Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: howard@53iss6.waterloo.ncr.com (Howard Steel) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: What's the difference? Message-ID: Date: 5 Jul 90 05:52:02 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: NCR Canada Ltd, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Lines: 75 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article MARK@ucf1vm.cc.ucf.edu (Mark Woodruff) writes: >What's the difference between the various denominations of the >Christianity? I'm curious as to why there are so many splinter >groups in the body of Christ? It is certainly entertaining to try and figure out how the mind of man works. Someone will no doubt follow-up your article with names and dates to tell you why their particular version of Christianity is the "right" one, so I will just provide some musings. Since the first major split in Christianity (Romans vs Gnostics; final score 1 - 0 Romans, Gostic writings were removed from the bible) the reasons have in most cases been an attempt to gain power by specific individuals. This statement is often upsetting to people, who feel that their sect was formed on the basis of deep spiritual insite, but the fact is that certain individuals who wanted change within the system, weren't getting it fast enough to meet their needs and so were forced for political reasons to break away and head (ever here of the founder of a new group becoming a follower :-)) their own group. Whether or not you accept this reasoning is entirely your own business, but the point is that most changes in the church have been political, rather than spiritual. This is not to say that a spiritual component did not exist, it many times did, but the change was either to slow or not well enough received politically and that demanded segmentation. The prime example that comes to mind is the Anglican (Episcopalian in the US) Church, (Romans vs Anglicans; 2 - 1 Romans kept the papacy and most of Europe, Anglicans gained a monarch). On the whim of a monarch a whole segment of the church hierarchy went off trying to come up with ways to justify his divorce of one woman over another. Those that would allow it also had cotempuous views of the papacy and some areas of disagreement in dogma. The problem is, if you as an individual disbelieve segments of dogma you are in the least, misguided and at at worst a heretic. If you were a priest or minister you would be removed from office. If you were a bishop then the possibility arose that you could influence many others to your way of thinking, and if you were a group of bishops, well you had the basis for a new religion. You see these are political actions; the individual, the priest, the bishop, all had a common denominator of dissatisfaction, but only the bishops were well place enough to make a significant difference. By the way, it doesn't make them right. What keeps the churchs apart today is habit. If you were born and raised in the United Church, then that is way to do things and all the Catholic mumbo jumbo about saints and Virgins is alien to you...you wouldn't mind them coming around to your way of thinking but YOU certainly won't change. The other problem is that the Catholic church still has its well defined papacy and the heads and power figures in other sects wouldn't fit too well into the structure, and they aren't prepared to make the sacrifice of becoming less significant. All the dogmatic difficulties in the world aren't nearly as tough to overcome as the idea that you may become sublimated and appear less powerful. If that issue is ever resolved, then unity is just around the corner. / / / / / / / / / / :-(I Think, Therefore I Am, I Think :-) / / / / / / / / / / / Howard.Steel@Waterloo.NCR.COM NCR CANADA LTD. - 580 Weber St. N / / (519)884-1710 Ext 570 Waterloo, Ont., N2J 4G5 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / [This seems like a pretty jaundiced view of inter-church relations. I think many Christians do not consider the lines between churches as being as important as all that. The Catholics are of course an exception, since they believe that the unity of the body of Christ is manifested in an organization. However Protestants (particularly American) have seen the body of Christ as something that transcends organizational boundaries. I feel no less communion with members of other churches than my own. My experience with bureacracies -- church and otherwise -- does not suggest that a single church containing 90% of the population of the U.S. would necessarily be a better witness to Christ than the current situation. Before people talk about how terrible it is that we have so many churches, I'd like them to think carefully about what it would mean to have a single church that included almost the entire population. Indeed I think such a situation would be far more likely to lead to excessive confusion between church and state, and it would tend to encourage leaders of the organization to confuse their own decisions with God's. --clh]