Apollonius of Tyana (not exactly a break-away but definitely started a movement), Paul the apostle (spurned and became the name we associate with a break away in early Christianity from Judaism), The Prophet Muhammad, Mani, David Koresh (of course that ended in disaster), Chaitanya, are all a few I would throw there.neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Fri Jan 07, 2022 4:28 pmI have taken the above snippet from another thread because I want to focus on the distinctive theme raised here.Chris Hansen wrote: ↑Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:49 pmAlternative: obscure people start rapidly evolving religions all the time. Given that Christianity developed out of Judaism, we can look at it, in my opinion, similarly to how various Christian denominations have evolved. Martin Luther, a random monk sitting in an abbey just stewing on problems with indulgences, managed to jumpstart an entire Reformation of the religion in his lifetime.
It seems rather natural and habitual that these events take place.
That "obscure people start ... religions all the time" is integral to a theory of religious origins set out by a leading anthropologist of religion Harvey Whitehouse. Whitehouse discusses two modes of religiosity, the doctrinal and the imagistic, and addresses the constant danger facing the former: that obscure members can rise up any time with their own revisionist doctrines and start a new religious body. In short, a religion founded upon doctrinal teachings is always going to be vulnerable to someone coming up with some sort of challenge to those teachings. Whitehouse notes the various techniques used by the would-be parent body to minimize this threat.
What I am interested in is a list of many names of such "obscure upstarts" in order to arrive at a sample that enables us to make serious comparisons with what we know of Christianity. To what extent will a close examination of these common anthropological breakaway events be consistent with the evidence we have for Christian origins? But to address that question I would like a list of sample candidates.
We have started with Martin Luther.
One quickly thinks of Joseph Smith.
Who else?
Added after original posting:
Maybe there are examples where "bodies" or "groups" break away to start anew -- not just individuals. This will open up, I expect, questions of myth-making to justify the break.
I would add also one that no one probably would ever know about here. My dad's family were immigrants from Denmark and became involved in a new denomination that was an offshoot of the Free Methodist Church. Founded by Vivian Dake originally as a youth missionary arm, the Pentecost Bands were headed by him until he died. In the mid 1890s, however, he passed away and Thomas Hiram Nelson, a charismatic ex-Catholic, who had converted and been elected the new leader (despite him being an obscure immigrant from Canada), took command of the Bands and announced their separation from the Methodist church. They became heavily involved in their own brand of the Holiness movement, with much their own creed. As far as Christians go, they were almost early Christian universalists at first, at least for Protestants, as they allowed dual denominational memberships, but they had a set of core tenets. They had no "pastors" or "priests" but only "workers", and very early allowed a closer to equal status among women and men, along with also people of color, thus, they were actually fairly progressive. They were staunchly against the conception of money, very communal, none of their workers drew a salary, and specifically critiqued and attacked the "modern Church" for its opulence, preaching to the rich, and refusal to reach out and give safe spaces for ex-prisoners, orphans, immigrants, people of color, etc.
Functionally, they were their own very peculiar sect of Christianity. Unfortunately they died out around 60 years after their founding, eventually merging with the Wesleyan church.
My great great grandfather was a leader in the Pentecost Bands, and eventually became the second highest ranking member. Anyways, thought that would be an interesting one, since it is an entire separate offshoot of Christianity that was relatively recent, and had quite an impact on the FMC, but no one really knows about it. Founded by obscure immigrants.