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Over the past several months I have received several postcards inviting me to join religious congregations that refer to themselves as "nondenominational." Each one stated that all faiths are welcome. Since I have a religious affliliation I haven't bothered to check out these organizations. However, in the past, I have asked people associated with "nondenominational" religious congregations what they believe and without fail they have answered that their prayer revolves around Jesus, a Christian belief. That doesn't seem nondenominational to me. I looked up the term in my dictionary but couldn't find it. I found denomination, "a religious organization uniting local congregations in a single, legal and administrative body - denominational."
I guess my question is, where did this term "nondenominational" come from? Is there a correct usage?
Since, as you point out, a community of local congregations/churches is what is known as a 'denomination', any group that is nondenominational is one that does not align itself with any of the mainline Christian churches (Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, etc.). Many Christian churches with an evangelical or pentecostal leaning started out as separate from any of the mainline churches, although arguably some of these, by gradually federating, have over time formed a "denomination" of their own.
The term is used only within Christian circles, and so properly speaking applies only to a Christian grouping (In fact, technically only to Protestant groups, since the Catholic Church never considered itself a 'denomination', although popular usage also refers to Catholic as a denomination).
In most cases you could say the term is the equivalent of a "church" in the sense of the Methodist Church, Baptist Church, Lutheran Church, etc., but there are some traditions that resist the term church altogether (eg chapel traditions in Wales, etc.) while with other traditions there are multiple "churches", ie federations of local congregations (Wesleyan Methodist vs Methodist, etc. etc.).
Multi- or inter-denominational might refer to an event, a service, a group or organization, etc. that is a collaboration of several denominations, such as a joint Anglican-Methodist-Baptist soup kitchen or carol service. An event, group or organization that would include members of faiths other than Christian would properly be called 'interfaith' or 'interreligious'.
"Denomination" doesn't apply exclusively to Christian groups. It's been used to describe the branches of Judaism and Islam as well. You'll also find the term "transdenominational" applied to religious schools that accommodate students from multiple denominations (of a single faith).
(In the usages I've seen, the distinction between "nondenominational" and "transdenominational" is less than clear.)
Yes, that's of course absolutely true - other religious traditions also use this English term by analogy to describe their own internal subdivisions or branches.
As you say, when a group calls itself nondenominational, it remains within its main faith tradition, be that Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc. So the author of the question should not have been too surprised to find that a nondenominational group within the Christian tradition professes core Christian beliefs, while bracketing some of the other traditional points of doctrine, practice, worship, etc., that distinguish the denominations from each other.
dilettante said:
“Denomination” doesn't apply exclusively to Christian groups. It's been used to describe the branches of Judaism and Islam as well.
In Judaism, you'll find the term “ branch” used as well. In Islam the usual term is “division”. While etymologically the terms are similar, some are favored more over others. French uses the all-encompassing term « courant » (cognate with English “current”, with the meaning of stream).
Another term, found more in politics than in religion, is “nonpartisan”.
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