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ChrisB103
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Haha I think it’s only fair to present anything that isn’t common ground in a conversation as a claim.Don’t be too hard on yourself. I take heart that at least you recognized it is a claim.
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ltwin
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This is not entirely fair. The mainline churches are not just merging together. Almost every mainline church is splitting over issues of biblical authority and human sexuality.
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CMatt25
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Yes you either read too much into what I intended. Or maybe I didn’t express what I intended well enough.
But just with regard to these 2 denominations I guess I would just love it because they are 2 of my favorite non Catholic Christian faiths and since they appear to be so close together anyway now as it is. They have had a partnership as I mentioned for yrs.And I could be wrong about major differences. Maybe if there are any members of either here they can explain more major differences. But from my observations, nearly the only difference I can see of any potentially major consequence would be that UCC on their national level is more settled on homosexuality. While DoC as with many of the mainline churches remain in a discerning process of sorts about homosexuality and gay rights issues. UCC as a denomination is on record in support of gay marriage for instance. I’ve been told by DoC pastors that on the national level there is no forceable policy in regard to homosexuals. But views can and do vary from region to region and congregation to congregation. I know though in the UCC there is variance among congregations as well.
DoC offers weekly Communion. But I don’t see why that would be such a hurdle to overcome. UCC baptizes children to my understanding, DoC’s preferred method is immersion. Yet if a potential member has been baptized elsewhere, they do not re-baptize and only require then a profession of Christ Lord and Savior . Seems to me that can be resolved.
From my understanding they already share pastors and sacraments. They seem a lot closer together to me than say ELCA and MO Synod Lutherans.
But you’re right I don’t think they *need *to fully unite unless they want to take their partnership the final step and merge into a single denomination. As they stand now they are both members of the Christian body.
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Cat
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Are you all sure about the connection between the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ? I’m pretty certain you’re incorrect about this.
The Disciples of Christ is related to the Christian church (small “c” in “church”) and the Church of Christ (no “United” in front of it) and these denominations were started in the 19th Century by the Campbell brothers, and were part of the Restoration movement. The churches are autonomous, meaning that there is no denominational governing board, conference, convention, or consistory that holds the pastors and churches accountable or that requires a financial contribution from each church.
For the most part, these Campbellite churches tend to lean towards evangelical teachings, which are quite orthodox (virgin birth, literal resurrection of Jesus from the dead, Bible is the Word of God, etc.), and are usually conservative in their social and political views. Usually pro-life and anti-homosexual marriage. But since the churches are autonomous, it’s certainly possible that they can develop pro-choice and pro-homosexual marriage congregations. One of the dangers of autonomous churches is that without any denominational leaders to keep an eye on the pastors, cults can develop; the Jim Jones cult developed out of the Campbellite churches. There was no one to stop him.
The United Church of Christ is much more ancient (as Protestant churches go). It had its origins in Calvinism and the Reformed Churches/Congregational Churches. In fact, the denomination called United Church of Christ formed from a merger of Congregational Church of Christ and the Evangelical and Reformed Churches.
The UCC tends to be extremely liberal socially and politically, generally supporting abortion rights and the right of homosexuals to marry. But these congregations are also autonomous, so it is possible to find a UCC that is still pro-life and anti-homosexual marriage. The UCC tends to be liberal theologically as well, often teaching that Mary was not a virgin, that Jesus didn’t literally rise from the dead, and that the Bible is just a man-written book full of wise sayings, but also errors. But again, because the churches are autonomous, it’s possible to find churches that are quite orthodox in their theology.
The Disciples of Christ is related to the Christian church (small “c” in “church”) and the Church of Christ (no “United” in front of it) and these denominations were started in the 19th Century by the Campbell brothers, and were part of the Restoration movement. The churches are autonomous, meaning that there is no denominational governing board, conference, convention, or consistory that holds the pastors and churches accountable or that requires a financial contribution from each church.
For the most part, these Campbellite churches tend to lean towards evangelical teachings, which are quite orthodox (virgin birth, literal resurrection of Jesus from the dead, Bible is the Word of God, etc.), and are usually conservative in their social and political views. Usually pro-life and anti-homosexual marriage. But since the churches are autonomous, it’s certainly possible that they can develop pro-choice and pro-homosexual marriage congregations. One of the dangers of autonomous churches is that without any denominational leaders to keep an eye on the pastors, cults can develop; the Jim Jones cult developed out of the Campbellite churches. There was no one to stop him.
The United Church of Christ is much more ancient (as Protestant churches go). It had its origins in Calvinism and the Reformed Churches/Congregational Churches. In fact, the denomination called United Church of Christ formed from a merger of Congregational Church of Christ and the Evangelical and Reformed Churches.
The UCC tends to be extremely liberal socially and politically, generally supporting abortion rights and the right of homosexuals to marry. But these congregations are also autonomous, so it is possible to find a UCC that is still pro-life and anti-homosexual marriage. The UCC tends to be liberal theologically as well, often teaching that Mary was not a virgin, that Jesus didn’t literally rise from the dead, and that the Bible is just a man-written book full of wise sayings, but also errors. But again, because the churches are autonomous, it’s possible to find churches that are quite orthodox in their theology.
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johnnyjones
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Major and minor differences exist in Protestant denominations, that is a fact. I think it it becomes a tiresome circular argument to to try to slice and dice all the particulars. The heart of the matter is this:Yes you either read too much into what I intended. Or maybe I didn’t express what I intended well enough.
And I could be wrong about major differences. Maybe if there are any members of either here they can explain more major differences. But from my observations, nearly the only difference I can see of any potentially major consequence would be that UCC on their national level is more settled on homosexuality. While DoC as with many of the mainline churches remain in a discerning process of sorts about homosexuality and gay rights issues. UCC as a denomination is on record in support of gay marriage for instance. I’ve been told by DoC pastors that on the national level there is no forceable policy in regard to homosexuals. But views can and do vary from region to region and congregation to congregation. I know though in the UCC there is variance among congregations as well.
DoC offers weekly Communion. But I don’t see why that would be such a hurdle to overcome. UCC baptizes children to my understanding, DoC’s preferred method is immersion. Yet if a potential member has been baptized elsewhere, they do not re-baptize and only require then a profession of Christ Lord and Savior . Seems to me that can be resolved.
From my understanding they already share pastors and sacraments. They seem a lot closer together to me than say ELCA and MO Synod Lutherans.
But you’re right I don’t think they *need *to fully unite unless they want to take their partnership the final step and merge into a single denomination. As they stand now they are both members of the Christian body.
Like anything else there are those who are just stubborn and refuse to “give in” even if the facts are clearly presented to them. Sometimes it takes time, other times it just not going to happen.
Often times an event needs to take place in ones life for the blinders to come off. I will say this though, as a Catholic, I feel I am debating the fullness of the Christian faith, not an individuals eternal destiny when engaging a Protestant. You love Christ, the true God and from my human standpoint appear to be a candidate for heaven. It would though be beneficial for you, if while on earth, you came home to Mother church. The Eucharist is the center of Catholicism and God is calling you to receive his actual body and blood.
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ReddyFreddy
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I’m not baptized but I have attended a Protestant church for the last 8 months or so (except this past month).
This is a huge issue I have with attending Protestant churches now and I think it’s becoming an issue for my husband as well.
If you have a bunch of denominations that disagree about their doctrines, I feel like I can’t really trust any of them. Who gave them the authority to decide what is true and what is false? I don’t know.
This is why I am turning to the Catholic Church. I feel like maybe it’s the church that has retained the original teachings of Jesus Christ simply through process of elimination. When I talked to the priest, the beliefs of the church made sense.
Granted, I do not know everything about all the denominations but obviously they differ otherwise they wouldn’t have different names. It saddens me to see the body of Christ divided and stretched instead of unified. However, it delights me when I do see churches of different denoms working together in the community or for a cause.
Now this doesn’t seem like an issue at all for my Protestant friends. Why it bothers me and not them I have no clue. They are very much happy where they are and feel like they have the Bible to back themselves up.
This is a huge issue I have with attending Protestant churches now and I think it’s becoming an issue for my husband as well.
If you have a bunch of denominations that disagree about their doctrines, I feel like I can’t really trust any of them. Who gave them the authority to decide what is true and what is false? I don’t know.
This is why I am turning to the Catholic Church. I feel like maybe it’s the church that has retained the original teachings of Jesus Christ simply through process of elimination. When I talked to the priest, the beliefs of the church made sense.
Granted, I do not know everything about all the denominations but obviously they differ otherwise they wouldn’t have different names. It saddens me to see the body of Christ divided and stretched instead of unified. However, it delights me when I do see churches of different denoms working together in the community or for a cause.
Now this doesn’t seem like an issue at all for my Protestant friends. Why it bothers me and not them I have no clue. They are very much happy where they are and feel like they have the Bible to back themselves up.
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johnnyjones
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Good point. A Catholic apologist said to me when I was fighting Catholicism tooth and nail in my Fundamentalist days," Where do you go for a final answer." In Protestantism, you really can’t say, “the bible”, because it is subject to that particular denominations translation. So, I kind of wavered on the answer and then foolishly “re-convinced” myself the bible anyway.
The 1st church is the final authority, that is the answer. The Catholic church.
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ltwin
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Cat, you are correct. The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is the liberal version of the Churches of Christ. Both grew out of the Stone Campbell restorationist movement.
The United Church of Christ is a “uniting church” that joined together the larger part of the Congregationalist churches (the descendants of the Puritans of New England) and the Evangelical and Reformed Church (which was itself sort of a “uniting church” in the tradition of the Prussian Union, bringing together the Lutheran Evangelical Synod of North America and the Calvinist Reformed Church in the United States). Overall, the UCC tends to have a Reformed flavor.
Both are pretty liberal, though I’m sure there are some conservatives in both. Both the Congregationalists and the Disciples of Christ tend to be very congregationalist in their church polity, so organizationally they would fit together. It wouldn’t surprise me if they merged eventually, but historically they derive from very different origins.
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cajunhillbilly
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Agreed
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andrewstx
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But who is fracturing? The Evangelicals and fundementalists who are present to some extent in every Protestant church who break away to form splnter groups who continue to split, from each other. With their rejection of Majesteria and Holy Tradition they have nothing to go by but sola scriptura. The bible is not that plain and easy to understand, which is how we ended up with so many denominations.
These groups tend somewhat to major on the minors and be very conservative. And use the bible as a history and science text. Ignoring the 6.000 years of learning that have came along in the mean time.
We know now that God did not intend everyone to be the same and heterosexual, surely if God, did God would have made it so that every individual would be attracted to the opposite sex.
I was raised in a very traditional fundamentalis family and it goes agianst the grain to say so. I am conflicted on this issue.
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ltwin
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I’d rather have the Bible then reference to what is current in the cultural mainstream, which seems to be what the mainline church is basing its decisions on.
And why do you say that its the conservatives who are the schismatics when it is the liberals who have departed from the faith that they received. Just because liberals have managed to takeover the denominational machinery does not mean that they get a pass on blame for the divisions. The liberals have made it impossible for theological conservatives to remain in the mainline in good conscience.
For one thing, most of the groups splitting from the mainline churches today cannot be called “fundamentalists.” They’ve managed to stay in the mainline churches this long because they are relatively moderate Christians. It is because the mainline churches have gone so far left (in the sense of Marxist left in some cases) that regular Christians are embarrassed to be affiliated with them.
Sorry but Christian marriage is not a minor thing. Marriage is a relationship that reflects Christ and his church. The pagan sexual ethics that many liberal Christians want to adopt is not a minor issue for Christians. It strikes at the very heart of human nature, and it calls the Bible and the church’s traditional interpretation of the Bible into serious question–which is not beholden to science (which doesn’t have a great moral track record with the advocation of euthanizing unwanted people, etc.)
The fact is that God’s design for sex is between a husband and wife. Unmarried people, whatever their orientation, are called to celibacy. Any position short of this is condoning fornication, which is not a minor issue.
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Dave_Noonan
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I guess I don’t know what that is, since Protestantism, as this thread points out, is extremely diverse.
From my perspective, the church has always been pretty diverse in its theology. Take just as an example the work of Aphrahat, an honored early theologian from the Church of the East. You can’t really reconcile his theology with Nicaea, yet he was certainly never condemned as a heretic. Once you start really digging into history and not just sort of cherry-picked collections of church fathers, things quickly become pretty murky.
If you’re interested on the topic as it pertains specifically to the New Testament, you might want to read Dunn’s Unity and Diversity in the New Testament; as far as I know it’s still the definitive work on the topic.
I think we disagree on what constitutes unity. The Trinitarian aspect of our faith, as you rightly point to, teaches us that unity is not the same as a totalizing uniformity. See also Paul’s comments in 1 Cor 12.
I’m not seeing those phrases in my Bible, so maybe you have some references. I do find “avoid stupid controversies…about the law” (Titus 3:9).
If you spent any time on the threads here at all, I’m sure you’ve noticed that very few Catholics (and probably as few Evangelicals) have a grasp on what Sola Scriptura actually means.
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Dave_Noonan
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I guess I don’t think that a first century Jew (or an observant Jew today for that matter) would have been able to see those as separate categories.
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PJM
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Dear friend in Christ;
KNOW that your making the right; indeed, the only “right choice.” WHY?
Simply put there is Only One God
That One God [Triune] can therefor have only one set of Faith beliefs per issue. After all; God is Perfect, and a Perfect God cannot hold contradictiory views on the same defined issues.
… Matthew 5:48"Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect"Look up these few proofs using the site below
drbo.org/
Matt. 10: 1-8
Matt. 16:15-19
Jn.14: 16-17 filled in John 20:21-22
Jn.17:15-19
and Mk.16: 14-16 & Matt. 28: 19-20
Each of these is Jesus who is God commanding directly and exclusively His Apostles, who He also gives His Actual, Real Powers and authority as God to complete THEIR Mission.
Mt. 10:1-2
Jn. 17: 18
Jn. 20:21-23
And Mt. 28:18
Only the CC has this authority; this Mandate and God’s Protection
God Bless you both!
pat/PJM here on this FOUM
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CMatt25
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Yes I’m all sure.
“In 1989 the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) approved a historic partnership of full communion. The two churches proclaimed mutual recognition of their sacraments and ordained ministry… There are now more than 30 “federated” congregations affiliated with both denominations, and it is now common for Disciples and UCC ministers to serve congregations of the other denomination.”
ucc.org/ecumenical/ucc-disciples-ecumenical.html
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Dave_Noonan
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I would absolutely agree with you that progress can be made over time toward the “less imperfect” as you put it (e.g., gaudium et spes and the idea of the “pilgrim church”–we are all on this theological journey, etc.) and agreeing to disagree is helpful at arriving at such an understanding and sorting out problems. Much better than splitting; I would heartily agree. However, I wouldn’t see that at all as the modus operandi in the Catholic Church for at least since the 19th century.Yet they need not coincide to be valid.
Look at Mt 23:1-3…We know how “perfect” Jesus thought the Pharisees were…yet what did He tell the people to do?
To me - I think that the beauty of the Church as Christ established it lies not in some idea of remote autocratic authority (as I think some see it) but rather in the very imperfections that you mention.
Consider Mt 18:15-18 and where it says “sin” in vs 15…let us assume the perceived sin is teaching something false.
The progression of the instruction we have here brings in more and more “imperfect” people seeking the truth. Eventually it is taken to the whole community (or their representatives in the Bishop(s))…If everyone comes together in humility and the spirit of seeking God’s Truth and God’s Will…then each man submits his argument and others submit theirs.
The arguments are then prayerfully dissected and that which is found to be true is kept while that which is found to be false is discarded. It is very likely that, (and I suspect most often) in this process that truth and error will be found in both sides of the argument.
Thus at the end of the process we have a more perfect (or less imperfect…) understanding of the matter than we could ever have had by the opposing groups each going their own way.
Peace
James
But the basic problem, at least as I see it, is that the Catholic Church claims as a core teaching the ability to teach infallibly in at a minimum, two ways (at least since Fides et Ratio): through the Pope’s instruction in faith and morals and via the ordinary magisterium–the latter being so loosely defined that it can be made to mean almost anything. From my perspective, as long as we are using language and dealing with fallible human beings (both teacher and those taught) there cannot logically be such a thing as an infallible teacher or an infallible teaching; one always risks misunderstanding and overstatement or understatement. (Then to complicate things further, start thinking about things like translation into other languages and varying cultural contexts.) While we may, as a whole, be arriving at better and clearer understandings over the long haul, I don’t think any of us fully arrives in this life (e.g. well stated in 1Cor 13:9, 12). Because we all “see through a glass darkly” we have divisions. It’s part of the human condition; I don’t think anyone gets a special exemption from that.
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CMatt25
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Thank you for recognizing I love Christ and am a candidate for heaven. I take a lot of hits on CAF and I try to turn the other cheek. I’m sure at times I fail. But anyway this was one of the nicest things a Catholic has ever said to me on CAF. As far as coming “home”, according to “CAF” I’m not accepted in the “home” as I am though. A home to me is where a family dwells. And all members of a family do not always agree on everything. Yet they remain family. God bless you for your kind words though and peace be with you always my friend in Christ.
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CMatt25
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All Cat was correct about was the history of the 2. But was incorrect about being pretty certain I was wrong about their connection or partnership today.
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CMatt25
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Incase anyone had any doubts
I just wanted to chime in here that I consider myself a regular Christian. Profess Christ my Lord and Savior. Believe He was crucified, died and was buried. Believe risen from the tomb He ascended into heaven where He sits at the right hand of the Father. I believe He will come again. I try to live by the Golden Rule. Try to love my neighbor. Believe strongly in what I see in Matt 25 as a chief mission of Christ and His followers.And I would not at all be embarrassed to be affiliated with the mainline churches.
Andrewstx makes a good point as well I believe that the very conservative tend to major on the minors and use the Bible as a history and science text while ignoring the 6.000 years of learning that have came along in the mean time.
In any case God bless all whether conservative, moderate, or liberal, as they strive to walk with Him.
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johnnyjones
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Gandhi said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians, they are so unlike your Christ.”
Not necessary. Come to the biggest family there is, the Catholic church. Experience the holy FAMILY Jesus, Mary , Joseph and all the saints. As a former Protestant, I would not steer you wrong my friend. Peace.
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