Christian denomination

A synod (/ˈsɪnəd/) is a council of a Christian denomination, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. The word synod comes from the Ancient Greek σύνοδος (synodos) 'assembly, meeting'; the term is analogous with the Latin word concilium 'council'. Originally, synods were meetings of bishops, and the word is still used in that sense in Catholicism, Oriental Orthodoxy and Eastern Orthodoxy. In modern usage, the word often refers to the governing body of a particular church, whether its members are meeting or not. It is also sometimes used to refer to a church that is governed by a synod.

Sometimes the phrase "general synod" or "general council" refers to an ecumenical council. The word synod also refers to the standing council of high-ranking bishops governing some of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches. Similarly, the day-to-day governance of patriarchal and major archiepiscopal Eastern Catholic Churches is entrusted to a permanent synod.

Messianic Judaism is a syncretic Protestant Christian religious sect that incorporates elements of Jewish practice. It considers itself to be a form of Judaism but is generally considered to be a form of Christianity, including by all mainstream Jewish religious movements. Its roots are in Christian missionary activity aimed at Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in North America.

Messianic Jews believe that Jesus was the Messiah and a divine being in the form of God the Son (a member of the Trinity), some of the most defining distinctions between Christianity and Judaism. Messianic Judaism is also generally considered a Protestant Christian sect by scholars and other Christian groups.

Christian liturgy is a pattern for worship used (whether recommended or prescribed) by a Christian congregation or denomination on a regular basis. The term liturgy comes from Greek and means "public work". Within Christianity, liturgies descending from the same region, denomination, or culture are described as ritual families.

When Christians meet for worship, they perform a liturgy (work), offering service to God together. The majority of Christian denominations hold their principal church service on Sunday, the first day of the week, which is known as the Lord's Day. In some Christian denominations, liturgies are held daily, with these including those in which the canonical hours are prayed, as well as the offering of the Eucharistic liturgies such as Mass, among other forms of worship. In addition to this, many Christians attend services of worship on holy days such as Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Ascension Thursday, among others depending on the Christian denomination.

Restorationism, also known as Christian primitivism, is a religious perspective holding that the early beliefs and practices of the followers of Jesus were either lost or adulterated after his death, and therefore required restoration. It is a view that often "seeks to correct faults or deficiencies, in other branches of Christianity, by appealing to the primitive church as normative model".

Efforts to restore an earlier, purer form of Christianity are frequently a response to denominationalism. As Rubel Shelly put it, "the motive behind all restoration movements is to tear down the walls of separation by a return to the practice of the original, essential and universal features of the Christian religion." Different groups have attempted to implement the restorationist vision in various ways; for instance, some have focused on the structure and practice of the church, others on the ethical life of the church, and still others on the direct experience of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. The relative importance assigned to the restoration ideal, and the extent to which the full restoration of the early church is believed to have been achieved, also varies among groups.

The Franciscans are a group of related organizations in the Catholic Church, founded or inspired by the Italian saint Francis of Assisi. They include three independent religious orders for men (the Order of Friars Minor being the largest contemporary male order), an order for nuns known as the Order of Saint Clare, and the Third Order of Saint Francis, a religious and secular group open to male and female members.

Franciscans adhere to the teachings and spiritual disciplines of the founder and of his main associates and followers, such as Clare of Assisi, Anthony of Padua, and Elizabeth of Hungary. Several smaller Protestant Franciscan orders have been established since the late 19th century as well, particularly in the Lutheran and Anglican traditions. Certain Franciscan communities are ecumenical in nature, having members who belong to several Christian denominations.

The Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC; Romanian: Biserica Ortodoxă Română, BOR), or Romanian Patriarchate, is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox Christian churches, and is one of the nine patriarchates in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Since 1925, the church's Primate has borne the title of Patriarch. Its jurisdiction covers the territories of Romania and Moldova, with additional dioceses for Romanians living in nearby Ukraine, Serbia and Hungary, as well as for diaspora communities in Central and Western Europe, North America and Oceania. It is the only autocephalous church within Eastern Orthodoxy to have a Romance language for liturgical use.

The majority of Romania's population (16,367,267, or 85.9% of those for whom data were available, according to the 2011 census data), as well as some 720,000 Moldovans, belong to the ROC.

The Baptist Union of Denmark (Danish: Baptistkirken i Danmark) is a Baptist Christian denomination in Denmark. It is a member of the European Baptist Federation, the Baptist World Alliance, and the World Council of Churches. Headquarters of the Union are maintained in Copenhagen.

A shared church (German: Simultankirche), simultaneum mixtum, a term first coined in 16th-century Germany, is a church in which public worship is conducted by adherents of two or more religious groups. Such churches became common in the German-speaking lands of Europe in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. The different Christian denominations (such as Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, or United, etc.), share the same church building, although they worship at different times and with different clergy. Simultaneums have been seen as a manifestation of Christian ecumenism.

Simultaneum as a policy was particularly attractive to Christian rulers who ruled over populations which contained considerable numbers of both Catholics and Protestants. It was often the opposite of cuius regio, eius religio and used in situations where a ruler was of a different religion than the majority of the people, and not strong enough to impose his religion on the population. These have been seen as a form of religious toleration.

The Church of Sweden (Swedish: Svenska kyrkan) is an Evangelical Lutheran national church in Sweden. A former state church, headquartered in Uppsala, with around 5.4 million members at year end 2024, it is the largest Christian denomination in Sweden.

A member of the Porvoo Communion, the church professes Lutheranism. It is composed of thirteen dioceses, divided into parishes. It is a national church which covers the whole nation. The Primate of the Church of Sweden, as well as the Metropolitan of all Sweden, is the Archbishop of Uppsala.

In ecclesiology, the Christian Church is what different Christian denominations conceive of as being the true body of Christians or the original institution established by Jesus Christ. "Christian Church" has also been used in academia as a synonym for Christianity, despite the fact that it is composed of multiple churches or denominations, many of which hold a doctrinal claim of being the one true church to the exclusion of the others.

For many Protestant Christians, the Christian Church has two components: the church visible, institutions in which "the Word of God purely preached and listened to, and the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution", as well as the church invisible—all "who are truly saved" (with these beings members of the visible church). In this understanding of the invisible church, "Christian Church" (or catholic Church) does not refer to a particular Christian denomination, but includes all individuals who have been saved. This is in contrast to the one true church applied to a specific concrete Christian institution, a Christian ecclesiological position maintained by the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Churches, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox churches, Assyrian Church of the East, and the Ancient Church of the East. While holding this view, the Lutheran Churches teach that "there are indeed true Christians in other churches" as "other denominations also preach the Word of God, though mixed with error". The branch theory, which is maintained by some Anglicans, holds that those Churches that have preserved apostolic succession are part of the true Church, though the majority of Anglicanism has historically "followed the major continental Reformers in their doctrine of the true church, identifiable by the authentic ministry of word and sacrament, in their rejection of the jurisdiction of the pope, and in their alliance with the civil authority ('the magistrate')".