45,000 Demoninations

Have you ever come across the claim that there are tens of thousands of different Christian denominations around the world? There were 34,000 denominations in 2005 (say the pollsters) and the number has been growing at the rate of about one thousand per year so we now have 45,000 different denominations in 2015.

Christians love to quote those figures because it seems to suggest that their religion is growing ever more popular at an exceedingly fast rate.

Atheists use the same figures to poke fun at Christians whose one-true-god has been splintered into 45,000 separate parts.

But where do the figures come from? Have you ever seen a list of names of different denominations? What is the biggest list you have ever seen?

5,000?
2,000?
1,000?
500?

Chances are you have never seen more than 100 named denominations in a single list. Probably not even fifty - and off the top of your head, I'll bet you would be hard pushed to name even twenty.

So where is the list of 45,000 denominations?

Let me know when you find it.

Actually you will never find such a list because it doesn't exist. The people who came up with the figure of 45,000 denominations have this to say about their methods:

The sources used in this database were so numerous and diverse (often a different one for each number in a table) that it has proved impossible to insert them or document them in either the text or the tables. The current total of books on Christianity exceeds 5 million distinct and separate titles. In most cases, the most authoritative sources, published or unpublished, were available to this book and so were used. Most of the materials collected for this survey, however, relate to original and previously unpublished enquiries. A large majority of the data came from field work, unpublished reports, and private communications from the collaborators
http://www.gordonconwell.edu/resources/

The highlighted words make it clear that the poll is based more on heresay than the statistical method.