chekmate

I grew up as a "General Christian." Not methodist or catholic or anything like that. I never really looked into each of the different sects of it. Could someone give me a basic rundown of the different sects of Christianity (lutheran, catholicism, methodist, etc...), and a few things to help me understnaf what they are all about? Thanks.

Syphor

This should help you -

<a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/" target="_blank">http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/</a>

Just search for what you need.

Tercel

Hey Checkmate, that's a massive question!
Your best bet is to research each group you want to know about yourself.

Did you want theological differences, structural differences, or differences in the way Church services are done?

Oh, well, I'll generalise... majorly...

Christianity can be roughly divided into 3 groups: Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox.

In the 11th Century, differences between the Eastern and Western spheres of the Church finally culminated in a schism in the Catholic (=Universal) Church. The Eastern part became known as the Orthodox Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Church (EO), while the Western part became known as the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) or now generally just the Catholic Church.

The main points of difference between them originally were the issue of Church authority (The Orthodox seeing the Roman Church as the first among equals, the Roman Church seeing themselves as supreme) and "filioque":
The <a href="http://www.mit.edu/~tb/anglican/intro/lr-nicene-creed.html" target="_blank">Nicene Creed</a> was a statement of Christian beliefs written as a result of the Ecumenical (ie entire Church) Church Councils in the 4th century, and has served as a universal statement of Christian beliefs ever since. The point at issue is the line that runs: "We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son (Latin = 'filioque')."
Originally the creed did not have "and the Son", but the Roman Church added it in the 6th century or so without consulting the rest of the Church. Of course the rest of the Church was not happy at not being consulted, and was not happy that a universal creed had been altered without there being an Ecumenical Council, and was not happy because they didn't actually agree with the addition. (I understand that discussions between the Anglicans (who as Western Christians have inherited the "and the Son" wording from the RCC) and the Orthodox have found the words "through the Son" to be acceptable to both sides)

However the long term split has led to quite separate theological development, and the Churches now disagree on some basic issues such as the nature of salvation. The RCC's view (which has subsequently greatly influenced Protestantism, so you'll probably be familar with it), is that we're sinners and thus God will send us to Hell in judgement, unless we are saved through Christ who needed to die as a punishment instead. The EO's view is that God is good to everyone and would never condemn anyone to Hell in judgement or anything of the sort. Rather they see Heaven/Hell as a person coming into contact with God's supreme love, and that to a loving heart it will be Heaven, while a person who can do nothing but hate will be in a state of Hell when they feel God's love for them. This kind of "we send ourselves to Hell" view is starting to influence some Protestant groups. The EO also reject the idea that Christ's death was to satisfy some kind of cosmic judgement. (They prefer to regard these sorts of things as mysteries than to do too much speculating on them.)

From the point of view of a Protestant though, both Churches seem kind of similar, in their formality, their high view of Mary, their Saints etc.

The 16th Century was another period of interest in the Church: The Reformation. The RCC was getting a bit carried away with itself, taking money to forgive sins, general corruption etc. The attempted Reforming of the RCC didn't go down to well with the RCC and the Reformers got themselves booted from the RCC for their troubles.
In general Protestants distanced themselves from "Church Tradition" which they saw as having caused a lot of dodgy doctrines in the RCC, and so they went right back to the Scriptures.

If you've been brought up as "General Christian", then I presume that's basically "General Protestant". The Protestant Churches have split themselves a bit over theological, structural, and Church service differences. The major theological split in Protestantism was Calvinism vs Arminianism (after the writings and followers of Calvin and Arminius). It can be best summarised in the question: "Who decides if I will be saved: Me or God?". "Me" = Arminianism (+RCC and EO), "God" = Calvinism. Okay, so books could be written on the hairsplitting that goes on about just how the two systems are different, but I'm grossly generalising here to save space and time. If you want to know more, do a search on google for the differences or something.
Today Arminianism seems to have mostly won-out. Only the Presbyterians and the Methodists (the two are fairly close and keep trying to merge) are fully Calvinist, as far as I am aware. The Baptists seem to straddle the fence and have historically accepted both. (The two sources I have seen on which they were originally, conflict. Go figure!)
The Baptists have a tendency to be comparatively weak on their theology though, and strong on their bible-bashing (ie they are Evangelical to the extreme). Another point of interest at this stage is recent appearence of the Evangelicals (19th Century), who believe the Bible to be the word of God and should be always taken literally with no "spiritual interpretations" allowed, and by logical extension it is inerrant. It certainly seems to have gained a strong hold in some areas of the world: I've been pretty shocked to have been asked twice (while posting on these boards) how I could call myself a Christian if I didn't accept the Bible as the Inerrant Word of God! Oh dear...
Anyway, the Baptists buy whole-heartedly into that one. (As do a few other minor protestant denominations, but by and large the idea is rejected by most everyone else) The other point of interest about Baptists is of course: Baptism. They do this by "full immersion" (ie dunking) as opposed to a little bit of sprinkling like most other Protestant + RCC do. (The EO's do dunking). The Baptists only baptise adults, whereas most others (Anglican, Lutheran, RCC, EO etc) will baptise babies, and then later have what they call "confirmation" where the person confirms that baptism is indeed what they wanted.

If anything could be said to be the mainstream Protestant denomination, it would be the Anglicans. The Anglicans have done a bit of in-house fighting in the past as to the nature of their Church services, and I'm not quite sure what the deal is there, and the Anglicans seem to have had somewhat liberal tendencies in recent years. However overall, if you were brought up with standard protestant theology it's probably closer to Anglican than anything else.

The Lutheran Church is of all Protestant Churches, the closest to the RCC. The Lutherans don't really consider themselves fully Protestant, but in a separate category half-way between the Protestant's and RCC. The main differences between the Lutherans and the RCC is the Lutherans stress on salvation by faith alone (as do all Protestants, but for the Lutherans this is close to being the only difference between them and RCC), whereas the RCC is inclined to add "and works" enough to make the Lutherans (and the rest of Protestantism) unhappy.

The other major recent movement, apart from Evangelicalism, is Pentecostalism. (Although the two have combined often) I'm sure you've come across Pentecostals before. Since it's inception at the beginning of the 20th Century, Pentecostalism's forked 3 of its own denominations (whose names elude me), as well as greatly influencing the entire rest of the Church.

Also possibly worthy of note are the Church of Christ, Bretheren, and 7th Day Adventist, on whom I don't really feel qualified to comment - so I sharn't.
Apologies to any major denominations I've missed by accident!


I hope that helped you somewhat. But what I suggest you do, is pick a denomination you want to find out about and run it through a search engine, and read what info comes up about it. Or better yet: Consult an Encyclopedia.

[ July 07, 2002: Message edited by: Tercel ]</p>

Vorkosigan

Actually, one of the Kiosk articles from a couple of months ago had many denominations with beliefs in comparison, but I can't remember the title or the author, and so cannot find it. Help!

In addition to Tercel's fine review, let me add that there are lots of smaller groups in out of the way places out of the mainstream of western Christianity -- Syrian Christians, Coptics, Nestorians....

Vorkosigan

Tercel

Okay, my original write up of my reply had the following, but I thought I'd drop it for brevity, since these guys don't really concern us much in the West. But since Michael mentioned them:

----------

The 5th Century saw the first splits in the Catholic (universal) Church. The first was the Nestorians (now number ~200,000), but my sources conflict over exactly why they split. The majority seems to agree though that they split on the issue of whether Jesus was one "Person" or two. They believed he was two Persons, corresponding to his Human Nature and his Divine Nature, while the rest of the Church held that he had two natures in one Person. The Monophysite Churches (now number ~30 million in Egypt (Coptic), Syria, Armenia, Ethiopia, and can't think of the other, but I could have sworn there were 5 of them - Edited to add: India) split off on the rather technical terminology issue of whether the two natures of Christ (ie his being both man and God) were unified or distinct. (the Catholic Church Council declearing them to be distinct, the Monophysites declaring otherwise)

[ July 08, 2002: Message edited by: Tercel ]</p>

Toto

? Did you mean Bible-thumping? Or does that mean something else in British English?

Rational Ag

The article was written by Thomas Doubting and was entitled <a href="http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=192" target="_blank">Christian Salvation</a>.

Tercel

That article doesn't look too bad on the whole, although I have reservations about some parts.
I wouldn't regard Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons as Christians for example.

His view of the devolopment of the Trinity seems a little skewed also.
The Church Councils were not held in a vacuum. Rather they were attempts to define authoritively what Christians had believed for centuries in order to pinpoint the heresies when they appeared.
Several passages in the Bible are clear enough. But the actual word "Trinity" is first used by Tertullian (c155-c225AD) as he was the first to write in Latin (from which the word comes).
And Celsus (an anti-Christian writer c185AD) complains:
"And what of their [the Christians] belief in a trinity of gods; is not even this central doctrine of theirs a gross misinterpretation of certain things Plato says in his letters?" (pg 94 Celsus: On the True Doctrine by Hoffman) And elsewhere he accuses that Christians of having a double standard when at once saying men like Hercules weren't Gods while at the same time proclaiming Jesus as a God.

Through the centuries as each heresy appeared, it needed a Church Council to discuss the issue and confirm that the teaching was really heretical.

325 A.D.: Emperor Constantine calls to order the Council of Nice and decrees that Christ is "consubstantial" (of the same nature) with the Father.
This seems to imply the Emperor dictated that belief...

1274 A.D.: At the Second Council of Lyons it is finally decided that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son.
It should be noted that this Council was not an Ecumenical Council, with the EO Church not being present.

[ July 07, 2002: Message edited by: Tercel ]</p>

Tercel

Hey Toto, it took me a while to understand what you were meaning. "Bible-bashing" taken literally does have rather the opposite meaning, doesn't it!
I think it comes from the idea of them bashing others, with the Bible!

Laera

Just thought I'd add what I know.

When Tercel mentioned "Lutherans" he seemed to be speaking of one branch of the Lutheran church. Without getting into the too much detail, I just thought I'd let you know there are three main divisions within the Lutheran church here in the states which are very different from one another:
Missouri Synodd
Wisconsin Synodd
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)

He described the Wisconsin Synodd fairly well - very similar to Catholic if not even more "rule-centric". The Missouri folks are also quite similar and very hooked on ceremony and rules. (I've also heard that most European Lutheran Churches are very close to Catholic as well.)

The big exception is the ELCA which is quite liberal as protestants go - closely resembling Anglican and very free to interpret scripture (unlike the Baptists). The big ceremonial differences between Catholics and ELCA Lutherans are that the latter allows divorce and female clergy - and there are some that even openly welcome homosexuals as members and as clergy. Theologically, the ELCA is all about "saved by grace through faith in Christ" - no works.

So just a "heads up" if you look into Lutherans, because you'll likely find VERY conflicting practices and policies if you don't watch out for the different sects.

My 2 cents.