Great question and here's an attempt at a very basic lesson in church history.
Understand that the Christian church comes out of Judaism (Jesus was reared in that faith tradition). Many of the early Christians were Jews and that created problems such as the one in Galatians with the Judaizers and new Christians and the problem covered in the book of Acts over equitable distributions among Hebrew widows (who were Jewish) and Greek widows (who were Gentiles--not Jewish).
With the establishment of the Christian faith in society, Christianity was all Catholic. There were 2 splits: one was in 1,000 AD between the West (whose seat of authority was in Rome-known as the Latin-speaking churches) and the East (whose seat of authority was in Constantinople-known as the Greek-speaking churches). The second occured when a German priest, Martin Luther (and not King), felt that the Roman Catholic Church was not Catholic enough, and went about the task of detailing what it would take to reform the church, make it better. He and the reformers protested against the Roman Catholic Church practices on a number of issues. These reformers became known as
Pro-test-ants.
And from there, the Protestant Reformation of the 14th century began with Martin Luthers followers who became known as Lutherans; there were the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Anabaptist, Mennonites, Brethren, Methodists...
Out of Methodism came the Azusa Street Revival in the early 1900's. Now we know about Acts 2, when the day of Pentecost had fully come. The Azusa Street Revival brought about the holiness movement and the birth of the Pentecostal denomination with people like Bishop Charles Harrison Mason and the Church of God in Christ.
But it goes back to that group of protesters who really wanted to reform the church. So when you hear of splits and schisms and the like, remember: that's just the church being the church. Take that little word cleave. Cleave can mean to join together (cleave to that which is good)or it can mean to separate like in the case of a meat cleaver. We are the church militant, always cleaving (joining together) always cleaving (separating). And we will be that way until the church militant becomes the church triumphant in that "land that is fairer than day..."
Shalom
