Why I'm discontent with my Protestantism

THE W said:

appeal to emotion isn't a good way to get to the truth.

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No, but it is an aspect of our beings, and He meets the whole person.

God be with you on your journey, Meg. You are making good points, and noticing good things.

Tone said:

No, but it is an aspect of our beings, and He meets the whole person.

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let me refraze,

appeal to emotion is an erroneous way to get to the truth.

Mary Meg said:

Oh, I like that!

Thanks very much!

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There is a LOT more posted by the same guy, JClarke527. About 500 pieces. Years worth. He's the organist. Jayne is the music director. Not every Catholic Church does as well, just as a fair warning. Not so big a place but they have, as I mentioned, new music too. Like this one, clearly with an Irish lilt to it. Wings of the Wind, for the feast of St. Michael:
We do some Latin music as well. No, not Latin beat and Latin tempo, but Latin language. Usually the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) is in Latin. Sometimes some other parts.

THE W said:

let me refraze,

appeal to emotion is an erroneous way to get to the truth.

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In the sense of it being "inexact" or "imprecise"...I can see what you're saying.

Mary Meg said:

↑

There is no evil that is not needed for a higher good.

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Really? Evil in the pursuit of good? "The ends justify the means"? I have a really hard time with that. What happened to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"?

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I choked on that one as well. Maybe what was intended was that God can work out good things even from bad, not that evil is useful or needed for getting good ends. We can never do evil to achieve good ends. That is a bedrock principle of morality. At least it was a bedrock principle of morality. Doing a poll today about that might be interesting.

Tone said:

I like your journey so far and I can relate! I would encourage you to continue to go back further,to the true foundation. Two things to consider:


I would submit to you that you have been successful at tracing your roots back to a couple of great splits, but I encourage you to go further still...past the "church fathers", unto your Hebrew roots!

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I can't help but keep in mind that Israel lost it's temple not once but twice due to going astray. How many little schisms of their own did they undergo over the centuries.
Jewish schisms - Wikipedia

Albion said:

That sort of thing is much less common in Catholic churches today, though, wouldn't you agree, Dave? It would be unusual to find a guitar Mass in a Catholic church outside college communities or at least the big cities, and even then it is not what's found in many Protestant churches where “contemporary“ worship is the rule.

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If by "Catholic churches today" you mean "Catholic parishes in the US that have a majority of white parishioners" I would agree that it is not common, although there seems to be at least one or two of these types of parishes in most cities that have some type of guitar of folk music. If you count the Masses in Spanish (which is a pretty good percentage) it seems that a large majority of them have guitar. Parishes that have more black parishioners tend towards more of a gospel style of music. Outside of the US I would guess that you see a good amount of diversity.

Chris V++ said:

I can't help but keep in mind that Israel lost it's temple not once but twice due to going astray. How many little schisms of their own did they undergo over the centuries.
Jewish schisms - Wikipedia

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Yes, but the "little branches" sprung off the Branch, so we can be certain that these are the way!

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@Mary Meg

Mary, I would suggest that you pray to the Lord Jesus Christ for the answer on this. Ask the Lord Jesus to show you the truth on both the Protestant church, and the Catholic church, and Orthodox church. I know if you continually pray about this to the Lord for a year while fasting and looking at Scripture, the truth will be revealed to you. Right now, my words are not going to be helpful beyond that. I know things about the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox churches that you think may be considered as hateful, but in reality it is simply the truth. Not all ways are the path that Jesus laid out for us. Jesus said narrow is the way. Jesus said FEW be there that finds it. For who better can answer your questions but the Lord? Do not seek out a truth that you desire, either. Let the Lord tell you the truth (even if it is a truth that you do not like in the fact that the Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox church are not operating biblically). Only seeking the truth with the Lord will be able to help you here. I have said what I feel I needed to say so as to help you.

May the Lord Jesus Christ (as described in Scripture) bless you in all good things.

Sincerely,

~ Jason.

I know that I am only one more voice in a sea of "salesmen" here, but this thread is good timing. We are one week away from the Orthodox Pascha celebration, and we are at the beginning of the Orthodox Holy Week. During this time of trying to figure out what is what, you have a unique opportunity to see and experience things you won't see or experience anywhere else or at any other time of year, especially Holy Friday and Pascha.

Just a thought.

I will be praying for you on your spiritual journey to contentment in Him. I know there are a lot of voices out there that say this and that about this and that which leads to confusion, so I am going to suggest that you start with God. Prayerfully ask God to give you a one on one meeting with Him. Once He comes to "sup" with you, ask Him to sort this all out for you. There is good and bad in all these things that you have encountered and trying to untangle them yourself will not be easy. We will not be able to separate the wheat from the tares, because that is His job. Our job is to witness about Him. If you meet Him, you will have a lot to talk about that is real.

People react differently. If you find Christ in the Orthodox tradition, you should follow it.

As others have noted, the Lutheran and Anglican traditions try to combine the best of historical Christianity with the insights of the Reformation.

Personally the more I know of the early Church the less I'm interested. They certainly didn't lose the Gospel completely, but to my mind the emphasis on purity looks more like the Pharisees than Jesus, and the focus on fairly narrow theology that's by no means obvious from Scripture seems a serious departure from Jesus. Interestingly Southern Baptists share some of the same properties. (At least they do now. Before the late 20th Cent conservative takeover it was less pronounced.)

Dave-W said:

There is a lot more to Protestantism than the. Baptists.

THere’s the Calvinist block
The Lutheran block
The Zwinglian block
THe Anglican/‘Methodist block

All have their distinctives.

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Not to mention the Charismatics & Pentecostals.

Dave-W said:

Yes and no. Back in the late 1960s and early 70s the Catholic Church started having “guitar masses” with contemporary folk type tunes being used.

Here are a few:

The common thread in contemporary worship music is that it started in Charismatic communities. THe Catholic Charismatics were probably first. (Unless you want to count the gospel choruses in Pentecostal churches in the 50s and 60s) quickly followed by the charismatic Episcopals. Ted Sandquist was in an upstate nondenominational congregation and took the music level up a notch with Phil Keaggy, Nedra Ross (from the Ronnetts) and Dennis Hopper. (Drums behind Janis Joplin) In the Late 70s Maranatha records started transitioning from Jesus Music CCM to contemporary worship. Then in the early 80s Hosannah Integrity started up. All of these were either classical Pentecostal or Charismatic.

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Craig Smith and I used to run in the same musical circles. He is from my hometown. Now he's an Assemblies of God pastor in Arkansas. He was always a great singer and he's a fine Christian man today.

I've performed at a Catholic church or two and was invited by the charismatics of the church.

The former Benson Company rep where I live used to sponsor "Joy Jams." Local groups and artists like Michael Card would perform. This was in the early 80s.

Sabertooth said:

Not to mention the Charismatics & Pentecostals.

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They fit into one of the aforementioned groups.

There are Catholic and Orthodox Charismatics too.

Sabertooth said:

Not to mention the Charismatics & Pentecostals.

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Wouldn't that be the beginning of the emergent movement?

The way it started even was different than the "awakenings" that lead up to that period. So it would indicate a different era.

Mary Meg said:

Happy Easter! He is Risen!

If you've been following my other musings the past couple days, you probably know a little of what I'm going through... how I'm questioning my Protestant heritage, and struggling with how to read Church history and remain a Protestant. If you're new to me, hi -- a little about me: I was raised in a small, conservative Southern Baptist church where my family has a long tradition. I love my church, because I love my family, but I've made the mistake, maybe, of reading too much history, and now I'm having some serious questions about Protestantism. You may all think I'm really down on Protestantism, but I'm really not. So I wanted to make this post to try to give a more balanced picture of where I'm at. (This proved to be longer than I expected, so at risk of ending up with unbalanced audiences, I may wait until another post to tell in detail why I feel drawn to more apostolic forms of faith.)

What I love about Protestantism (by which I mean my Baptist Evangelicalism)

• The simplicity. Honestly, reading about Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, even Calvinism -- it's really complicated! A lot of hard, confusing, and even troubling things. Growing up I can just open my Bible and read and understand (though often, when I don't understand, my eyes just glaze over and I say, "Okay, God") ... and go to church and love one another and live my faith and everything is fine. All I have to do is have faith ... no other expectations really.
• The worship. I go to a little tiny church, with traditional worship, but I love our hymns and singing together. But I also, just recently, am getting to contemporary worship music on Internet radio, like Chris Tomlin and Crowder and Matt Maher and Jeremy Camp and Bethel Music and Hillsong. And it seems like that's a mostly Protestant thing?
• My own history. I complain sometimes about the history of the Protestant Reformation (which I'll do more below), but my own history is something I love. It's the history of how faithful pioneers came to the hills of North Alabama and founded a church. There are a lot of regaling tales of early ministers, early church minutes to peruse, and especially my own family history -- the histories of my church and my family are largely intertwined for like 6 or 7 generations.
• The people. I love the people -- because they are my family, my friends, my loved ones.
• The belonging. Because this is my church, I am her daughter -- I belong and am accepted and have a place. I can minister (I teach V.B.S., among other things) and really feel I am serving.

What I don't like about [my] Protestantism (or, why I'm having problems)
Over the past few years, as I've gotten deep in studying Church history and theology and languages and read a lot on my own, I've gradually grown more discontent. This lays out my basic problems.

• Lack of historical foundation. This may be more a problem of my own upbringing than of Protestantism in general, I don't know -- but I feel disconnected from history. Before I started high school, I knew almost nothing about the history of Christianity. Just Bible stories, then BAM! Martin Luther is nailing something to the door! And POW! The church comes to Alabama! There were anecdotes scattered here and there in sermons about "great Christians"... Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, maybe a few others... but these were disconnected dots on a blank sea. And I really didn't realize how empty it was, until I opened a book and saw everything that was there.
• Lack of theological rigor. Growing up, I don't think I ever heard the word theology. My Church taught the Bible and the Bible alone, just the Gospel and that's all. I didn't understand until much later (I was homeschooled and didn't have any friends outside my immediate community until high school) that there is more than one way of understanding the Bible and the Gospel. At first I was floored. Then I started studying theology and languages, and the idea that different people could have different interpretations made more sense. I discovered that my church lives in a sort of quasi-Calvinist-Armenian limbo. Preachers can appeal to either, but avoid the objectionable points of both. But the bottom line is, there's no rigor. Our theology is a wet noodle. And maybe that's okay? But it feels very intellectually unsatisfying.
• Fascination with the Early Church. As I said previously, when I read the New Testament growing up, it was mostly with a confirmation bias, seeing in it a vision of my own church experience. It wasn't until I started reading excerpts of the Church Fathers that I started to get the feeling that this doesn't actually look anything like my church. And let's not get distracted by arguments about sola scriptura or relying on Scripture -- it really doesn't. Whether you believe this is because the post-Apostolic Church quickly fell away from the truth of the faith, or because our modern tradition is just a really long way from the second century -- it really doesn't.
  
  What I admire about the Early Church is more than just the visible things like the liturgy, the way they have church (which you can see in early writers like the Didache and Justin Martyr) -- it's an overall feeling. In our modern Christianity -- especially once you get outside the walls of my little church -- there's a lot of disagreement about faith and practice, what to believe and do; a lot of argument about interpretation of Scripture; a lot of divisions and numerous different denominations. And that's just not what I see in the Early Church. Sure, eventually there were doctrinal questions and crises and schisms, and even in the second century there were heresies -- but to the orthodox faith (and yes, I think that's something that can be objectively seen, not just something that is decided by the victor), there was unity and certainty. These people were sure in what they had been taught, by people who knew or had been taught by the Apostles. And when there was a controversy with these heretics (I'm reading Ignatius and Irenaeus here), they didn't appeal to "Scripture alone" and argument over interpretation, they appealed first to the authority of the bishop, and his agreement with every other bishop in what had been received from the Apostles.
  
  And all of this is getting long, but it's just to say that I admire that certainty of orthodoxy.
• Disillusionment with the Protestant Reformation. And I got to the Protestant Reformation in history, and rather than finding the glorious scenes of Martin Luther rediscovering the true Gospel from corruption and restoring the true faith, I was appalled. I had grown to like the Catholic Church, with all the popes and monks and saints -- not that I necessarily agreed with it, but I liked it. So I was disappointed, first, that things in that were becoming corrupted. But it still seemed like a good thing that could be fixed, right? Of course I knew that wasn't where it was going...
  
  And then the Reformation very quickly got ugly. Luther calling the pope "antichrist," everybody writing nasty letters to each other, revolts and people getting killed... And then everybody else starts jumping on board, and it seems like a free-for-all, and political opportunism in a lot of cases more than anything else... And before long, anybody with a beef against the Catholic Church, for any reason, is breaking away and grinding their own axe... And then martyrdoms (murders) on both sides, and wars... Christians killing Christians... And this is not a glorious picture at all.
  
  And I just think, again and again, to Jesus's prayer "that we all might be One" (John 17:21). And I just think none of this is what Jesus wanted at all.

So this is really long, sorry about that, and more emotional than I really meant for it to be. But this is my heart. Go easy on me, ok?

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You need this. It's not a systematic theology like you'd find by Wayne Grudem or others similar to his. The emphasis is Christ. Thomas Oden spent a period of his own life in a search mode. He came back to Orthodox Christianity, the same Christian principals which have existed for 2,000 years.

Dave-W said:

They fit into one of the aforementioned groups.

There are Catholic and Orthodox Charismatics too.

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I'm thinking of the standalone Charismatics:
Vineyard < Calvary Chapel < Foursquare Gospel [which is Pentecostal]

While considered to be Pentecostal, my experiences with Assemblies of God have been more like the above. And there are no shortage of non-denoms of that flavor.

(And I was baptized in a United Pentecostal Church.)