How does Methodism differ from Lutheranism or Prysteberianism?
Methodism is younger than both Lutheranism and Presbyterianism for one. Lutheranism and Presbyterianism are direct heirs of the Protestant Reformation. Lutheranism evolved from the teaching of Martin Luther. It retains a lot of the outward look of Catholicism, but it rejected the Catholic penitential system: the mass, confession, absolution, penance, indulgences, pilgrimage, prayer to the saints, prayer for the dead, and purgatory. At the same time, he framed Protestant teaching around 3 main themes:
sola fide, sola gratia, sola scriptura (faith alone, grace alone, scripture alone). Other Protestants would take up these themes, but they would not always agree on how exactly they should be interpreted or lived out.
While Luther was still alive, disagreements appeared on a host of issues: What exactly happens during the Eucharist? When should baptism be performed? How should churches be governed, by bishops or by collegial assemblies of elders or by local congregations themselves? And on and on.
A major group of Reformers began to drift away from Luther’s more conservative form of Protestantism. These became the Reformed or Presbyterian churches. They adopted Calvinist theology. Calvinism emphasizes the sovereignty of God; indeed, it teaches predestination, unconditional election and irresistible grace–that God decides who will be saved and whoever he chooses to save WILL come to saving faith. No free will, ultimately.
Calvinism explodes across the Protestant world in the 1500s. And that brings us to the Anglicans.
Is Calvinism better than Anglicanism?
That isn’t the way it works.You can be an Anglican and a Calvinist at the same time. Anglicanism is a church tradition that is fairly broad. Calvinism is a theology. For a long time, the dominant theology within the Church of England was Calvinism. But there is also Arminianism and Anglo-Catholicism and liberal (affirming) Catholicism and so on within the Anglican Churches.
While the Church of England was itself fairly Calvinist in theology, it preserved several features from medieval Catholicism that angered many Protestants (called Puritans): cathedrals (and their choirs), a formal Prayer Book liturgy, traditional clerical vestments, and a hierarchy of bishops and archbishops. Many Calvinists split off from the Church of England.
Some of these Separatists came to believe in adult baptism and that each congregation should have full control over its own affairs. These are the Baptists. The Baptists immigrated to America like everyone and eventually wanted to start organizing missionary works. Baptist congregations across the United States organized a national Convention to oversee missionary work and other common projects. This national Convention split into a Northern Baptist Convention and a Southern Baptist Convention over the issue of slavery–should slave owners be allowed to be missionaries? That was the divide between Northern and Southern Baptists.
See second post about the Methodists.
