MasterDestroyer

1: Catholicism

Jesus said you will know them by their fruits. Regardless of what you want to say about certain individuals within the Catholic church, Catholicism as a whole has more fruits than every other version of christianity combined.

2: Greek Orthodox

I have changed my mind about which EO patriarchate is the best. Even though the EP (Ecumenical Patriarch) is forced to play it cool due to residing in Turkey, in Greece itself the Greek Orthodox are based and islamophobic. Also Greek Orthodox are much more likely to reunite with Rome. If EO unites with Rome the autocephalous churches that side with EP will join Rome and the Patriarchate of Moscow and OCA will schism.

3: Oriental Orthodox

They are also a historic church that is likely to reunite with Rome at some point

4: Assyrian Church of the East

They still have the best music

5: Anglo-Catholic

Caesaropapism is about the most cringe thing ever. Separation of church and state is mid. Church ABOVE state is where it do in fact be at. High church Anglicans plagiarize all of their best qualities from Catholicism, but many of them are realizing that they are just Catholics in denial.

6: Confessional Lutheran

The protestant reformation wouldn't have been the disaster that it was if it wasn't for state-church caesaropapism. Confessional Lutheran bodies consistently prove that there is genuine christianity in protestantism, it just can never achieve what catholicism can or guarantee salvation or correct theology.

7: Presbyterian

The most evolved branch of the reformed tradition which resisted the evils of caesaropapism

8: Dutch-Reformed

Without them there would be no Presbyterians. They were the masterminds of reformed theology after the original Swiss Reformation got rekt by its state-church model.

9: Moravians

The OG Hussite proto-protestants who believed in apostolic succession. They are most similar to methodists but methodists are cringe because they are either super liberal or super schismatic and baptist-flavored.

10: Seventh-Day Adventists

Due to their doctrines that focus on health, they are the healthiest religious group in the world and even have a "blue zone" to their name.

1: Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. If you want christianity in its purest most distilled form (not lacking anything essential but not containing any "fluff" or heterodoxy) this is where you go. It is the largest mainline denomination in america that isn't liberal and has stayed consistent, solid and conservative. Classic Lutheran orthodoxy with a "high church" vibe.

2: Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. Like LCMS but smaller and even less ecumenical. Fact is being non-ecumenical is a good thing, not to the extent you think no one but your denom can be a christian but to the effect that you realize anything that isn't Lutheran is heterodox and has at least one major error that distorts the gospel. WELS isn't even ecumenical to other Confessional Lutherans though lol.

3: The American Association of Lutheran Churches. An even smaller version of the above 2. Youtuber, pastor and theologian Jordan B Cooper is in this denomination. The main issue other than size is they have less resources and thus have a more plain low church vibe.

4: Roman Catholic. The Church that Lutherans would have ideally stayed in and reformed. Although I respect Russian Orthodox more in certain ways, RC is closer in theology and is the best denomination at having a highly structured and institutional church.

5: Russian Orthodox. Known for polemical refutations against things that suck like atheism, cultural marxism, evangelicalism in the baptist/pentecostal/nondenom sense, islam, and ziocuckoldry. If you love mysticism, beautiful liturgy and incense this is the place for you.

6: Orthodox Church in America. They are essentially russian orthodox lite. Much more pastoral approach and much more english-speaker friendly than other EO churches. Since they were granted autocephaly by russian orthodox and aren't recognized by greek orthodox they are essentially where you go when there isn't a russian orthodox church around. Ideally OCA would spread and phase out other EO churches and be america's official EO church but I can't say it hasn't been influenced by american culture, making it less of a good option for serious converts.

7: Greek Orthodox. They have good food.

8: Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America. Conservative like the PCA, but mainline, traditional, and not baptist-influenced like the PCUSA. If only it wasn't so small.

9: North American Lutheran Church. Schismatic from the largest but most liberal Lutheran body (ELCA) in america. It is semi-liberal and schismatic so it ranks much lower.

10: Anglican Church in North America. Schismatic from TEC so this is a reluctant choice. If you want vague, amorphous "a little of everything" christianity without it being TOO liberal this is your best bet.

Everyone needs a system of values and a way of understanding the world. Atheism having no built in values, forces you to self-determine your values. Now many people will ask "whats wrong with that?". Everything is wrong with that. You have no way of determining what values are right nor of perpetuating them even if they were right.

If you are just an individual with a frankenstein set of opinions cobbled together (all borrowed from worldviews that actually have built-in values btw, very few people genuinely have original ideas) then you have no "team" that can reliably perpetuate those values. You must remain alone, start your own movement, or sacrifice some values to join and perpetuate a pre-existing team. So with atheism you either have apathetic people, insular individuals with opinions, or random movements with no yard stick to measure which is right other than personal preference. On the other hand if you have religion you have a common operating system that can be perpetuated, shared coherently and serve as the core lens through which everything is viewed rather than individual subjectivity being your lens.

Sure you can be an atheist and have a philosophy or a political affiliation. Those are just cheap placeholders for religion when you are atheist. The properly ordered human psyche has philosophy/politics that EXTEND FROM religion. The more comprehensive a philosophical system, the more it starts to resemble a religion. In other words having a complete worldview becomes synonymous with having a religion either way, otherwise you are just ignoring the "big questions".

If you are truly agnostic you must sacrifice literally everything to remain consistent. You have no epistemic basis for ANY truth claim. If you are an atheist you must be a nihilist, so existentially you can say "everything is just materialism" but when it comes to values you are the same as the agnostic. If nothing objectively matters in your worldview and life is just having fun and/or suffering for a few decades with nothing after that, you can see why it generates selfish and shallow people. The lack of consistent/objective values is how you get people who are both feminists and in favor of islam taking over their country for example.

You may think it is dangerous not to "think for yourself" but atheism only leads to that in higher IQ atheists, and even then it isn't ideal. For the vast majority of atheists it leads to a combination of apathy and cognitive dissonance. They have no coherency to how they view the world and what values they do have come from outside of themselves anyway. They have no reason to reproduce because it gets in the way of their hedonism and they know they can't promise their kids that they will inherit a world worth living in. If they do have kids, the kids will be lost without beliefs and values and will only ultimately feel "whole" if they adopt a religion or a philosophy that mimics one.

LCMS (lutheran church missouri synod)

This is the best denomination on earth. It is proof that protestantism can remain conservative without becoming "evangelical", relegated to a tiny minority or schismatic. I realized that only the Reformed and Lutheran traditions can be true because libertarian free will is definitely false, and my initial instinct was to gravitate to reformed due to their higher view of reason. I have come to realize however, that adding your own ideas to scripture just because they make sense to you results in a man-made religion rather than a revelation based one. John Calvin was guilty of doing major mental gymnastics to reinterpret what scripture clearly says in a way that makes more sense to him, resulting in Nestorianism among other errors.

Russian Orthodox

My second most respected christian tradition. Why russian specifically? Because they are the most polemical against the 3 great cultural cancers: Islam, cultural marxism and "evangelical" christianity. Greek Orthodox is more focused on coexistence rhetoric, even going so far as to claim muslims worship the same god like the utterly compromised roman catholic church does. Beyond theological reasons, ROC is not number one for me because although removing the 3 cancers is good, replacing them with russia isn't exactly ideal. I am in favor of replacing them with scandinavian style social democracy minus the secularism and lax sexual morality.

Roman Catholicism

The Roman Catholic Church is a bloated corpse of christian orthodoxy full of virtually endless man made doctrines that they keep making up as they go along. Their poster boy Thomas Aquinas was an aristotelian philosopher first and a christian second. The Papacy's ahistorical and overblown claims to authority are a testament to the extent of human pride. Rome has cucked its theology to Jews and Muslims, reversing and contradicting centuries of dogma just to sound nicer. In an age when muslims are actively trying to replace western civilization, and the increasingly secular west needs a strong cultural backbone more than ever, the roman catholic church promotes religious pluralism and syncretism.

PCA (presbyterian church in america)

Let me be perfectly clear, I have very little respect for "evangelicalism". Even the fact they are called evangelical is an insult to the gospel. The PCA is just as much baptist as it is presbyterian, if not more. I have attended a PCA church and their treatment of the sacrament of the lord's body and blood was downright disrespectful and dismissive. If you do not believe in some form of sacramental realism or efficacy you are not a christian. Not to mention the PCA formed via schism from the PCUS in 1973 because they were mad that the PCUS stopped practicing racial segregation.