Hello, I'm a Buddhist, but I get comfort from reading the Bible NIV) and have been moving closer to Christianity. I can't say I'm a Christian but I've been praying to God/Jesus for guidance and inspiration so I can see what the right path is. I'm open to inspiration if it comes.
Something that confuses me when I look at Christianity is all the different churches and chapels.. there are all these different groups: Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, evangelicals, Pentecostals, Anglicans etc. Etc. I don't even know what it all means or what they believe...
Would somebody explain the basics for me so I have a very general idea of what the differences and similarities are...
Thank you
That's a tall order. To really properly do the subject any justice would not only require looking at the history of each branch/movement, but the history of Christianity as a whole. That isn't to say it can't be addressed here, only that any answer here would fall incredibly short.
The briefest history lesson might be this:
From the inception of Christianity in the first century until the 5th century AD we can speak of a unified Christian Church. The first disruptions to that unity came in the 5th century with some Christological controversies (Christological = theology about Christ).
The first of these is known as the Nestorian Controversy, in brief the Bishop of Constantinople, Nestorius, said some things that many took serious issue with, most prominently Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria. This resulted in a church council being held in the city of Ephesus, the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD, condemned the views of Nestorius, and championed the views of Cyril. It's a lot more complicated than that, but for the sake of brevity let's leave it there. This set in motion a schism between some of the churches in the East from what is modern day Syria, Iraq (etc); largely because the condemnation of Nestorius also resulted in a condemnation of a very well respected Syrian theologian, Theodore of Mopsuestia; and thus a rift occurred giving way to the Church of the East and the "Western" Church. The Church of the East, while rather small today, at one time spread across Asia to as far away as Western China and Mongolia.
The second occurred later on in the same century, a man by the name of Eutyches, in a sense, went the opposite direction that Nestorius had taken. And while Eutyches' ideas were condemned, the council which met at Chalcedon in 451 AD ended up being incredibly complicated and controversial. The result was that the strong supporters of Cyril of Alexandria were, seemingly, caught up in the controversy with Eutyches; and this led to the division between those churches which supported the Council of Chalcedon and those churches which did not. Today the non-Chalcedonian churches are known as the Oriental Orthodox, and include the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawahedo Church (among others).
The Chalcedonians remained united for the next several centuries. However differences in theology and practice began to crop up over time, between the primarily Latin West and the Greek East. This subject alone is a massive one, and all the various factors involved are deeply and immensely complex. However, ignoring the earlier Photian Schism, which was healed (at least, formally), and some other major issues, perhaps the really big thing to mention here is the Great Schism of 1054. In 1054 some representatives from the bishop of Rome (which, at the time, had been growing its ecclesiastical authority over the Western Church for several centuries) went to Constantinople. Things didn't go well, the representatives ended up condemning the bishop of Constantinople, and the bishop of Constantinople in turn condemned them. This resulted in the bishop of Rome excommunicating the bishop of Constantinople and vice versa.
While this was obviously a big deal, it didn't really formalize the schism. It would take a couple more centuries of growing differences, various historical factors (e.g. the Fourth Crusade), and finally the Council of Florence-Basil in the 15th century, which resulted in the condemnation of Conciliarism in the West, declaring the bishop of Rome--the Pope--of equal authority as Church-wide council (The Counciliarists argued that that the highest ecclesiastical authority came through Church-wide council through the agreement and consensus of all the bishops). While the split between the Eastern and Western Church is usually attributed to the Schism of 1054, it's really only in the 15th century that we see this split as final. And thus the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the East respectively as fully out of communion with one another. With both claiming the other left them. So the Eastern Orthodox claim the Roman Catholics left them; and the Roman Catholics claim the Eastern Orthodox left them.
In the West, there had been localized discontent with certain aspects of ecclesiastical authority cropping up here and there. The Western or Papal Schism which led to, at one point, three Popes at one time also didn't do a good job at convincing people that the Papacy, as an institution, was necessarily everything it claimed to be. However, it really isn't until the early 16th century that anything truly big happens.
A devout monk by the name of Martin Luther, and also the head of the theology department at the University of Wittenberg in Saxony, was less than thrilled when certain men came into Saxony selling bills of indulgences. Indulgences weren't new, but these folks were selling them. An indulgence, for what it's worth, was, in essence, a declaration that the temporal effects of venial sin are removed. This also meant that one could receive an indulgence for a dead relative, to shorten their time spent in Purgatory (a kind of waiting room for heaven in which those destined for heaven are purged of the temporal effects of their sins). Most infamous of these indulgence sellers was Johann Tetzel, who was known for his catchy little jingle, "As soon as a coin in the coffer rings / the soul from purgatory springs.", and even worse was his claim that with a bit of coin and the writ of indulgence any sin could be satisfied, even for the man who "violated the mother of God herself". These things got Tetzel into trouble with church authorities, but still, many in Saxony were going wild for these things.
Luther didn't want to start trouble, at least not in the beginning. Instead Luther thought this was a chance to have a debate on the subject. And so he wrote down ninety-five theses against the selling of indulgences in Latin, and nailed them onto the university's message board (i.e. the door of the church) inviting other academics to formal debate. However, some of Luther's students, it is believed, took Luther's 95 Theses, had them translated into German, and then used that fancy new technology the printing press to distribute them, first in Wittenberg, but ultimately throughout Saxony.
This set in motion a series of events that would eventually come to be called the Protestant Reformation. However, Luther wasn't the only one who would use his voice in this time, throughout Europe other voices would show up, often vehemently against one another. As such historians speak not of a single Reformation, but of several "reformations".
The Magisterial Reformation refers to those who worked from within the already-existing structure of the churches, specifically the Lutheran and Reformed traditions.
The Radical Reformation refers to those who worked from outside of the established church structures, most famously the different sorts of Anabaptists, such as the Mennonites (the Amish would split off from the Mennonites later on in history).
In England something else happened, King Henry VIII wanted a male heir, and the Pope refused to let him have his marriage annulled so he could marry another woman. Well, in the 1530's Henry decided maybe he didn't need the Pope, and broke the English Church away from Rome. The newly independent Church of England would, eventually give rise to what we call the Anglican Communion--Anglicanism. This is known as the English Reformation.
With Europe now in fire, figuratively speaking. The history of the modern western world begins to take shape. It is in this time that we also see the Age of Discovery, with Europe colonizing the Americas and trying to find faster, cheaper trade routes to Asia (seeing as the Ottoman Empire's conquest of Constantinople had resulted in the spice trade being cut off from Europe).
In the 17th century, as the Church of England was still figuring out its identity, a number of groups arose, including the Puritans who wanted to make the Church of England more Protestant (by which they meant Calvinist), but also Separatist and Non-Conformist groups, such as the first Baptists and Quakers. English colonization of North America gave many a sense that, if they can't change the Church of England or express their religious beliefs openly back in Britain, maybe they could in a new continent. Which led to a number of dissenting religious groups coming to North America.
In the 18th century, an Anglican priest by the name of John Wesley, came to the American Colonies and preached as an evangelist there, Wesley's work is associated with what was known as the First Great Awakening. A period of immense religious fervor in both Britain and the American Colonies. Wesley's preaching eventually resulted in the founding of Methodism and the Wesleyan tradition.
The 19th century saw a huge number of religious movements in the United States. A Baptist minister by the name of William Miller predicted Christ would come in the 1840s. The Millerites, as they came to be called, were disappointed when it didn't happen--however not all followers of Miller were convinced it was wrong. Adventism arose out of the Millerite movement, the most important of these Adventist groups being the Seventh-Day Adventists founded by Ellen G. White. In the 1820's a young Joseph Smith Jr. from upstate New York claimed God told him that all churches were wrong, and that the true church would be restored under Smith, resulting in the various Latter-Day Saint groups, the largest being Mormonism. Revivals began to crop up throughout the century in a period known as the Second Great Awakening. Among these Revivalists there's Charles Finney, who can be thought of (at least in part) as one of the great-grandfathers of American Evangelicalism. In Ireland an ex-Anglican priest named John Nelson Darby helped found the Plymouth Brethren, with the most distinctive doctrine being the belief in "The Rapture" and a system of theology that would come to be called Dispensationalism. Dispensationalism came to North America through the work of men such as Dwight L. Moody and Cyrus Scofield.
Also in the 19th century there were those from or at least influenced by the Wesleyan tradition emphasizing a doctrine of personal holiness, resulting in groups such as the Nazarenes and Churches of God. Some of these "Holiness Churches" emphasized spiritual, charismatic experiences, such as speaking in tongues. And in 1906 a revival in Azuza Street in San Francisco would give rise to Pentecostal churches such as the Assemblies of God.
The early-mid 20th century would see the rise of the Neo-Evangelical movement, the most well known leader probably being Billy Graham (Neo-Evangelicalism is usually just known as Evangelicalism today). And in the 1960's and 70's the Counter Culture movement would give rise to the Jesus People Movement, and groups such as Calvary Chapel would show up.
Of course, I've been focusing largely on Western, especially American, religious history here. Largely because it's what I'm most familiar with; but also because an argument can be made that a lot of the newer denominations of the past couple hundred years did, in fact, show up or became mostly popular in North America and then spread outside to the rest of the world after that.
I know I haven't really explained the beliefs of any of these groups. But, I wanted to first focus on some of the history here, to get at least a very basic picture of how things came to look the way they do.
-CryptoLutheran
