D
DL82
Guest
The phenomenon of inter-communion between Protestant churches is (at least in the UK) a recent phenomenon.
If you look at 19th century Protestantism, there are significant schisms in most Protestant communions (Southern v Northern Baptist, Presbyterian v Free Presbyterian, Methodist v Calvinist Methodist, etc.) and these schisms were taken seriously, so seriously that people from one church feared for the salvation of people from the other church.
In England, you only have to look around our towns and cities to find churches that were erected practically overnight by public subscription in the early 19th century as people moved from the countryside to the towns. People today mistakenly think these churches were once all full, this is not the case, many of these churches once belonged to a new denomination, first the Methodists and Baptists, also other new churches which sprang up and disappeared, such as the Catholic Apostolic Church, the Catabaptists, the Menonites, the Plymouth Bretheren, and numerous others. Most of these had their 5 minutes of fame, then people moved on elsewhere.
It’s only in the mid 19th century that outside influences begin to erode this territorialism. The World Council of Churches is set up mostly to arbitrate disputes between missionaries. An English Anglican missionary would show up in some African village and start preaching Christianity, then a Dutch Baptist would show up and they’d spend more time arguing with eachother than converting the pagans. It made Christianity look foolish. Once a set of core fundamentals could be established, and once different Churches started to say that the detail was unnecessary to salvation, the details began to be irrelevant. That irrelevance tended to lead to the view that there was no objective truth, no way of arbitrating between the Baptist and Salvationist understanding the sacraments, no way of deciding between Lutheran and Congregationalist interpretations of Revelation. All of these details begin to be swept away, and a stripped-down Christianity emerges, partly influenced by rural American non-denominationalism, which has its’ own origins that I know too little about to comment on.
That’s not what Jesus tells people though, He commissions His disciples to go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey EVERYTHING He commanded. It’s that everything that led the Protestant reformers to take their denominational affiliations very very seriously indeed. The detail matters.
Is there anyone today, apart from the Catholic Church, who still takes the details seriously?
If you look at 19th century Protestantism, there are significant schisms in most Protestant communions (Southern v Northern Baptist, Presbyterian v Free Presbyterian, Methodist v Calvinist Methodist, etc.) and these schisms were taken seriously, so seriously that people from one church feared for the salvation of people from the other church.
In England, you only have to look around our towns and cities to find churches that were erected practically overnight by public subscription in the early 19th century as people moved from the countryside to the towns. People today mistakenly think these churches were once all full, this is not the case, many of these churches once belonged to a new denomination, first the Methodists and Baptists, also other new churches which sprang up and disappeared, such as the Catholic Apostolic Church, the Catabaptists, the Menonites, the Plymouth Bretheren, and numerous others. Most of these had their 5 minutes of fame, then people moved on elsewhere.
It’s only in the mid 19th century that outside influences begin to erode this territorialism. The World Council of Churches is set up mostly to arbitrate disputes between missionaries. An English Anglican missionary would show up in some African village and start preaching Christianity, then a Dutch Baptist would show up and they’d spend more time arguing with eachother than converting the pagans. It made Christianity look foolish. Once a set of core fundamentals could be established, and once different Churches started to say that the detail was unnecessary to salvation, the details began to be irrelevant. That irrelevance tended to lead to the view that there was no objective truth, no way of arbitrating between the Baptist and Salvationist understanding the sacraments, no way of deciding between Lutheran and Congregationalist interpretations of Revelation. All of these details begin to be swept away, and a stripped-down Christianity emerges, partly influenced by rural American non-denominationalism, which has its’ own origins that I know too little about to comment on.
That’s not what Jesus tells people though, He commissions His disciples to go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey EVERYTHING He commanded. It’s that everything that led the Protestant reformers to take their denominational affiliations very very seriously indeed. The detail matters.
Is there anyone today, apart from the Catholic Church, who still takes the details seriously?