 1609 where?

Amsterdam's English exiles saw Smyth baptise himself in 1609, earning him the nickname 'Se-baptist'; he later sought union with the Mennonites while Thomas Helwys carried on as a Baptist.

Adventism grew from the 'Great Disappointment' of 22 October 1844, when whose predicted return of Christ did not come?

William Miller, a New York farmer and Baptist lay preacher, fixed the date from Daniel 8:14 and its '2,300 days', read as years. He had preached the Second Advent since 1831.

By its own figures for 2024, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had how many members worldwide?

17.5 million members includes more than 6.8 million in the United States, so most Latter-day Saints now live outside the church's homeland. Back in 2019 about 9.6 million lived abroad.

When a president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dies, who has invariably succeeded him?

The longest-serving apostle takes over because seniority in the Quorum of the Twelve is counted by continuous years of service, and the next most senior then presides over the quorum. The rule has held without exception.

The Church of Scotland's General Assembly elects which presiding officer each year, usually named the previous October?

The Moderator is nominated by a twelve-member committee and formally elected at the opening session; Alison Elliot in 2004 was the first female holder and the first elder in about 400 years. The post passes on after a single year.

Which US president, born in a Presbyterian manse in Staunton, Virginia, ran Princeton before entering politics?

Woodrow Wilson's father Joseph helped found the southern Presbyterian church after its 1861 split from the north, and Wilson stayed a member of Columbia First Presbyterian Church from 1873 for the rest of his life.

Eastern Orthodox Great Lent opens not on Ash Wednesday but on which day, named for purifying body and house?

Clean Monday falls on the sixth Monday before Palm Sunday, begins a 'Clean Week' of confession and housecleaning, and is sometimes called Ash Monday outside Orthodoxy. In Greek it is Kathara Deftera.

Which Boston daily, founded in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy in reply to press attacks on her, has won seven Pulitzers?

Christian Science Monitor staff have taken seven Pulitzers, starting with Edmund Stevens in 1950 for 43 articles written over three years in Moscow. Eddy launched it partly to answer the New York World's relentless criticism of her.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church claims its Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion at Axum holds which biblical object?

The Ark of the Covenant that Moses carried is said to rest there, and every Ethiopian church needs a tabot, a replica of it, from its bishop before it counts as a church. The church's Bible runs to 81 books, the largest canon of any.

The World Council of Churches, founded in 1948 and joined by most Orthodox and Protestant bodies, is based where?

Geneva's Ecumenical Centre serves as the administrative hub, though the council has no head office as such, and the Catholic Church sends only observers rather than joining. Delegates of 147 churches attended the founding assembly.

Which Lutheran pastor, a founding member of the anti-Nazi Confessing Church, was hanged at Flossenbürg on 9 April 1945?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer died at dawn, weeks before the Nazi collapse, alongside Admiral Canaris and General Oster of the resistance; his prison letters and theology are still widely read.

Which southern African country, a former German colony, is the only nation outside Europe with a Lutheran majority?

Namibia joins Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Norway and Sweden on the list of places where Lutherans are the largest religious group, as do North and South Dakota. Sizeable Lutheran bodies also exist elsewhere in Africa.

The Presbyterian Church (USA), formed by the 1983 reunion of northern and southern churches, is headquartered where?

Louisville, Kentucky became the national headquarters in 1988, five years after the merger, replacing the old northern church offices. The reunited church counted about 3.1 million members at the time.

In the Disruption of 1843, some 450 evangelical ministers walked out of the Kirk's General Assembly to found which body?

The Free Church of Scotland eventually drew 474 of about 1,200 ministers, and the artist David Octavius Hill painted its founding Disruption Assembly.

The Lutheran World Federation, linking more than 150 member churches, was founded in 1947 in which Swedish city?

Lund Cathedral hosted a sequel in 2016, when Lutherans and Catholics marked the 499th anniversary of the Reformation's start with a joint statement. The federation was created to coordinate relief and rebuilding after the Second World War.

Lutheran confessions including the Augsburg Confession and the two catechisms were gathered in 1580 under what title?

The Book of Concord appeared in Dresden on 25 June 1580, exactly fifty years after the Augsburg Confession was presented to Emperor Charles V. It opens with the three ecumenical creeds to show continuity with the ancient church.

Which son of emancipated slaves, blinded in one eye by smallpox, led the 1906 Los Angeles revival behind Pentecostalism?

William J. Seymour led the mission at 312 Azusa Street, where worship mixed races in a way that unsettled the Topeka preacher Charles Parham. He was the second of eight children from Centerville, Louisiana.

Which Canadian-born evangelist, a 1920s pioneer of radio preaching, founded the Pentecostal Foursquare Church?

Aimee Semple McPherson built the domed Angelus Temple in Echo Park, advertised as the largest single congregation in the world, and opened a commissary there in 1927 to hand out food and clothing.

The Coptic Orthodox calendar counts its years from AD 284, the accession of which persecuting Roman emperor?

Diocletian's reign gave the calendar its name, the Era of the Martyrs, with dates written Anno Martyrum. Its epoch falls on 29 August 284 and it keeps the months of the ancient Egyptian calendar.

Coptic Orthodox Christians, who fast every Wednesday and Friday, keep roughly how many fast days across a year?

210 to 240 fast days include 43 for Advent and 55 for Lent, with fasting defined as no food until sunset followed by a single vegetarian meal. Married couples also abstain from sex through Lent.

Moravian refugees renewed their church in 1722 at Herrnhut, a new village built on whose Saxon estate?

Count Zinzendorf, raised in Pietist Lutheranism, agreed to the carpenter Christian David's request to let the 'Hidden Seed' settle on his Berthelsdorf lands in Upper Lusatia.