What is a denomination?

In short, a denomination is a group of people who agree on a certain Biblical issues. It’s a shared school of thought.

Within Christianity, there are many different doctrines (Link to What is doctrine? article). Sometimes there is disagreement between Christians about what the Bible teaches on a certain topic. For example, baptism. (Link to What is Baptism? article) The Bible is clear that baptism is a command given to people who profess Christ as their Savior. However, there is disagreement amongst Christians about what that looks like. Do we have to be fully submerged in the water? Can we just be sprinkled with water? Do we baptize babies or children? Different groups of people answer these questions in different ways. And thus we have denominations. All Christian denominations agree on the foundational message of the Gospel (Link to What is the Gospel? article), but depending on how people interpret the passages that talk about baptism, they might fall into different denominations. They are all still Christians uniting around the same Gospel truth (which is what really matters), but secondarily, they are grouping themselves by these other doctrinal beliefs. Baptism is just one example of a doctrine denominations are built around; there are several others as well.