Denominations: The Secret Origin Stories, and How They Got their Names

That title sounds like a Fenris parody on comics, but it’s in response to a quite real question, asked by Copper Moon over in MPSIMS. Coldfire agreed that GD was the place for it. I’m going to start it off by quoting his post and my response, and then C&P a series of posts of mine from a Pizza Parlor thread that connect to the topic. Input, argument, disputation, and general discussion from others is welcomed.

Over on the Pizza Parlor Michie asked:

I started answering as follows:

Thomas Cranmer was an up-and-coming young cleric in the English church structure. He found himself drawn to the irenic teachings of Martin Bucer, that there was much to the Catholic doctrine that was founded on early teachings from the united church and redeemable if medieval accretions were scraped off, that the church’s doctrine should be founded in Scripture, that the Eastern conceptualization of some of the doctrines offered solutions to many Western disputes. Privately, he subscribed to Bucer’s views, while outwardly maintaining Catholic orthodoxy.

Time passed. King Henry was his father’s second son, but had inherited the throne after the untimely death of his older brother Arthur during his father’s lifetime. What he’d inherited, along with the English monarchy, was his brother’s bride. Like most royal marriages at the time, it was an arranged one, to a daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella named Catherine. And with his brother’s death, it fell to him to marry the young widow.

While this was forbidden by canon law, it was a political necessity, and he bowed to Realpolitik and did so. His father petitioned the Pope in his behalf, and he was graciously pleased to issue an exception to the canon law’s forbidding of the marriage.

More time passed. Henry and Catherine had one daughter and a bunch of stillbirths. Henry, slightly superstitious, thought that the stillbirths were God’s punishment for his having sinfully married his brother’s widow. He petitioned Rome for an annulment. Influencing him was the fact that there was this pretty young girl among her ladies in waiting named Anne Bullen, who refused to commit adultery but who would have been quite willing to marry him if he weren’t already married.

There was, however, a small problem. Arthur, sickly, had never consummated the marriage – a technical flaw in the presumption that they had validly been married. And Rome was at this time under the authority, and occupied by the troops, of the Holy Roman Emperor – who, by virtue of more dynastic marriages, was Queen Catherine’s nephew. He was adamantly opposed to a Papal ruling that would effectively brand his aunt a bigamist and adulteress.

Henry’s solution was to revert back to what Kings of France and Emperors had done in the past – to deny the Pope’s authority to rule over matters of law in his kingdom. With a compliant Parliament backing him, he issued a writ making himself the ultimate authority over the English branch of the church, just as previous monarchs had. Then he petitioned the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was pleased to grant an annulment to the King who had appointed him and who had power of life and death over him.

Problem solved. Except that Luther and Calvin were active on the continent, the Pope was getting tough on doctrine and discipline as a result, and no face-saving compromise was ever worked out.

Cranmer was named Archbishop of Canterbury and hence spiritual head of the English Church after a bunch of other political/ecclesiastical history trivia we don’t need to get into. And he held the office when Henry died – head of the Catholic Church as it was expressed in England.

Under the regents for Henry’s nine-year-old son Edward, who were all Protestants inclined to agree with Cranmer, he reformed the English Church on a Bucerian model, preserving the classic teachings of the early church and framing doctrine on a Protestant model in a church that preserved the apostolic structure and preserved the Apostolic Succession in its clergy.

Edward died six years later, and was succeeded by his elder sister Mary, Catherine’s daughter. The church reunited with Rome under her, and she married Philip II of Spain. The annulment of Henry and Catherine’s marriage was reversed, so that she would be considered daughter of a valid marriage of the King.

She died childless, and was succeeded by her sister Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn (as it came to be spelled) and King Henry. The annulment of Henry and Catherine’s marriage was reinstated, so that she would be considered daughter of a valid marriage of the King (which of course would not be true if Henry were still married to Catherine in the eyes of God when he married Anne). Some years later, in 1570, Philip was eradicating heresy in his domains, to the Pope’s pleasure, and he and Elizabeth got into a dispute. (Remember that Philip had a claim on England as the surviving consort of her queen – he always claimed the title of King of England “by the crown matrimonial.”) At Philip’s behest, the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth and those who paid allegiance to her – a political move. That excommunication has never been rescinded.

So the Church of England and all its daughter churches, including the Episcopal Church in America, are not the result of a revolt against Rome so much as they are the outgrowth of a bunch of political machinations in Reformation times.

More…

Edited to change “Holy Roman Empire” to “Holy Roman Emperor” (which I’d intended to type, in order to talk about why he was opposed to Henry’s annulment).
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This addresses a question Zev raised some time ago in GQ, by the way – I’d thought I’d said most of this over here in GD as well.

Oblio, our Orthodox moderator, commented:

I answered as follows:

Evee asked:

And I asnwered

After a bunch of exchanges regarding various sidelights on all this, we got into the Sunday service (Eucharist or the classic Protestant style).

As long as I’ve been on this board you would think I would have learned how to quote one thread in another, but I haven’t. Anyway, Copper_moon, in the MPSIMS thread mentioned in the OP of this thread by Polycar, stated he didn’t know where the term Catholic, came from, as a name for a church. I answered it to the best of my ability there, so if anyone is interested they can check it out. Hopefully I answered correctly.

I always thought that the word “catholic” meant “universal”, and is used in that way in a non religious context as well. Calling the church Catholic just is a way of saying it is THE true church for ALL of mankind. Is it more complicated than that?

John, best answer is one final exchange from the Pizza Parlor thread. Your Quagga, a compassionate and devout Catholic, said:

I answered:

Fascinating summary, Polycarp. Thanks!

What about the Quakers?

Do you know as much about more modern heresies as you do about the ancient ones? I’m wondering how distinctions come to be made between ‘acceptable’ deviations that are considered by most people to be under the umbrella of Christianity, and those that are heretical. Or did y’all stop considering anything really heretical at some general point in time? I’m just thinking that the little I know about UU congregations is that many of them don’t (won’t) mention Jesus, which make calling them Christian seem a little odd.

I have on my shelf what was surely someone’s doctoral dissertation entitled ‘Heresies of the High Middle Ages’ (which I bought mainly to read up on the Albigensians, but haven’t had enough motivation to look at more of it than that) which has over 800 pages just on heresies from the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. So the notion was still current as late as that. And Hus was killed as a heretic in the 14th. What about Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, etc. Did the RC church consider them heretics? Would they have (or did they) kill them. And what’s a Huegenot, anyway?

Finally, IIRC, Henry confiscated a great deal of property from the church and closed many (all) of the monasteries when he did his thing. (I think they had started to own so much of the land that other political/social problems were resulting, and in fact that his move was influenced by same, i.e. that the marriage thing wasn’t all there was to it. Though you mentioned the tension in general between the church and the monarchs.) My question, though, is whether this was the general trend: as other religions (or strands of christianity) came into prominence, did they simply take over the properties that belonged to the RC church? Or was that peculiar to England’s reformation being initially at the top of the hierarchy?

Is this really a GD or a GQ thread? :slight_smile:

Polycarp–

I trust it be not a hijack to commend you, now and always, for these informative, compassionate, and fair-minded discussions of religious matters.

Before I begin this it may help for me to give a rough explanation of the structure of the United Methodist Church. Each church has at least one Lay Leader, a Pastor and an Administrative Board. The Lay Leader’s main job is as a “substitute pastor” to run the services and/or preach in the Pastor’s absence. The AB is in charge of the general operations of the Church. The board president, lay leader, pastor and secretary are all delegates to the Charge Conference which is a small group of churches (usually a 3 or 4 town radius) which is governed by a Bishop. Charge Conferences are organized into larger Districts governed by a District Superintendent. Districts come together at the State Conference and the States in the National Conference. The NC being the head governing body of the denomination.

That being said, ** Polycarp ** If I may add something to modern day Methodism. There is currently slowly growing split in the denomination between two movements referred to as “reconciling” and “transforming.” The second of the two being the smaller “faction” and the one to which I, and most of the Methodist churches in Southern NJ belong. The basic divide is over what occurs to a person at the time they are saved. The Reconciling Movement believes and teaches, basically, that when you are saved, if you live a sinful lifestyle you will be forgiven of that lifestyle even if you never repent. The Transforming Movement believes that if, when a person is saved, he is living a sinful lifestyle, the Holy Spirit will work within the person to help him overcome those sins if you truly repent.

The reason for the split, and the reason when asked I will say that I belong to a church which is Methodist in name only is because the National Conference of the UMC (the nearest equivalent I can think of may be the Council of Cardinals in the RCC) endorses the Reconciling Movement. This is where the problems come in. Some Methodist ministers have taken it upon themselves to perform mariages for homosexual couples (save your flames for later…I don’t want to get into a debate over whether this is right or wrong) and to also recognize those marriages among clergy. A decision was made a few years ago to allow for the Church’s insurance benefits to be extended to the “life partners” of homosexual clergy.

Now, for the most part, it could be accepted. Such differences have been a part of most denominations for most of the life of the Church. But recently there was a series of events in our region that caused great outcry and thoughts of leaving the denomination over a group of events over the last few years. Our DS was recently involved in a divorce which was later discovered to be from his second wife and was, for the second time, due to marital unfaithfulness, though this time that unfaithfulness was with a male. (We did not know about the first time until the second was occuring) The District Churches drew up a petition asking the State Conference to remove him from his position and they refused (North Jersey having more representatives and being largely of the Reconciling Movement). The decision was appealed to the National Conference and it was decided by them that seeing as he was saved, ordained, and was for most intents and purposes a Christian, there was no reason to remove him.

There are other small differences between the two movements as well. The main of these being a noted de-emphasis on missions by the Reconciling Movement while the Transforming feeling that Missions and spreading the word should be one of the primary reasons for the existence of the Church.

It would seem even some of the older denominations are not beyond experiencing dissent among their ranks. It may end up in the next few years we will have yet another denomination to add to the list.

Great posts, Poly, as usual. And I have learned a lot.

I am not sure my own experience in churches is valid, or of interest, but it seems to me that it might show a bit of light into the corners of American Church realities. It certainly is not a theological or doctrinal analysis of religion in any sense. I hope it isn’t too much of a hijack.

I grew up a Down the Road Military Protestant.

I was a Protestant, because I was not a Catholic, but neither was I a Jew.

I was a Military Protestant, because my Dad was in the Army, and so we moved to another town, and another church, about every two years. But dad’s dogtags said Protestant. (OK, actually they said P.) His parents were Lutherans, although I understand that my grandfather seldom attended.

I was a Down the Road Military Protestant, because my Mother always chose the church closest to our house to attend, and take me to. Her parents were a Roman Catholic, and a Christian Scientist. I don’t recall ever hearing them discuss religion.

About fifteen years into this ecumenical orgy, I met the Reverend Mister William Basom. He was the pastor of the Evengelical United Brethren Church, just down the road from my house. He advised me to think of Jesus as a person, because the theology was very hard to understand, without a lot of school, and I was a very poor student. On the other hand, I seemed to be able to understand people fairly well. We studied the bible, together, during my confirmation classes. He asked me if I believed that Jesus was real. I did. He asked me if I believed that living my life according to the teachings of Jesus was a good idea. I did. He said that was probably enough. I was skeptical. He promised me that Jesus would love me, anyway.

I am not sure what the name of this denomination is. I tend to just call myself a Christian.

I pretty much forgot about the whole thing for the next fifteen years. I did still consider it real, in an intellectual way. I just didn’t think about it much. The things that happened to make it seem real in a personal way didn’t change my theology at all, though. But they did prove the Late Reverend Mister Basom to be exactly correct. I did believe in Jesus, Jesus did love me, and it was enough.

God bless him.

Tris

thx fer that update Meros on the UMC (I use to be Methodist)

“reconciling” and “transforming.”

I wasn’t up on this

Polycarp;
ie; Luther and his internal reforms.
The German princes started using Luther’s protests to solidify their political positions, (ie; overthrow the influence of the Bishops), and in effect started to form their own churches.
As this “schism” was forming, the philosopher Erasmus and the artist Drurer, wrote a series of letters to each other, Erasmus defending the Universal church, and Drurer defending the idea that the chuch was so corrupt, a new chuch had to be built.
These letters still exist and make for some fine reading. The debate still goes on. BTW Drurer also “flamed” Erasmus, sending him a drawing of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse in which Erasmus is portrayed as Death.