Nondenominational Christianity

Nondenominational (or non-denominational) churches are those which typically distance themselves from the confessionalism and/or creedalism of other Christian communities by calling themselves non-denominational. Often founded by individual pastors, they have little affiliation with historic denominations, although they almost always adhere to Evangelicalism.

There is no identifiable standard among such congregations. Nondenominational church congregations may establish a functional denomination by means of mutual recognition of or accountability to other congregations and leaders with commonly held doctrine, policy and worship without formalizing external direction or oversight in such matters. Some nondenominational churches explicitly reject the idea of a formalized denominational structure as a matter of principle, holding that each congregation is better off being . This is a main feature of the congregational polity.

Many of the nondenominational churches trace their origins back to the United States. Their history is often associated with American Protestantism, even though nondenominationals emphasize their Christian identity above all others. A 2012 Gallup survey reported that 10 percent of U.S. adults identify as non-specific Christian.

Nondenominational churches are on the rise. According to some, who classify nondenominationals alongside other Protestants, they constitute a substantial part of Protestantism.

According to James Walker:

The visible churches, in the idea of the Scottish theologians, is catholic. You have not an indefinite number of Parochial, or Congregational, or National churches, constituting, as it were, so many ecclesiastical individualities, but one great spiritual republic, of which these various organizations form a part. The visible church is not a genus, so to speak, with so many species under it. It is thus you may think of the State, but the visible church is a totum integrale, it is an empire. The churches of the various nationalities constitute the provinces of this empire; and though they are so far independent of each other, yet they are so one, that membership in one is membership in all, and separation from one is separation from all... This conception of the church, of which, in at least some aspects, we have practically so much lost sight, had a firm hold of the Scottish theologians of the seventeenth century.

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