Branches

What This Book Covers

1. The Great Split
2. Chapter One - The Bible Before the Bible
3. Chapter Two - The Early Church
4. Chapter Three - Catholicism - The Original Franchise
5. Chapter Four - Eastern Orthodoxy - The Great Divorce
6. Chapter Five - Protestants - Martin Luther Lights the Fuse
7. Chapter Six - Anglicans - When Divorce Becomes Doctrine
8. Chapter Seven - Episcopalians - Anglican, But Make It American
9. Chapter Eight - Lutherans - The OG Protestants
10. Chapter Nine - Presbyterians - Calvin’s Chosen Few
11. Chapter Ten - Baptists - You Must Be Born Again (and Dipped)
12. Chapter Eleven - Methodists - Holy Spirit, But With Order
13. Chapter Twelve - Pentecostals - Tongues, Fire, and Dancing
14. Chapter Thirteen - Jehovah’s Witnesses - Apocalypse Always Pending
15. Chapter Fourteen - Mormons - The Sequel No One Saw Coming
16. Chapter Fifteen - Seventh-day Adventists - Saturday Is the New Sunday
17. Chapter Sixteen - Non-Denom - “Just Me and My Bible”
18. Chapter Seventeen - 40,000 Ways to Be Right

Excerpt

THE GREAT SPLIT LET’S START WITH the obvious: There’s only one Bible. Okay, there are different translations. Different languages. A few disagreements on which books count. (Some include the Apocrypha. Some don’t. We’ll get to that.) But in theory, there’s one holy book at the root of this whole thing. One origin story. One divine message. One central character arc, running from Eden to Armageddon. And yet… there are over 40,000 Christian denominations and groups in the world today. That’s not a joke. That’s the actual estimate from the World Christian Encyclopedia, and it grows every year. Each one slightly different. Each one confident. Each one certain they’re the ones who finally got it...