That sounds nice, but it simply cannot be true. What do you base this statement on?
Protestant self-understanding. I was apparently less clear than I intended to be. I deliberately said “intrinsic” importance–my point being that an identity as Anglican or Methodist or Presbyterian or whatever is not a “religion” in itself. Protestants are pretty unanimous about that, with a very few exceptions. What matters is to be a Christian.
I don’t mean that the theological matters under dispute are unimportant. For that matter, the Jesuits and Dominicans who called each other heretics in the 16th century didn’t think their differences were unimportant either. (And yes, I know that the Pope told them to stop calling each other heretics, and that is a very practical way in which the Catholic Church has unity we don’t have.) My point is that just as a Dominican would not say “my religion is Dominicanism” but “my religion is Catholic Christianity, and it is rightly expounded by St. Thomas and his followers,” so a Presbyterian would not say “my religion is Calvinism” but “my religion is Christianity, and Calvin basically got Christianity right.”
Jesus taught us to be loving of all people, but nothing about a growing, and even changing version of Christianity.
Sure he did. He said that the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth, which implies a gradual process. You can’t seriously try to tell me that Catholicism has not grown. (Whether it has “changed” is a matter of definition–by most people’s normal usage it certainly has.)
I think the real question is; why were those traditions even began in the first place?
For various reasons. A tradition of vernacular hymn-singing, for instance, originated in the early Church but became especially important in the Continental Reformation as a form of lay congregational piety, and became popular in England in the 18th century as part of the “evangelical revival” of that era. Catholics just don’t get it. It’s an evangelical thing–one of the most powerful means of grace for many of us. I can’t see that it’s any less legitimate than, say, the Rosary.
The same with the tradition of the small group Bible study and/or accountability group (what Wesley would call “class meetings”). Is it really un-Catholic? For that matter, Catholics do it. But it doesn’t have the same importance for you that it has for us–it has flourished among us, as has private lay Bible reading as a mainstay of devotional practice.
Theologically, we have the Wesleyan tradition of universal prevenient grace, which no doubt Augustine would consider Pelagian, but which attempts to preserve the universal salvific will of God without positing a natural ability to turn toward God. Also the doctrine of Christian perfection, which can easily be abused but which attempts to articulate just how and in what way ordinary Christians can hope for holiness in this life.
What do you mean incorporate them into the broader stream of christianity?
I mean correct them where they are unorthodox and offer them to the broader Church.
What is this stream?[j/QUOTE]
Christianity as a whole, particularly Catholicism and secondarily Orthodoxy.
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