How do we all relate?

When I was at school I used to be fascinated by Venn diagrams. Many people hated them, thought them too confusing... maybe it is because I am a visual person they seemed to communicate better to me than numbers.

Over the last few years I have been thinking about the different strands of the church and about whether we could express those relationships in a Venn diagram. Last few days I have been thinking more and come up with the following diagram.

The first reaction I had was from my son [who is studying theology] and was 'Brilliant'. Hmmm... now this is just a first draft and based upon gut reactions. But what do other people think? Is this a helpful way to express things? How do we measure the overlaps?

Its quite deliberate that some groups overlap all core Christian beliefs and some do not... obviously one problem with this diagram is that each group defines core Christian beliefs differently. Nobody thinks that they are unsound themselves... but maybe the problem is the words sound and unsound. And what do we mean by 'core' anyhow?