The Family Tree of Christianity

UPDATE 01.01.2015: This version of the family tree is now obsolete. You can find the new version here.

I had always been interested in making a diagram portraying how Christianity evolved and splintered into a thousand pieces, but never got around to making one due to the daunting size of the project. A couple of months ago unemployment gave me the opportunity to start and complete it, initially in Greek. Now I’ve translated it in English as well!

A few words about reading the diagram:

For starters it’s a large file (7MB 5-pass JPEG) so wait till it completely loads, otherwise it’ll be blurry. The vertical axis represents time (1 AD up to today). Colours are consistent across the diagram (e.g. the bright green dots in early Christianity have the same colour as more modern non-trinitarian denominations, even though they’re on the other side of the diagram and Restoration Movements are the same colour as early Christianity). The different levels over the main branches are different churches, but with minimal doctrinal differences with the parent (e.g. Evangelicals are effectively Lutherans, but Pentecostals which branched off from them have quite a few differences, so they’re placed to the side, but have the same colour). When there’s an asterisk, that means there’s an entry about it at the upper right corner of the diagram. Finally, smooth and curvy joints suggest a mild transition, while plain straight lines suggest a more violent separation (typically condemnation as a heresy).

I hope you find the diagram useful. As is the case with all the material on this blog, you may freely copy the image as long you mention the source (and you don’t remove the copyright from the image).

If you find an error in the diagram, please leave a comment here so I can check it out and correct it. Enjoy!

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