Christian Denominations

Great Debates
1

I have, I think it safe to say, learned more about organized religions and the various denominations thereof in my time on this message board than any other time in my life. Discussions here have led me to do my own research further out, and of particular interest is the Christian faiths. Being raised a baptist, I had a fairly limited view on Christianity until I met (and later married) a Roman Catholic.

As I’ve looked into my histories, and read up on the creation of various denominations and how the many splits have occured over time, I get more and more confused about the discord I see. Over time, man has “reinterpreted” the original scriptures to fit their world view, and it is through these reinterpretations that divisions are created. Today I must wonder, how deep are these divisions? And why have some of them been so deeply fought for?

This isn’t about right and wrong. I suppose it’s more political then anything else, because theological discussion (and even dissent) have been present in Christianity since the beginning. For those Christians out here, do you really know anymore what seperates the baptists from methodists from unitarians from episcopalians, ad nasuem? Religious observances? These can vary within a denomination simply over teritory. Theological precepts? If so, what are they and how vital are they to defining a particular denomination? History? Well, every denomination has a history, but if the core of all these denominations centers around the life of Jesus Christ and the covenant, how important should historical events after that date be?

This question arrises out of comments in another thread, begun by Esprix, where the immediate point most people seized upon was blanket statements about Christianity. How many denominations must prohibit something before one can say that Christianity as a whole prohibits that thing? How many denominations must embrace a concept before one can even say that Christianity has a stance on that concept? Example: Christianity prohibits murder. True, false, or not essential to the core of Christian beliefs?

Esprix has found that enough Christian denominations have been outspoken against homosexuality that, majority or not, public opinion has accepted that homosexuality is incompatible with Christianity. Should Christianity be defined around such a point as this?

Before responding, please consider - I did not post this to mirror Esprix’s thread (nor, indeed do I intend that last paragraph to be an accurate summary of his opinions) as a discussion of Christianity and Homosexuality, but it is a significant issue to begin with. How much should Christian denominations be defined by their stances on issues such as these? And what is significant enough compared to the original message brought forward through Jesus Christ* to warrant such divisions in the church?

inkblot

*There’s some of my baptist upbringing showing through again.

2

[qupte]Over time, man has “reinterpreted” the original scriptures to fit their world view, and it is through these reinterpretations that divisions are created. Today I must wonder, how deep are these divisions? And why have some of them been so deeply fought for?
[/quote]

I would go beyond this and say that some of the historical reasons for schisms in the church seem ridiculous when viewed by modern eyes. I read about them and think “Who would fight over that, let alone care enough to walk off and form a whole 'nother church?”

For me, I’d have to go with “B,” theological precepts. There are certain beliefs that can be taught in Christianity that are simply incompatible with what I personally sense to be right and true – that sex between consenting adults can be a sin, to name one that’s in the front of my mind for some reason. “We believe all non-Christians roast in Hell.” Whoa! That’s not for me. “We believe that women should be barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen.” Uhhh, nope. Next! “We think you should prove your faith in God by handling poisonous snakes.” Yikes! No.

There are, however, less “out-there” beliefs that are still incompatible with my own personal beliefs. I do not believe that it is necessary or even possible for anyone (saint or priest) to intercede between me and God. Therefore I am not a Catholic. I do not believe that baptism as a sacrament has any relevance after death. Therefore I am not a Mormon. I do not believe my church leadership should make indefensible turn-the-clock-back pronouncements about the role of women. Therefore I’m not a Southern Baptist. But I’d like to think my choice of church is based on theology and not on history. Frankly, I don’t care all that much about Westley anyway.

I think it’s perfectly fine to acknowledge beliefs held by certain denominations and simultaneously recognize those believes are not held by “Christianity” as a whole. I even think you can get away with ascribing beliefs in common to “fundamentalist” Christians or “moderate” Christians or “liberal” Christians. I just don’t think you can ascribe all beliefs to all Christians, as if the fact that a fundamentalist beliefs something means a liberal must believe it too.

3

not quit sure what you want but, what the hell.

had someone here get on my case for not caring about the differences in christian denominations. they all promote the hell as eternal suffering concept and since i think the system works on reincarntion i see no reason to sweat the small stuff. so far noone has given me anything approaching a logical reason for ETERNAL suffering.

suppose someone commited a murder 1050 years ago, and the victim would have lived another 50 years otherwise. the murderer doesn’t get caught or punished and dies of natural causes 50 years later. so presumably this murderer has been in hell for the last 1000 years. can look forward to another 1000 years. etc. etc. etc…

the victim only lost 50 years, what is this eternal suffering accomplishing? what good does it do the victim? i’m supposed to believe an ALL INTELLIGENT GOD can’t come up with something that makes more sense than this? there was a christian theologian, Origen who lived before constantine made christianity the religion of rome who taught reincarnation. he kind of disappeared from official history. i think the RELIGIOUS POWER GAMES like the hell concept to terrorize people on this side of the grave, it is totally illogical on the other side.

Dal Timgar

4

Sigh. So the answer to whether Dal knows anything about the differences in various denominations is “no.”

Oh, Dal: Not all Christians believe in the idea of eternal damnation or Hell.

5

Well, I think there is the whole point, InkBlot - what is the “original message” of JC? The primary source of information are four relatively short gospels written well after the fact (and at least second hand), that chronicle a limited number of the events of JC’s life and his teachings. There is more than enough room there for arguments over what JC really meant to teach. Hell, if you read Acts, you’ll note that the original Apostles and disciples had fights over what exactly they were supposed to be about - primarily if they were a Jewish sect or a completely new religion (see the debates over Kosher rules and circumcision). Paul, a mere 20 or so years down the line, was adding in enough filler to the Xian doctrine that people can legitimately argue that Christianity was really founded by Paul, not JC.

Given the paucity of source material, and humans being humans, of course differing interpretations would arise. And, humans being humans, eventually they started killing each other over said differences.

Sua

6

Well, but weren’t the Christian scriptures written after the religion was already formed? So, the messages of Jesus in the gospels is written through the lens of what was seen as correct at the time. I also have noticed some people seem to be anti-Paul, calling him mysogonystic, homophobic, etc., and was wondering why? Was what he said THAT terrible?

7

Jodi … told him that … about 40 threads ago.

Check your microphone, lady. I don’t think it’s on! :smiley:

8

That’s right. Some denominations plan for sins’ obsolescence and include the depreciation in their calculations.

:: flees ::

9

Personally, I don’t have anything against Paulie - I was just pointing out that a great deal, if not most, of JC’s “original message”, as it was called in the OP, was actually Paul’s “original message”. Y’all can fight amongst yourselves as to whether Paul was divinely inspired.

As for the scriptures being written after the religion was already formed, you’ll have to talk to a religious historian to find out how organized and monolithic Xianity was in the first Century A.D. I will point out to you, however, that several vital theological questions weren’t resolved until the Council of Nicea (sp?), which, IIRC, was around 320 A.D.

Sua

10

SuaSponte:

Christianity was remarkable diverse in the first century, much moreso than today. There were the Gnostics, the Ebionites, the Arians, the Docetists, the Apollonarianists, the Monophysitists, the Nestorians, the Monoteletists, etc.–all of whom were eventually labeled heretical by the growing Pauline Orthodoxy. The difference between Jehovah’s Witness, Roman Catholic, Southern Baptist, and Latvian Orthodox is miniscule compared to these guys.

11

Well, wasn’t that around the time when they decided, "Ok, these books will be in the bible, and these won’t be. Also, the gospels were written after the letters by Paul, who seemed to wander all over the place, so wouldn’t the writers of the gospels have some idea of what Paul wrote, and wouldn’t it influence their writings one way or another?

12

I’m inspiring other threads. Doesn’t that get me at least a cookie? :wink:

For the record, Unitarian Universalism recognizes its Judeo-Christian roots, but is not solely a Christian denomination any longer.

Thank you.

Esprix

13

Opus1’s and Captain Amazing’s posts are very well received – they make my point much better than I. Given the original diversions of Christian belief into areas we would now consider bizarre (but only because they lost the battle), I find nothing peculiar about the proliferation of sects now. If anything, the unusual thing is that Christianity was (for the most part) monolithic between the Council of Nicea (since no one corrected me, I assume I’m spelling that right) until the Great Schism.

Captain, I’m not ignoring your question about Paul’s letters influencing the gospels. I just have no clue.

Sua

14

How do they know that Paul’s letters were written before the Gospels? I hear that factoid a lot – but that is really more of an archeological theory, right?

15

And this is getting back around to my question. Just how important are these differences? Humans being human, we’ve gone to war over much less the divine countenance. New religions forming out of established ones is not unheard of. There seems to be a line between “denominations” and completely new religions - something the early judeo-christians fought fiercely over. Now we conceive of Christianity as a seperate religion from Judaism, but the denominations as essentially the same belief.

Where is the strength behind the differences in these denominations, and how is it enough to cause schisms in a belief system without fracturing it into an entirely new religion? Where is the line?

inkblot, wondering if he’s asking too big of a question

16

I grew up Assembly of God; not exactly one of the more liberal denominations. I now consider myself a non-denominational Christian.

I must say that this message board has been instrumental in helping me to stretch my mind around the fact that other denominations do things different and are not necessarily wrong. Let me tell you, its sad that this is such a big change from what I was brought up to believe.

I believe that some denominations have truly broken off from a previously established one for genuine differences of faith and interpretation. The way I was taught it (not that I necessarily agree with it) is that each denomination began as a sincere searching for God’s truth outside of the standard belief, biblical intrepretation or current movement (or lack thereof) from the denomination from whence it sprang; i.e. All new denominations are shoots of growth from a denomination that had died spiritually or, at the least, had stopped growing. Of course, being raised in the church I was, this of course meant that God’s current favorite was the AofG ::insert rolling eye smiley here::

Now that I’m older, I can see that perhaps some of this may have been true but I do believe that God maintains a “remnant” in each church: those who truly seek and love him and aren’t just there to call themselves a Christian or for some social climbing or whatnot.

Some denominations are strictly political breaks. Actually, I don’t have cites for this; I guess I’m looking at individual church breaks more than an entire denomination and I guess that’s a thread unto itself.

17

Well, you probably are :). I don’t purport to answer it, but let’s talk about some of the differences. For this post, howzabout the issue of transubstantiation v. consubstantiation.

Okies, the Papists, along with a small number of Prod sects, and (methinks) the Orthodox churches (AKA the bearded nuns), believes that the bread and wine are, through miraculous intercession, transubstantiated into the body and blood of JC. The majority of Prod sects believe in consubstantiation - that JC is “present” in the bread and wine, but that they aren’t transformed. Another group of Prods believes that the bread and wine are merely representative of the body and blood.
This is a pretty fundamental difference, impacting as it does on the most basic of Christian sacraments. But, putting aside the Representationists for a sec, does it matter? To the Papist layperson receiving the sacrament, it sure don’t taste like flesh and blood, but like cheap wine and cardboard (as the author betrays his Papist past). So, regardless of the actual mechanics of the miracle, if one occurs, the bread and wine as flesh and blood is still somewhat metaphorical to both trans-ers and con-ers. The (at least physical) experience is the same. Is this worth a schism over?

Sua

18

InkBlot – it occurs to me you might enjoy reading the first few chapters of the Revelation of St. John which discusses some of the early splits in the church into seven others.

You are missing the politics behind this. Catholics hold that only a Catholic priest may perform the transubstantiation. The earlist Protestants held that though they were not obediant to the Pope, their priests/ministers could as well. Others, intending an even wider break with the dominant Church, further diluted the rite – some, ala Jack Chick, even calling the whole original rite Satanic.

Don’t under estimate the control issues involved here.

19

This board is slowly converting everyone to Unitarian Universalism. My plot is working! {MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!}

{ahem}

Um, mods? Could you delete that line? Wouldn’t want anyone to know What’s Up… {wink wink}

And to the OP, all I can think of is that scene from “Life of Brian” when he’s running from his followers and he loses a shoe:

Esprix

20

To me, the theological question is an interesting one, but really not worth loosing sleep over. More to the point, if we’re preforming the ceremony for the same spiritual reasons, the theological mechanics shouldn’t affect us in the performance of that ceremony. How many people stop in the middle of communion thinking, “gosh, what did I just eat?”

Alas, this is one I can understand. Recent communications from the Vatican have indicated that the Catholic Church firmly believes in their superiority to any other religion, including other denominations of Christianity. In fact, I would not be surprised if the Church (in an official position, not an individual level) actually viewed the various Protestant denomiations as a seperate religion.

This is part of what brought my question on. What is the point of these religious politics? Is it merely for the purity of a belief system? If so, and I can see this being a strong motivator, what is the benefit of clinging so closely to flawed counterparts?
inkblot