Okay. Some demand for this so: an introduction to American Protestantism. This is not going to be a comprehensive guide of American Protestantism because I hope to leave you with the impression that such a thing would be huge and nearly impossible for anyone to do, let alone me. - ThreadSky

tznkai.bsky.social • 31 days ago

Okay. Some demand for this so: an introduction to American Protestantism. This is not going to be a comprehensive guide of American Protestantism because I hope to leave you with the impression that such a thing would be huge and nearly impossible for anyone to do, let alone me.

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kdallashammond.bsky.social•31 days ago

As a Baptized & Christened Greek Orthodox & later Received into the Episcopal Church re:☝️
*it's a history not easy to explain here but noble attempt👍
don't think most know Dietrich Bonhoeffer/W Stringfellow/Christian democrat progressive left
or that Washington, Madison & Monroe were Episcopalians

bruceediger.bsky.social•31 days ago

But what about Jefferson?

kdallashammond.bsky.social•31 days ago

nice catch! but I think it's a technicality. He was a member of the church but not a "true" believer

bruceediger.bsky.social•31 days ago

That ol' Jefferson Bible... hard to reconcile that with believing.

kdallashammond.bsky.social•31 days ago

In Philly, I once visited the first American Episcopal Church, "Christ Church"
https://christchurchphila.org/history/

morgado.bsky.social•31 days ago

📌

tznkai.bsky.social•31 days ago

I am also going to try to move beyond the trite "we're not all the same" because sure, every group has outliers. Rather I want to give you a basic toolkit to understand the shape of different denominations and why they are not the same: it often isn't because of theology!

tznkai.bsky.social•31 days ago

By the end of this you should be able to recognize that the generic Christian that shows up in American popular media is not merely unfair, but an incoherent mishmash of Catholic aesthetics and evangelical beliefs.

We will begin, very briefly, with the Great Schism.

tznkai.bsky.social•31 days ago

In 1054 Great Schism split most Christians into either Western Christians, obedient to Rome or Eastern Christians for whom Constantinople was the center. The Western Christians became what we now know as Roman Catholic Church. Ish. I'm glossing over a lot of nuance.

tznkai.bsky.social•31 days ago

The RCC chugged along until ~1517 before enough disputes about theology, conduct, and organization boiled over into the Protestant reformation. Western Christianity is functionally split into Protestants that broke off from the Roman Catholic Church and Catholics who did not.

tznkai.bsky.social•31 days ago

This sets the stage for American Christianity in two very important ways. First, many Protestant Christians do not call themselves Protestant Christians, some of them because they see themselves as restoring the true, pre-Great Schism, Pre-Roman Empire church. I am simply ignoring that.

tznkai.bsky.social•31 days ago

Second, the theological differences with the Catholic Church allowed, even necessitated organizational differences. Protestant churches experimented with many different kinds of organization, or in the case of Quakers and baptists, disorganization.

questauthority.bsky.social•31 days ago

Including the existence of the non-Latin rite branches of Roman Catholicism.

(Glossing over = excellent call.)

tznkai.bsky.social•31 days ago

Everyone knows that there are Eastern Rite Catholics in full communion with the Pope. What this thread presupposes is, what if we just pretend they don't exist so we can get a move on.

questauthority.bsky.social•31 days ago

That's true, although I've found that some are less familiar with the Chaldean, Syro-Malankara, and Coptic rites. But absolutely irrelevant to a thread on American Protestantism - completely agree.

ebs.bsky.social•31 days ago

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