Where the traditions land

Population figures are each tradition's own most recent published count. Eligibility is set against the World Christian Database, the standard reference for global denominational data.

Why the disagreement

Every seated tradition points to some combination of baptism and faith; the real disagreement is over which one actually does the work — whether becoming a Christian is something that happens to a person through an objective act, or something a person does through a conscious decision, or both, in a specific order that matters.

Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Lutheran teaching hold that baptism itself is what makes someone a Christian. The Catechism states it directly: baptism "incorporates us into the Church," making a person a "member of Christ" and part of "the one People of God." On this view, the sacrament does the incorporating; a person's later growth in faith is what living out that new identity looks like, not what created it in the first place.

Anglican, Reformed, and Methodist teaching hold that baptism marks entry into the visible church, but treat genuine, saving Christian identity as something deeper the visible sign doesn't automatically guarantee. The Westminster Confession draws the line explicitly, distinguishing the "visible church" — everyone who outwardly professes the faith — from the "invisible church," the actual elect known only by God's own inward calling; membership in one doesn't guarantee membership in the other. Methodist teaching locates the same gap in personal experience rather than election: John Wesley, already a baptized and ordained clergyman, described his own realization of what actually made him a Christian as a specific, dateable moment of felt assurance — "I felt my heart strangely warmed... an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins."

Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, and Adventist teaching remove baptism from the causal question entirely. What makes someone a Christian, on this view, is regeneration — "a work of God's grace" received "through conviction of sin" met with "repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ," as the Baptist Faith & Message puts it — with baptism following afterward as public testimony to a change that already happened.

LDS teaching ties Christian identity to a specific sequence: faith, repentance, and baptism performed under proper priesthood authority, entered into as a formal covenant, followed by confirmation and the ongoing keeping of that covenant.

Jehovah's Witnesses locate it in a personal dedication made directly to Jehovah in prayer, publicly symbolized by baptism, which then commits a person to sustained, loyal obedience. Their own literature describes baptism as marking "the beginning of lifelong service to God" in association with Jehovah's organization specifically, not a completed status achieved at a single moment.

Solving the disagreement

Catholic, Orthodox, and Lutheran teaching on one side and Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, and Adventist teaching on the other are arguing over whether an outward act can constitute an inward reality — whether baptism itself does something to a person's actual spiritual status, or whether the water only ever follows and displays a change a decision of faith already made. That dispute isn't likely to resolve, because it depends on a prior commitment about whether physical, administered rites can carry spiritual effect at all — a question no new evidence about this specific case is likely to settle either way.

Anglican, Reformed, and Methodist teaching sit in an unusual position: their own doctrine is built to be unresolvable by design, not by accident. If true Christian identity depends on an inward election or a felt assurance that no outside observer, and sometimes not even the person themselves with full certainty, can verify, then there's no evidence anyone could produce, from any side, that would settle who's actually in that inner category and who only looks like they are. That's not a gap waiting on a better argument; it's a doctrine deliberately built around a distinction only God is positioned to judge.

LDS teaching's answer depends on the premise recurring throughout this format: whether the authority to perform binding, identity-conferring ordinances was lost and needed restoring, a historical claim Bible interpretation alone can't adjudicate.

Jehovah's Witnesses add a feature no other seated tradition builds into this specific question: sustained membership in a particular organization as part of what living out Christian identity requires, not just a private relationship with God. Resolving that difference from the rest of the table would mean resolving whether Christian identity is inherently individual or inherently organizational — a question about the nature of the church itself, underneath this one rather than a continuation of it.

Sources

Same standing source per tradition on every post, not hunted per question.

• Catholic — Catechism of the Catholic Church
• Eastern Orthodox — Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (binding across all jurisdictions); The Longer Catechism of St. Philaret of Moscow (widely used, not binding on every jurisdiction)
• Oriental Orthodox — Catechism of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Fr. Tadros Y. Malaty (Amazon — no full free text found)
• Anglican — Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion
• Lutheran — Book of Concord
• Reformed/Presbyterian — Westminster Confession of Faith
• Methodist/Wesleyan — Articles of Religion
• Southern Baptist Convention — Baptist Faith & Message 2000
• Pentecostal (Trinitarian) — Assemblies of God Statement of Fundamental Truths
• Seventh-day Adventist — 28 Fundamental Beliefs
• LDS — Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants
• Jehovah's Witnesses — What Does the Bible Really Teach?