Why I'm discontent with my Protestantism

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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If you have any questions about Catholicism, feel free to start a thread in OBOB and we'd be happy to answer them.

Have a blessed Easter!

Sabertooth said:

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

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Which falls into the Anglican/Methodist group.

Messianic Judaism started in Orthodox Judaism but still gets lumped into Protestantism.

Dave-W said:

Which falls into the Anglican/Methodist group.

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So, Vineyard is Wesley on steroids...?

Sabertooth said:

So, Vineyard is Wesley on steroids...?

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Kind of. Doctrinally they are definitely related.

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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We have something similar in Lutheranism, but it's really more about the popularity of folks music starting in the 60's, combined with liturgical reforms that wanted to focus more on modern artistic sensibilities, than a specifically charismatic influence. It's somewhat different from "Christian contemporary", which often uses rock or pop as an inspiration.

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 can find fundamentalism in many religions, not just Southern Baptists. And I believe that's the main thing you are really going to have problems with long term.

FireDragon76 said:

You can find fundamentalism in many religions, not just Southern Baptists. And I believe that's the main thing you are really going to have problems with long term.

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It is the doctrine of Cessationism that I found to be inhibiting (and I got saved in a Baptist church).
Once you embrace Continuationism, the sky's the limit on your Christian walk!

Dave-W said:

Kind of. Doctrinally they are definitely related.

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Charismatic Reformed types seem to be rarer, but they do happen (particularly in the UK) But Wesleyanism is definitely the pop theology in the US because it fits with our conceptualizations of human freedom.

FireDragon76 said:

Charismatic Reformed types seem to be rarer, but they do happen (particularly in the UK) But Wesleyanism is definitely the pop theology in the US because it fits with our conceptualizations of human freedom.

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Actually, some of the best charismatic doctrine going is from a Reform group here in the US called PRMI.

SeventyOne said:

There are other options. Protestantism inherently implies at least some relationship to the RCC, albeit, a negative one.

There are and always have been believers with zero relationship to Rome, neither RCC or Protestant. Just be one of those and get out of the boxes.

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This simply is not the case in the west except small schismatic groups such as the Waldensians or Lollards that were often disconnected and knew nothing about each other, which won't help the OP's objections at all. The Waldensians and Lollards both were eventually absorbed into Protestantism, and none remained autonomous.

FireDragon76 said:

The Waldensians and Lollards both were eventually absorbed into Protestantism, and none remained autonomous.

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In that sense, I think that Protestantism has morphed into NOT RCC, rather than ANTI-RCC. I have found this to be true in my Church experience.

Mary Meg said:

Just Bible stories, then BAM! Martin Luther is nailing something to the door! And POW! The church comes to Alabama!

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Lets kick it up a notch!

OP I really understand where you are coming from.

I personally was raised in Reformed Calvinism, and I embraced all the teachings of the reformers. But it is easy to forget that reformed teachings isn't the only thing that is true. Something which I've fallen into myself.

Remember, a Christian who believes and repents in Jesus Christ is a Christian. Period. As Christians, we need to absolutely make sure our denominations are not hindering us.

My best advice I can give you is this, when you read the word of God, make absolutely sure you are NOT reading it with the glasses of some other person, namely a reformer or Christian hero you admire.

Read it for what it really says. For years I read the word of God thru the eyes of reformers and that was a huge mistake, and it is unbiblical. Rather, we should be reading the word of God for what it actually says and understanding all sides of an argument for say a specific topic or verse in the bible. Then, use our Christian heros and very wise Christians like Calvin, Augustine, Luther, Knox etc. as a guide. But not blindly, make sure you are understanding where exactly these people get their understanding of the bible and understand how they made their conclusions.

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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Interesting post, thank you for sharing. I encourage you to continue studying Church history, because from it you may learn a lot, benefit a lot.

@Mary Meg , I recommend looking up Wycliffe and the Lollards if you want to understand the true origins of the Baptist movement. They are in some ways a pre-Protestant movement that took on some Anabaptist and Calvinist distinctives.

Wycliffe really did not have the exact same interests as Luther, in anything he was far more radical and political in tone (he also believed in Purgatory and something like a medievalist attitude towards faith and works). He was also a Neo-Platonist, yet strangely enough, iconoclastic. His followers, the Lollards, were also highly political and favored the interests of the emerging minor nobility and merchants. In England, they became the Puritan movement which eventually lead to civil war.

Albion said:

You may be thinking that Calvary Chapel is not a Protestant movement or denomination, but it is Protestant through and through.

Know What Calvary Chapels Believe and Teach

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It's a label because otherpeople like labels. Don't go reading into is anything you shouldn't

Mary Meg said:

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.

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This part stood out for me. From the jump, we have to acknowledge that simplicity is a matter of perspective.

With traditional Christianity, I find that it's as simple or as complex as someone wants it to be. Brainier types enjoy the centuries of councils, studying the lives of the saints and all that stuff.

More specifically, within the Catholic Church there's plenty to feast on. Pope Benedict XVI is the kind of intellectual heavyweight who might come along once or maybe twice in a generation. But even ignoring him, there's plenty to chew on from earlier in history. The Church has plenty to offer these brainier types of people who need to nourish their intellects.

And, ahem, non-brainy types will probably be bored silly by a lot of that stuff. But the Church can accommodate these types as well. They're not intellectual heavyweights. They need the sacraments and they need to know that they're forgiven. The Church has plenty of room for this type of person as well.

Separately, maybe somebody isn't a scholar and they're not low IQ either. They're of average intelligence and their charism is charity. Well, the Church has tons of opportunities for them to shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, clothe the naked and comfort those who are grieving.

I understand if someone is intimidated by the centuries upon centuries of encyclicals, councils, bulls and other stuff. That's not for everybody which is why it's not offered to everybody. Those things are available to the people who want it but if one's talents are elsewhere, the Church has room for them too.

Catholicism is only as complicated as the faithful need it to be. And it's as simple as the faithful need it to be too. It doesn't matter what the faithful need. The Catholic Church is ready, willing, able and eager to give it to them.

She truly is universal.

Mary Meg said:

What would you put in this category?

I tend to think (since I apparently like putting things in boxes), that a church that sprang up in the Protestant world of western Europe or America, is probably "Protestant" by tradition, whether it ever had any formal association with Rome at all. Baptists technically sprang up after the main thrust of the Reformation was over and were never formally part of the Catholic Church, but they still were following in the Protestant tradition with Protestant assumptions.

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Pretty much anything that hinges it's identity on a denominational label. Christianity is not a group thing. People are not saved or have a relationship with God on a group level.

FireDragon76 said:

This simply is not the case in the west except small schismatic groups such as the Waldensians or Lollards that were often disconnected and knew nothing about each other, which won't help the OP's objections at all. The Waldensians and Lollards both were eventually absorbed into Protestantism, and none remained autonomous.

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More boxes. You didn't understand what I wrote at all.

SeventyOne said:

Christianity is not a group thing. People are not saved or have a relationship with God on a group level.

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But we are told to group together, upon getting Saved.

"And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching." Hebrews 10:24-25 NKJV

The Church, the Bride of Christ, is an extremely relevant corporate entity in the Bible.