YTread Logo
YTread Logo

What's the Difference between Christian Denominations?

Mar 25, 2024
(music) - We look around and see that there are so many different

denominations

, and it's confusing when you just look at that. But there are historical reasons why various

denominations

arose, and there are different types of causes that resulted in that. One of the fundamental sources of these denominational

difference

s is the form of church government. Church government is really about who has the responsibility under God to determine

what

the form of the Word of God is, that is,

what

does the Word of God actually teach? What is theology, true theology? And so those areas, theology, biblical interpretation, worship, ordinances, fellowship, and government, are the areas in which someone has to take authority, and different Protestants have had three different answers to that.
what s the difference between christian denominations
Some Protestants have said that Christ has invested authority for those things, responsibility for those things, in bishops, bishops who are pastors of a wide variety of churches within a region. Thus, the Episcopal Church, the Church of England, the Anglican Communion, invents authority in the bishops, although to a certain extent it shares it with the laity. The United Methodist Church in North America, Methodist churches in general, historically, have given that authority, that responsibility to bishops, and Lutherans, in most cases, have done that as well. Another group of Protestants said, no, Christ has invested the responsibility of these church affairs in the joint pastors, the elders, in Greek, presbuters, and that is why the name Presbyterian is the name that has most commonly been used to identify this group of Protestants.
what s the difference between christian denominations

More Interesting Facts About,

what s the difference between christian denominations...

And then it is the elders or the pastors jointly who have the responsibility for all those things. And finally, a group of Protestants said that no, according to the scriptures, Christ has invested the responsibility for those things in the congregation, the local body of believers, jointly administering that authority and that responsibility. And these have been the Congregationalists, sometimes called Independents, and the Baptists. Another fundamental source of

difference

between Protestant denominations has to do with who are the proper subjects of baptism. And most early Protestants believed, as the Roman Catholic Church believes, that children should be baptized.
what s the difference between christian denominations
That is part of God's command, that Christian parents must baptize their children into the church and therefore must become members of the church through baptism. But even from the earliest days of Protestantism, there were some who disagreed with that, who maintained that the Scriptures do not teach infant baptism, but rather they teach that baptism is for those who profess their faith. So, believer's baptism is what it is traditionally called. And today we call this group of churches that hold this view Baptists, although many other denominations have emerged, especially in the last 100 years, that have accepted Baptist views.
what s the difference between christian denominations
For example, many Pentecostal churches practice believer's baptism. Another major source of difference among Protestants over the last hundred years has to do with the nature of supernatural gifts, extraordinary gifts or sign gifts, speaking in tongues, working miracles, and the like. Protestants along with Catholics have traditionally held that these were gifts given by Christ to the apostles, generally, in the apostolic era, for the establishment of the Scriptures and the church of Jesus Christ, but which he later no longer granted, because the The church and the word of God were established. In the early 20th century, a number of Protestants began seeking a renewal of these extraordinary gifts in the church, and in the first 10 years of the 20th century in America several different episodes occurred in which people experienced what they believed to be speaking in tongues of one kind or another, which they believed were gifts of healing and gifts of miracle-working.
And thus began what we now call the Pentecostal Movement. And the Pentecostal Movement originally held that Christ had indeed taken away these sign gifts from the church after the apostolic age, but that he had also promised to renew them, to restore them to the church, just before his second coming. And then the Pentecostals, when they believed that this was experience, the Christians who became Pentecostals, when they began to experience these things, they believed that this was the beginning of the return of Christ. And so they spread not only their views on the restart and reestablishment of the sign gifts in the churches, but also on the imminent second coming of Christ.
Some Pentecostals today have rejected the connection between the gifts and the second coming, so there are now many who are Pentecostals in one way or another and believe that Christ never took away the extraordinary gifts; the church simply refused to use them. One of the enduring sources of differences among Protestants is based on nationality and language, and this is natural. It has been this way since at least the third century, that as churches grew, as people became believers, they tended to organize themselves into groups of churches based on the natural identities that they had, of language, society and politics.
In the 17th, 16th, and 17th centuries, when Protestantism became so prominent in many parts of Europe, many of these Protestant churches became state churches. And so the Lutheran church was the state church of Germany, Anglicanism the state church of England. Now these churches sometimes had other small differences, but as they migrated to the New World, North America in particular, they retained their identities as Lutherans or Anglicans. And so these national differences also help explain why many Protestants who otherwise have very similar theology (Lutherans, Methodists, and Anglicans) have still tended to retain their separate organizational identities. There is another important difference between denominations within Protestantism, and it has to do with the movement that began about 130 years ago in North America now known as Protestant liberalism.
Fundamentally, liberal thought placed human reason in the place of authority over Scripture. Then the Scriptures came under the judgment of human reason, and that caused a reinterpretation of the Bible from beginning to end. And in that reinterpretation, liberal thought eliminated miracles, eliminated what seemed harsh, what somehow seemed difficult to explain, what seemed like superstition. Anything that was offensive to reason could not be considered true, and therefore, by putting reason first, liberal theology undid most of what Scripture actually teaches. This led in the early 20th century to a fundamental split within most Protestant denominations, where many of those who held traditional evangelical convictions were forced to resign or left to form new church organizations, effectively new denominations.
And so, in the 20th century, there arises a movement sometimes called fundamentalism, more broadly evangelicalism, which seems new because there are many new denominations, but in fact, it is not new. It is a response to this new liberal theology. But in reality it is in continuity with the traditional faith of Protestantism and with the early church. And so, liberalism has introduced a fundamental division, and in many ways, the most fundamental division that now exists within Protestantism, and it is a difference that goes right to the heart of the gospel and how we are saved. And that helps explain why we have this group that we now call evangelicals.
It is important to recognize that although Protestants have all of these different organizations, they are not deeply divided on the fundamentals of the faith. In fact they agree, those we generally identify as evangelicals, agree that the Bible is authoritative, that it is inspired, that it has no errors. They agree that salvation comes through repentance and faith in Christ alone through his shed blood. He suffers for our sins, so that everyone who believes in him may be forgiven, redeemed, and spend eternal bliss with God in heaven. And so, although they have these different organizations, we call them by these different denominational names, yet they recognize that they are one, that they are brothers and sisters by faith in Christ Jesus and share a blessed and joyful unity in the gospel. (music) Thanks for watching Honest Answers.
You can submit your questions via email, Twitter, or in the comments section below. Don't forget to subscribe to find out the answer to next Wednesday's question.

If you have any copyright issue, please Contact