Religious denomination

A religious denomination (also simply denomination) is a subgroup within a religion that has a common name, tradition, and identity.

The term is often used for several Christian denominations including Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and the many sorts of Protestantism like: Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, and Pentecostal.

It is also used for the four branches of Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist), and for the main branches of Islam (Sunnism and Shi'ism, Quranism, Ibadism, Sufism, Muwahhidism).

In Hinduism the major deity or philosophical belief functions as the identifier of a denomination and typically each has distinct cultural and religious practices. The major denominations include: Shaivism, Shaktism, Vaishnavism, Smartism, and Halumatha.