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Catholicism is the largest branch of Christianity and the Catholic Church is the largest among churches. About 50% of all Christians are Catholics. About 50% of all Christians are Catholics. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] According to the annual directory of the Catholic Church or Annuario Pontificio of 2024, there were 1.390 billion baptized Catholics in 2022.
Comparative religion is the branch of the study of religions with the systematic comparison of the doctrines and practices, themes and impacts (including migration) of the world's religions. In general the comparative study of religion yields a deeper understanding of the fundamental philosophical concerns of religion such as ethics ...
Proponents of the Baptist successionist or perpetuity view consider the Baptist movement to have existed independently from Roman Catholicism and prior to the Protestant Reformation. [30] This view has been characterized as "apologetic and polemical" and "without consideration of a critical, scientific methodology".
The Catholic population exceeds 1.3 billion as of 2016, [24] making up the majority of Western Christianity. Stemming from the one Roman Catholic institution, there exists several Independent Catholic churches which have expanded the Catholic denominational family, becoming Old and Old Roman Catholicism, and Liberal Catholics.
Baptists also insist on immersion or dipping, in contradistinction to other Reformed Christians. [94] The Baptist Confession describes the Lord's supper as "the body and blood of Christ being then not corporally or carnally, but spiritually present to the faith of believers in that ordinance", similarly to the Westminster Confession. [95]
In the 19th century, some scholars began to perceive similarities between Buddhist and Christian practices. For example, in 1878, T.W. Rhys Davids wrote that the earliest missionaries to Tibet observed that similarities have been seen in Christianity and Buddhism since the first known contact was made between adherents of the two religions. [5]
The Catholic Church refers to itself simply by the terms Catholic and Catholicism (which mean universal). Some Catholics, based on a strict interpretation of extra ecclesiam nulla salus ("Outside the Church, there is no salvation"), reject any notion those outside its communion could be regarded as part of any true Catholic Christian faith.
The largest Christian denomination is the Catholic Church, with 1.3 billion baptized members. [9] The second largest Christian branch is either Protestantism (if it is considered a single group), or the Eastern Orthodox Church (if Protestants are considered to be divided into multiple denominations).