"True" Christianity

[Depot Denizen]

Fair enough Thanks for clarifying your statement.

[Flyndaran]

No problem. I often think differently from most and that too often leads to misunderstandings.
Yes, english is my first and only language.

[Slytovhand]

Don't worry, DD, we pretty much all debate the point on here, not the person. So, 'you' is usually the generic one... that's why we can to each other a lot

[Depot Denizen]

That's fine by me XD I lurk on CS often enough, so I should know that by now.

[guywithashovel]

Who gets to decide what is considered Christian and what isn't? The church I was raised in defined Christian as anyone who believed in Jesus and his divinity and sacrifice and etc, believed the Bible was the Word of God, and had been baptised. Obviously this excludes many denominations of Xity. On the other side, I have a friend who doesn't believe the Bible at all yet considers himself Xtian. As Xianity doesn't have a central leader, who decides what's Xtian and what isn't?

After hanging out on several message boards where religion is the predominant subject, it seems that many Christians will assert that a fellow Christian is not a "True Christian" if that Christian disagrees with him on any of the tenents of the faith. I have heard it said that Christians who are kind to homosexuals are not "True Christians." I have been told that Christians who accept evolutionary theory are not "True Christians" (actually, the ones who accept evolution are just intelligent people with a firmer grasp on reality than their creationist counterparts) I have also been told that the Christians who treated me like garbage in my childhood churches were not "True Christians." Similarly, it has been said that any Christian who doesn't vote Republican all the time is not a "True Christian." And in response to this, I usually point out that the first US president to be an openly born-again Christian was Jimmy Carter, a Democrat. I usually get my head bit off, but ah well.

I guess when it's all said and done, if you're a Christian and you disagree with another Christian and/or you do something to make the faith look bad, you will be accused of not being a "True Christian."

[CS-Saint]

Doesn't the pope have a say in what is currently "christian"? I was under the impression that the pope that made those decisions. But most of my info is gleaned from many different sources, and I have no formal teaching in any religon.

[Rapscallion]

Doesn't the pope have a say in what is currently "christian"? I was under the impression that the pope that made those decisions. But most of my info is gleaned from many different sources, and I have no formal teaching in any religon.

I don't have formal teaching myself, but religion generally comes in various flavours. The pope is generally regarded as the leader of the catholic church, but not (for instance) the leader of the methodist faith. Both are regarded as christian faiths.

Rapscallion

[Seshat]

Historic divisions of Christianity:

Circa 30 AD: Jesus dies. The Apostles and their friends form the original Christian church (though not by that name, at that stage). As they spread out from Israel, they form various sub-sections of Christianity.
Certain minor sects of Christianity, such as the Gnostic Christians*, originate from this diaspora.
These minor sects continue to the present day, and are not descendants of the Christianity of the Roman Empire.

(* Not all Gnostics are Christians.)

Circa 300 AD: The Roman Emperor of the time legalised Christianity, putting a stop to the organised persecution of Christians within the Roman empire.

Slightly before 400 AD: The Roman Emperor became Christian, and established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Circa 400 AD: The Roman Empire split into the Eastern and Western empires, with the Eastern (aka Byzantine) centred on Constantinople (ancient Byzantium, modern Istanbul) and the Western on Rome.
The Christian Church effectively split with the Empire. The Catholic Church and its descendants are the Western half, the Orthodox Church and its descendants are the Eastern half.

The Orthodox (aka Eastern Orthodox) Church has a far simpler history than the Catholic: basically, take the history of the Byzantine empire, mix in a bit of missionary work towards the slavic nations of the north, add the development of Cyrillic writing, and that's the history of the Orthodox Church.

There was a split around 450 AD, that divided the Orthodox church into Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox. Oriental Orthodox Christians are largely found in the 'Near East' countries like Syria and Egypt, though they go as far east as India.

If it's deemed to be 'Eastern Europe', it's probably Orthodox. There are minor differences between the Orthodox churches - Greek Orthodox vs Russian Orthodox, for instance - but those differences are smaller than the differences between Orthodox and Catholic, or Catholic and Protestant.



Now to some really interesting Church History. The Roman Catholic Church, and the rise of Protestantism.

Everywhere the Western Roman Empire ruled, the Catholic Church went with it. As far north as Germany, as far west as Spain and England and (eventually) Ireland. As far south as the northern Sahara. As far east as the borders to the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire.

Over the next few centuries, trade, missionary work, intermarriage of princes, and the desire of the nobility to seem 'sophisticated' like their neighbours spreads Roman Catholic Christianity all over Western Europe. It spreads north till it runs into the Arctic wasteland, west to the Atlantic Ocean, and east to the Eastern Orthodox Church's land. South, the region of Africa north of the Sahara ends up becoming a mix of Catholic, Orthodox, and Islam: by the late middle ages, mostly Islam.

(Of note: the Muslims (Islamic people) conquered Spain during the early middle ages, and were then kicked out again by the Catholics over the course of the middle ages.)

The poor Jews during this period keep getting shoved around, kicked out of nation after nation. Still, they fare better than the pre-Christian faiths of both western and eastern Europe - almost all of those faiths become extinct, with nothing more than survival traditions like the Christian Tree and Santa Claus.

The 'holy land' - the region where Asia and Africa and Europe meet - has the misfortune to be the place where Judaism, Catholic Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, and Islam all originated. It becomes disputed territory, and the ill-feeling between each of the faiths generated by those wars continues to this day.

Circa 1100: The Catharic Heresy developed. The Catholic church saw this heresy as - well, heretical. And dangerous, and all other sorts of things they found icky. Their campaign against Catharism ended up in the development of the Inquisition. Despite its name, the Inquisition was not limited to Spain - and it did not solely persecute Jews. It also persecuted Catharists, and anyone else they decided was heretical.

Circa 1500: Martin Luther.
Martin Luther was a Catholic monk in Germany, who became appalled at some of the accepted Church practices of his day. He protested them very publically, and was called before the Diet of Worms (a council in the city of Worms) and pretty much bullied to recant. He refused to, and things got very dangerous for him for the rest of his life. But he kept writing, and his works - including a bible in German - were spread around the scholarly folk of Europe.

It would be too much to say that he single-handedly created Protestantism. More accurately, he was the pebble that triggered an avalanche. There was a great deal wrong with the Catholic church at that point in time, and if things had worked out differently, the Catholic Reformation that happened as a response to Luther and Protestantism might have happened anyway, and we might all be Catholic.

But they didn't. Germany ended up creating a version of Christianity (Lutheran) that they named after Martin Luther. Many others developed other churches, based on their own theologies. Methodists, Puritans, Presbyterians, Baptists - all of these churches which developed as protest against the Catholic abuse of the time are called Protestant.
Any Christian denomination which descends from a Protestant denomination is also called Protestant.


The Anglican Church (Church of England) was created because King Henry VIII of England wanted to get rid of Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn.
Catherine's children, save for one (Mary) died in infancy, and Henry became impatient waiting for a surviving male heir. The Pope was unwilling to annul his marriage, however. Anne had copies of Protestant books, and showed them to Henry: she also refused to become his mistress, and held out for marriage.
Long story short, Henry got impatient, broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, started the Anglican church. The history of this change is fascinating, and continues through the history of Henry's three children as well.



The Pope is the head of the Roman Catholic Church. None of the pre-300AD Christian churches recognise him as authoritative, nor do any of the Orthodox churches, nor do any Protestant churches.

[Seshat]

Did I kill this thread ded?

[AFPheonix]

Ha ha, you made everyone's eyes cross

Also, is it just me, or did the font all of a sudden go from gray to lime-green?

[Slytovhand]

Did I kill this thread ded?

No - you've done a very important historical precis. And relevant to the thread, to boot!!

[Rapscallion]

Also, is it just me, or did the font all of a sudden go from gray to lime-green?

It was a darker green before. I'm going to try and play with the style stuff to try and get it closer to what it was. This is the main reason I hate having to update the board software - new skins always need a little tweaking to get them as I want them.

Rapscallion

[Sylvia727]

Seshat, your analysis covered every major schism and explained what each group thought was true Christianity. Although I notice you didn't include the compilation of the Bible, which to me is the craziest part of Christianity. So many people believe that this book and only this book is the true word of God, and yet so many of them don't realize that which books made it in and which books got thrown out was decided purely by politics. If I ever converted, I would have to do some serious research to learn what other books were out there, including the Jewish stories, and study all of them with notes from lingual scholars on translation ambiguities. I took a Mythology class where the professor passed out the story of Tamar from the Bible, and included notes on where a word might be translated differently, or what the culture was at the time. It was very informative. I'd love to lay my hands on something like that for the entire Bible and/or the entire Torah.

What's the definition of a Christian? Someone who believes that Jesus of Nazareth existed? Who accepts him as their personal savior? Who follows Christian traditions and goes to church on Sundays? What about the more recent splinter groups such as Latter Day Saints and Jehovah's Witnesses?

[Seshat]

If I'd included the history of the Bible, I wouldn't have just made people's eyes cross!


To really totally foreshorten the discussion of the bible: every denomination of Christianity (IE: each of the splinter groups) has at least one version of the 'One True Bible'.

Some denominations share their 'one true version' with other denominations. Some have multiple versions (usually different versions come from different stages in the history of the denomination).

And that's without translation disagreements or outright errors!


Plus the issue of which books are which.


The Old Testament is a jumbled mess of different sections of the Jewish Scriptures: the Scriptures contain a section of history, a section of spiritual guidance, and a section of literature. Each section of the Scriptures is to be interpreted differently.
Yet in the Old Testament, in almost all forms of 'The Bible', the history, spiritual stuff, and literature is all munged together with no distinction made between them.

As for the New Testament ... well, they say "history is written by the victors".

[IDrinkaRum]

This is why I want to get my hands on a copy of the Toarh & Koran in English so I can read them. I also want to get a hold of the Book of Mormon to read it also. The more we read from other religious texts/writings, the more we learn of religion & of the people who worship in different forms of religion. I do have a King James Version of the Bible somewhere, just not sure where I put it. For the record, I'm a Roman Catholic. I've had my fair share or ignorant comments by non-catholics, but I let them slide. I try to talk to others about their religion, but they end up trying to recruit me to their side, and I end the conversation. *le sigh*