A Taxonomy of Protestants

Well, ISTR that the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at one time didn’t accept Mormons, on the theory that they aren’t Christian; I don’t know if they’ve changed that policy.

Anyway, as has been pointed out earlier in this thread, Mormons consider themselves to be Christians, and they consider the Book of Mormon to be “another testament of Jesus Christ” (to borrow a line from their TV spots).

In my experience at least, Mormons tend to follow the basic teachings of Christ at least as well as those who call themselves Christians but don’t recognize Mormons as such. For me, that’s good enough for them to be called Christians.

Where would your born again, fundamentalists sects fit? I mean, Bible literalists, like Jack Chick types?

Fundamentalism began as a movement within several Protestant denominations, in reaction to modernist or liberal tendencies within the mainstream Protestant churches, which sought to accomodate changing social attitudes, new scientific discoveries (evolutionary biology), and new scholarship about the origins of the Bible. Fundamentalists rejected the modernist or liberal tendencies as abandoning the core tenets of Christianity, and sought to return to the “fundamentals” of the faith, including fundamental doctrines of Western Christianity (the deity of Jesus Christ, the Resurrection, the Trinity) and of Protestant Christianity specifically (salvation by faith rather than works). The Fundamentalists also stressed the authority and inerrancy of the Bible, in a way that is specifically Protestant.

In addition to the specific Fundamentalist movement with a capital “F”, various other Protestant Christian groups (conservative Pentecostals or conservative Calvinists) may share a belief in Biblical inerrancy and other core doctrines, while disagreeing about the interpretation of what they all believe to be the inerrant Word of God. These groups may be called “fundamentalist” with a small “f”. Classically, capital-“F” Fundamentalists have not embraced speaking in tongues or other Pentecostal practices, have generally been premillenial (focusing on the end of the world as a sudden supernatural event), and were traditionally “separatist”, avoiding involvement in secular activities or institutions which were seen as worldly and corrupt, including politics. With the rise of the Religious Right, a segment of traditional Fundamentalists have become very much engaged in politics and the “culture wars”’; there has also been a softening of traditoinal lines between Pentecostals and non-Pentecostal Fundamentalists. Although most Religious Right Fundamentalists still very publicly embrace premillenialism (the Left Behind books), to some extent they no longer act like people who expect the world to end any minute, as they have invested a lot of time and energy in creating institutions here on Earth (media empires, universities, political action groups). For many, though, this is still all just part of the plan to evangelize the world in preparation for the Second Coming. Others may have drifted into a “postmillenialist” view, in which Christians will bring about the “Millennium” before the Second Coming, “Christianizing” the world by human (albeit, in their view, God-aided) effort.

Within a specific Protestant denominational family–Presbyterians or Baptists, for example–there may be “fundamentalist” or conservative denominations and more mainstream or liberal denominations, often tracing their roots back to some schism within an earlier denomination.

Jack Chick is defnitely a Protestant, and a I think a Fundamentalist of the old school as well–the claim that the King James Version is the only true English translation of the Bible is a hallmark of a certain school of American Fundamentalist Protestants. He definitely doesn’t like Catholics, and I don’t think he really likes the modern Religious Right movement in many ways, with its blurring of traditional intra-Protestant boundaries, and occasional tactical alliances with Catholicism. There has long been a tendency with some Protestants to form ostensibly ever-purer and in practice ever-smaller groups, splitting over various details of theology and practice. To achieve political power or social and cultural influence, that sort of focus on purity of doctrine tends to be a liability.

It seems to me that this impulse is what kicked off the whole business back in 1517.

–Cliffy

3waygeek:

I checked the site you linked above and used its search engine to look for the word “Mormon.” Surprisingly, it only came back with one hit. Not surprisingly, it was almost as stupid in its characterization of the LDS as Chick is.

I suppose so. Initially, though, the goal of the Protestant Reformers–Luther and Calvin and so on–wasn’t to divide the Church, but to purify the entire Church. Later on, though, there has arisen among at least some strains of Protestantism an expectation that the “true” Church will be small and persecuted, and that “false” churches will be much larger and more politically powerful and socially influential–until the Judgment Day, when the small “true” Church will be glorified and the big, “false” churches will be cast down.

I don’t think Jack Chick-type Protestants really even expect the Catholic Church to be reformed by any human agency; that kind of Protestant denounces the Catholic Church, or other Protestant churches, because they feel they have a theological duty to speak what they see as the truth, and in order to convert people away from the “false” churches to the “true” Church on an individual basis. Actual unification and reform of the entire Church is something which they believe will happen only by openly supernatural means. This, I think, is a change from the initial attitudes of the Reformers, and still isn’t shared by all Protestants today.

Lutherans: Three different religions, united by a common retirement fund.

I don’t have the requisite knowledge to get that one.

Well, I think it’s more that, for Chick, and the people like him, the Catholic Church isn’t part of “The Church”. Originally, people like Luther and Calvin believed that Jesus and his followers set up “The Church”, and then, as time went on, it got corrupted by adding things like priests and saints and so on. Therefore, it could be reformed by getting rid of all the crap that got added to it throughout the years. Catholicism, for them, is part of the Christian tradition…just a horribly corrupt and degraded part.

It’s different for people like Jack Chick. For him, Jesus and his followers set up “The Church”, and it stayed pure. To fight “The Church”, Satan set up the Roman Catholic Church. However, the real Church has been in existance throughout that time, just in secret. However, sometimes, (according to people who believe like Chick), the Roman Catholic Church finds out about “The Church”, and tries to destroy it…so that’s why you hear about movements like the Albigensians, the Waldensians, and the Hussites, and most of what the Catholic Church considers heretic movements. According to Chick, those “heretics” are really all parts of the true Church.

So, for Chick and people like that, the Roman Catholic Church can’t be redeemed…it’s evil from the beginning.

Sad to say, I belong to a Baptist church and have no clue of how our denomination came about.

People on this thread have said that Baptists are not this or they’re not that. So how did the baptist church come about and what are the major classes of Baptist churches today?

The Baptists split off from the Calvinist/Presbytarian/Reformed movement in England in the 17th century, mainly over questions of infant baptism . There actually were two Baptist groups at first, the General Baptists and Particular Baptists (called because General Baptists believed that Jesus died for everyone, and Particular Baptists, who were more Calvinist, believed that Jesus died for a smaller elect)

The religion flourished in America more than England, and sort of took off from there. There are currently a number of different classes of Baptist churches, but the largest are the churches united under the Southern Baptist Convention.

I’ve heard some conservative-type preachers railing against what they referred to as the “liberal” churches – Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Methodist. Do those churches have a smaller component of conservatives?

No, C K Dexter Haven -

Confessing Christ as our Savior, we acknowledge one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one Jell-o salad recipe.

Regards,
Shodan

“I am saved by grace thru faith - but just in case, I brought a hot dish.”

I’ll stick with fish sandwhiches, thankyouverymuch.

So, Shodan, has it ever happened to you yet that, at a church picnic, all the dishes brought are jello?

Presbyterians run the gamut from the mainstream, generally liberal Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) through the smaller (roughly one-tenth the size) Presbyterian Church in America, a considerably more conservative “evangelical” organization, through several smaller and yet more conservative groups, such as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church or the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, down to little micro-denominations, some of which have quite alarming views. On the low end of the size scale, we’re talking about denominations with fewer members than a really large “mega-church” single congregation.

Methodists are reasonably well unified in the United Methodist Church; (itself a result of mergers which reunited Methodist denominations whose splits in some cases dated back to the sectional controversy over slavery before the Civil War). My (not necessarily all that well-informed) impresion of the UMC is that it is somewhere between the really liberal denominations, like the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., and the more evangelical or “fundamentalist” groups like the Southern Baptist Convention–perhaps closer to the liberal end of the spectrum. There are also several “African Methodist” denominations of black Methodists, including African Methodist Episcopal and A.M.E. Zion. (As far as I know, the “Episcopal” here just means they have Bishops, and indicates no particular connection to the Episcopalians/Anglicans; the UMC also has clergy with the title Bishop.)

The main Episcopal Church is generally liberal. There are assorted “traditionalist” groups these days, which often use titles like “Anglican” (although as far as I know, the main Episcopal Church is the only denomination in the U.S. that is accepted by the rest of the worldwide Anglican Communion); some of these may be reform movements within the church. Similarly, there are groups with labels like “Charismatic Episcopalians”; again, these may be internal wings of the Episcopal Church rather than separate denominations. Polycarp would undoubtedly know more about the current state of Episcopalianism than I do.

Incidentally, “Charismaticism” is a non-denominational movement which accepts many of the distinctives of Pentecostalism–speaking in tongues, healing, and so on–but is found in a variety of other denominations outside of the traditional Pentecostal ones. (I believe there are even Charismatic Catholics.)

For the UMC, this is really a geographic matter. The Southern congregations are demonstrably more conservative than the New England and Western ones. The Midwest is somewhere in between. UMC makes a concerted effort to preserve a national church, however; it took a lot of work to get the churches “united” and there is a real desire to keep that unity since it is perceived to strengthen the church as a whole.

I’ve been reading the thread and find it interesting and don’t really have anything to add to the discussion but I do have a few links that are somewhat related.

Link #1 shows the Religious Situation in Europe, c.1560 as a color coded map of Europe.

Link #2 has a table at the bottom listing many different churches and associated ‘offshoots’.

Link #3 contains a very rudimentary chart at the bottom similar to the inquiry on the OP.

I have not researched any of these websites for bias so I am not sure if any are slanted for/against a certain viewpoint.

Monty:

Now if they were all green jello dishes, that would be a Mormon function!!

Payne:

The Community of Christ (new name for the RLDS) bookstore back East sells a line of cartoon books: “Church Chuckles.” Hilarious stuff!