Open Questions

Open Celestial Church of Christ

Why It Is Open The church has no central membership roll and has been repeatedly divided by succession disputes since the 1980s, so published estimates of several million adherents across more than five thousand branches are given as a general "by the early 2000s" figure rather than tied to one dated count.

What Would Settle It A dated count from the church's own worldwide administration, or a fielded survey in Nigeria and Benin asking about Celestial Church of Christ membership specifically, would anchor the estimate to an actual year.

Question posed in Schism and Renewal in Africa: An Analysis of Six Thousand Contemporary Religious Movements, David B. Barrett.

Open Alexandrian Wicca

Why It Is Open Religious landscape surveys count Wiccans and Pagans as one combined category, and small, private, initiatory covens are not registered anywhere that would let a researcher isolate the Alexandrian line from other Wiccan traditions.

What Would Settle It A study that surveyed self-identified Wiccans on which initiatory lineage, if any, they belong to, of the kind Pagan studies scholars have occasionally run for specific regions, would let a tradition-specific estimate be drawn where only a combined one exists today.

Question posed in The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Ronald Hutton.

Open Anabaptism

Why It Is Open Anabaptism is a theological family rather than a single organized denomination; its living members already appear in the membership records of its daughter bodies, so no source totals them as one population without risking double counting.

What Would Settle It A scholarly survey that explicitly sums the reported membership of every living Anabaptist-descended body on a stated date, correcting for any overlap between them, would give the family a real combined figure comparable to a single denomination's.

Question posed in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.).

Open Basilideans

Why It Is Open No ancient source that describes Basilidean teaching, all of them hostile heresiological writers rather than the school's own records, gives any figure or even a qualitative sense of how many people followed it.

What Would Settle It New papyrological or epigraphic evidence from Roman Egypt naming Basilidean adherents or congregations, of the kind that has occasionally surfaced for other early Christian and Gnostic groups, would be the only realistic path to an actual estimate.

Question posed in What Is Gnosticism?, Karen L. King.

Open Breslov Hasidism

Why It Is Open Breslov has no central membership roll, so the scholarly estimate of its committed core is a researcher's reading of community size rather than a dated census, and the sources reporting it do not state the year the underlying fieldwork or count was made.

What Would Settle It A published methodology note from the estimate's original researcher, or a fresh dated count of registered Breslov institutions and their affiliated households, would anchor the figure to an actual year.

Question posed in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, Gershon David Hundert (ed.).

Open Church of Satan

Why It Is Open The organization has treated withholding a precise membership figure as deliberate policy since its founding, and no outside demographic survey counts organized Satanists as a category distinct from the wider religiously unaffiliated population.

What Would Settle It A survey instrument that asked specifically about affiliation with the Church of Satan, fielded independently of the organization itself, would be the only way to move past both the organization's own silence and the guesswork that fills it.

Question posed in Church of Satan (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors.

Open Dianic Wicca

Why It Is Open Religious landscape surveys count Wiccans and Pagans as one combined category, and small, often women-only covens outside any central registry leave no record a researcher could use to isolate the Dianic line from other Wiccan traditions.

What Would Settle It A study that surveyed self-identified Wiccans on which lineage or current, if any, they follow, of the kind Pagan studies scholars have occasionally run for specific regions, would let a tradition-specific estimate replace the combined figure in circulation today.

Question posed in Dianic Wicca (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors.

Open Dragon Gate

Why It Is Open China's official Daoist registration counts ordained monastics through the China Daoist Association and individual monasteries, not by which of Quanzhen's lineages a monastic was ordained into, so Dragon Gate clergy are never broken out from the wider Quanzhen or Zhengyi totals.

What Would Settle It A published survey of ordination records naming lineage affiliation across China's registered Daoist monasteries, of the kind scholars of contemporary Daoism have occasionally attempted for individual monasteries, would let a lineage-specific figure be drawn where only a combined one exists today.

Question posed in Daoism Handbook, Livia Kohn (ed.).

Open Eclectic Solitary Wicca

Why It Is Open Solitary practice leaves no coven roll, initiation record or central registry by design, and religious landscape surveys count Wiccans and Pagans as one combined category rather than separating solitary eclectic practice from initiatory lineages.

What Would Settle It A large-scale self-identification survey that asked Wiccans specifically whether they practice solitary and eclectically, rather than within an initiatory lineage, would let a real estimate be drawn where only a combined Wiccan/Pagan figure exists today.

Question posed in Eclectic Wicca (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors.

Open Feri Tradition

Why It Is Open Feri passes from teacher to student through small covens and houses with no central registry, and general surveys of American Paganism count Wiccans and Pagans as one combined category without separating this smaller initiatory current from the larger traditions around it.

What Would Settle It A survey that asked self-identified witches or Pagans specifically which initiatory lineage, if any, they belong to would let a Feri-specific figure be drawn where only a combined estimate exists today.

Question posed in Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America, Chas S. Clifton.

Open Folk Shinto

Why It Is Open Folk Shinto names an uncodified stratum of household and local custom rather than an organization anyone joins, with no shrine registry or denominational rolls of the kind Shrine Shinto and Sect Shinto both keep, so no demographic source counts its practitioners apart from the general population.

What Would Settle It A household practice survey that asked specifically about unaffiliated local and seasonal kami observance, rather than about formal religious affiliation, would be the only way to estimate a population that institutional records cannot capture by design.

Question posed in Folk Shinto (Encyclopaedia Britannica), The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Open Native American Religion

Why It Is Open This entry aggregates hundreds of distinct nations whose access rules range from fully open to strictly closed, so no single status value on the umbrella entity can be honest. A general source can show that variation exists but cannot resolve any one nation's specific rule.

What Would Settle It Recording closed-practice-status individually on each nation's own tradition entity, citing that nation's own statement or a specific scholarly or legal source, the way this has already been done for the Hopi, Taos Pueblo, Warlpiri, Arrernte and Haudenosaunee Longhouse traditions and the Native American Church.

Question posed in Wikipedia, Native American Church (source), Wikipedia contributors.

Open Mennonites

Why It Is Open Mennonite Church USAs Executive Board publishes its own annual audit, and a net-asset figure was reported in secondary coverage, but that figure could not be independently confirmed by reading the underlying audited document in this research pass, so it was not written into the atlas.

What Would Settle It A directly readable copy of Mennonite Church USAs own audited financial statement, or a current Mennonite World Conference Fair Share total with its underlying figures.

Expertise Needed Nonprofit financial reporting and Anabaptist denominational administration.

Question posed in Fair Share Contribution (Mennonite World Conference).

Open African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

Why It Is Open Reporting outlets and denominational pages carrying a consolidated total-assets or budget figure for the AME Zion Church returned access errors when checked directly; the denomination does not appear to publish a single consolidated financial statement the way some larger denominations do.

What Would Settle It A consolidated financial statement, IRS Form 990-equivalent filing or audited annual report published by the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church's own General Board, or a reporting outlet's successful access to one.

Expertise Needed Nonprofit and denominational finance, religious studies

Open An Lushan Rebellion

Why It Is Open The only widely repeated total, thirty six million, comes from subtracting one disputed Tang census count from another rather than from any direct accounting of the dead, and the compiler who popularized it later revised his own figure down by more than half using a different method on the same two numbers. Historians who have examined the underlying census data consider it unreliable for this purpose, but none consulted has published a replacement war death total of their own.

What Would Settle It A demographic historian's reconstruction of Tang population loss across 755 to 763 that accounts for wartime migration, tax registration collapse and regional variation rather than a single before and after census subtraction, similar to the kind of regional accounting that has been attempted for other long, poorly recorded wars on this atlas.

Expertise Needed Tang dynasty history; historical demography

Open The 1955 Anti-Baha'i Campaign in Iran

Why It Is Open IHRDC's history of the campaign documents one dated mass killing, the Yazd massacre of 28 July 1955 with seven dead, alongside widespread but uncounted violence, coerced recantations and property destruction reported in cities across Iran during the same month long campaign. No human rights body or historian consulted has totaled that wider violence into a single nationwide death count for the 1955 campaign specifically, as distinct from the persecution's later, better documented decades.

What Would Settle It A dedicated historical accounting of the April to May 1955 campaign specifically, cross-checking Bahai community records, contemporary Iranian press and any surviving official records city by city, of the kind IHRDC and other human rights documentation projects have since built for later, better recorded periods of Bahai persecution in Iran.

Expertise Needed Modern Iranian history; human rights documentation

Open The Rohingya Genocide

Why It Is Open Access to Rakhine State was tightly restricted during and after the 2017 clearance operations, and the UN Fact-Finding Mission's own report states it could not establish a verified total; independent estimates published since range widely with no consensus figure.

What Would Settle It Independent forensic and demographic investigation inside Rakhine State, which Myanmar's government has not permitted at the scale required.

Expertise Needed Forensic demography and human rights investigation

Question posed in Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (A/HRC/39/64), United Nations Human Rights Council.

Open State Atheism in Albania

Why It Is Open Clergy and believers were imprisoned and executed under Communist Albania's religious ban, but no independent body has separated a cumulative death toll for the ban specifically from Enver Hoxha's wider political repression.

What Would Settle It Archival research in Albania's post-Communist state security records isolating religiously motivated cases from the regime's broader political imprisonments and executions.

Expertise Needed Archival history

Question posed in Irreligion in Albania (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors.

Open Cao Đài

Why It Is Open English language sources on Cao Dai describe devotional ritual offerings, incense, fruit, flowers, tea and alcohol, at daily temple ceremonies, but none states a fixed due, a percentage of income or an enforcement consequence for not giving, the shape every other body on the atlas's member giving expectations axis carries.

What Would Settle It A direct reading of the Tan Luat (Cao Dai's New Canonical Law) or the Phap Chanh Truyen (Religious Constitution), or a scholarly ethnography of Tay Ninh Holy See temple finance, stating whether registered Cao Dai members owe a fixed contribution and what follows if they do not pay it.

Expertise Needed Vietnamese religious studies, primary source review of Cao Dai canonical texts

Question posed in Cao Dai (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors.

Open Jehovah's Witnesses

Why It Is Open Jehovah's Witnesses' UK and Canadian branches file public charity returns, and US Brooklyn real estate sales are documented property records, but Germany imposes no comparable financial disclosure requirement, and a German media report on a ZDF documentary investigation records the German headquarters declining to state its annual donation income when asked directly.

What Would Settle It A German regulatory filing requirement reaching the Jehovah's Witnesses' public-law corporation, a leaked or court-disclosed internal financial statement, or the organization's own voluntary disclosure of a figure it has so far declined to give.

Expertise Needed German religious law (Körperschaftsrecht) and the sociology and investigative journalism of new religious movements' finances.

Question posed in ZDF-Reportage Zu Den Spenden Bei Den Zeugen Jehovas (pro Medienmagazin, 2023), Jorn Schumacher.