TL;DR Christian History < TheoLogosSite: what Christians must know

God has a unique way of using rejects and rebels to advance His mission. Even when those people are utterly delusional, He still finds a way to use them.

The original rituals and customs of the Church are extremely ancient traditions connected to Judaism.

The Church inherits those customs, but it’s always flavored by the new generations’ cultures that adopt them.

Frequently, a denomination forms through a specific pattern:

Have a disagreement about something in a different denomination.
Break off and attempt to reconcile that disagreement.
Within a few decades, resist other changes proposed by the younger members.
After enough time, culturally freeze at least some traditions as members oppose new trends and lock habits against changes.
These traditions become the cornerstone of the denomination, with other derivative denominations borrowing from them.

1. Judaism

Ancient Judaism was grounded in God’s established law, which made it unusual compared to any other ancient society. This law depicted many sins, and was the beginning of quite a few implementations of justice that has persisted to this day.

But, further than that, while the Jewish center of worship was a cultural center of society, in many capacities it wasn’t as involved as other religions. Most temples also served as date tracking, weather reports, and even as banks. Other cultures saw the Hebrews as a type of “atheist” because they didn’t display any statues of God.

In 30 AD, the Jews were in a period of constant controversy from a crisis of national identity:

They had been released from Babylon, but were thralls of the largest empire around, and Caesar could heavily define their permitted religious activities.
They were besieged by a melting pot of conflicting values that were mixing into their culture, the most notable being intellectual echoes of Greek thought.
They had a second Temple Herod built that wasn’t as awesome as Solomon’s (and had strings attached because Herod expanded on it).
There were power struggles between that Temple and the relatively newer synagogues over how to conduct services.

In this situation, the Jews attended synagogues ritually, with the approximate format:

The Greeting: a formalized, biblical greeting or salutation, with the congregation saying “Amen”.
A Response: the attendees would respond, often with a chanted or recited Scripture.
Readings and Psalmody: read/chant several passages of Scriptures, interspersed with the congregation’s responding with singing/chanting a Psalm.
Psalms: the Psalms were considered God’s hymnal and were sung/chanted, most of the time without instruments.
Message: an elder/rabbi/teacher would interpret and explain the relevant meaning of the day’s readings.
Prayer: offer prayers on behalf of the people. The Jews considered prayer an act of sacrifice that was pleasing to God. Various portions of Scripture were frequently woven into the prayers.
Benediction: a formal blessing from God by his Word upon His people, with the congregation saying “Amen”.

2. New Judaism

After Jesus left, the remaining Christians (who were technically nothing but a Jewish cult/sect at this point) still went to synagogue to worship the Father, like Jesus had, and were still devout to their synagogue. However, since the rabbis obviously weren’t okay with them worshiping Jesus there, the Messianic Jews followed up by meeting on Sundays to worship Jesus.

On Sundays, they didn’t really have a purpose-built place for worship, and it was either rented or in someone’s home. It consisted of two parts:

“Service of the Word” or “the assembly”, open to everyone.
- Had a gospel presentation/sermon that went to everyone, but also gave at least some comfort to existing believers.
“Service of Thanksgiving”, open only to baptized believers (where unbaptized believers and nonbelievers were dismissed)
- The time together may have started as actually “breaking bread” (i.e., having dinner together), with a wine/bread ritual mixed into it.

The Service of Thanksgiving was a very private, Christians-only event:

Communion/Eucharist was performed at that time, and it may have even been a proper meal (rather the symbolic cup and small pieces of bread represented now).
Later, baptisms became part of that experience as well.

Those Christians were known among society as a very tightly-knit community. This was absolutely unheard-of in the highly stratified slave/foreigner/Roman hierarchy. They greeted each other with a “holy kiss”, which was a common, sincere, and non-sexual act of family affection. The Book of Acts shows how they shared everything together to fulfill everyone’s needs.

Interestingly, their privacy actually created confusion for the Romans:

As a community, they were very close, and greeted each other with a holy kiss.
On the 3rd, 9th, and 30/40th day after a believer passed, Christians would gather at the departed’s tomb, read Scripture, pray together, give money to the poor, and eat a meal together.
Altogether, some Romans had misunderstood (to the point of justifying persecution) that the Christians were cannibals (Eucharist+graves), ate boys baked into bread (baptism+Eucharist), and performed lewd acts with each other (holy kiss+Thanksgiving Service).

It’s worth noting they didn’t have a clergy-laity distinction, which came later. They saw Christianity as a “new priesthood” to the world as an evolution of the Levitical priesthood to the nation of Israel, with Jesus as the High Priest (Hebrews 4:14-16). They were responsible to curate and demonstrate morality for the rest of the world.

The logical outflow of the “new priesthood” thought was that Jesus returning, and His eventual reign, was a coming reality more than merely something to hope for. Death wasn’t as much “permanent departure” as much as “will return soon”, and they didn’t believe in a Rapture.

Once the new believers started noticing that Jesus was not coming back right away, some disciples recorded what they had experienced, mostly in their native language of Greek, but some in Aramaic. These passed around through the persecuted Church, and eventually became the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This included plenty of other letters, with some of them becoming canonized later as well.

While it’s lost to history, there was a Greek version of the Bible called the Septuagint, first completed in 132 AD. Its entire purpose was to create a Bible in the plain language of the time.

By the year 200 AD, the Christians had added quite a few things, though their religion was still certainly at least partly illegal:

In between the assembly and the Service of Thanksgiving, they added “The Peace”, which was an important intermission that let people greet each other and for believers to reconcile conflicts with other believers.
The Service of Thanksgiving developed a sequence of rituals:
1. Greeting: a formalized salutation, usually taken from Scripture.
2. Response: congregation recites a memorized Bible verse that acknowledged God’s awesome wonders and works.
3. Offering: often a special mid-worship time to collect funds to support the pastors, teachers/evangelists, widows, orphans, and the poor of God’s people.
  - Local church Christians had priority, but collections also went to other churches in different cities.
  - Any additional funds were occasionally used to serve the local community’s needy.
4. Eucharist Prayer: the president (the elder who presided over the worship) would offer thanks to God for Jesus Christ, and ask God to bless the bread and wine to spiritually feed God’s people in their faith.
5. Communion: offering prayers to God, then offering the elements, then ceremonially breaking the bread and the congregation receiving it.
6. Dismissing Benediction: after everyone had taken the bread and wine, an elder (typically the president) would pronounce a biblical blessing on God’s people.
The Service of Thanksgiving also often included renouncing Satan and all his works, making a statement of faith, water baptisms of converts, and receiving anointing with oil.
The ritual of gathering at believers’ tombs shortly after they died became annual feasts to celebrate specific martyrs.

The original, casual, personal Christian experience had absorbed some teachings of Judaism, then quickly evolved into a more formalized structure. Many of the rituals were direct remixes of the synagogue tradition. Moreover, the centuries added many, many more to Catholic traditions.

Over time, the church buildings themselves started representing a similar vein of symbolism to the Jewish Temple:

The building became the “holy place” (instead of the Bible’s clarification that our bodies are temples of the Most High).
There’s a sanctuary for the clergy (like the Holy Place).
A nave is for the laity and nonbelievers (like the Court of Women).
There’s a narthex for anyone (like the Court of the Gentiles).

3. An Illegal Religion

Naturally, some believers were more educated or gifted than others, but the bar to join was relatively low. If you observe the elders/deacons requirements, anyone who is keeping themselves relatively pure morally would qualify to become a leader. The entire message of Christ, mixed with its culture, heavily attracted the poor, slaves, and women.

Politically, Rome didn’t know what to do with them. They stubbornly honored their beliefs in God (which defied the Roman pantheon), but they were excellent Roman citizens. Their general approach was to leave them alone, but heavily persecute them for any law they may potentially have broken.

In 62 AD, Rome had a massive fire, potentially set by the Roman emperor Nero, who blamed Christians for the fire. This forced heavy persecution on the Christians, and their response created massive influence as they were scattered across the Roman Empire.

The Christian Church was not popular with Rome, and had been at least partly attributed to why Rome had fallen as an empire. This became especially toxic for Christians between the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 and the rise of Diocletian in 284.

Philip the Arab was a Roman Emperor who ruled from 244 to 249. He was implied to be Christian, but was still Pontifex Maximus (i.e., a god who had the right to go to any temple). It is very likely the attribution of Communion/Eucharist being dangerous to the soul was directly tied to his attempt to enter a Christian Service of Thanksgiving.

The first incident of widespread, direct Christian-targeted persecution came through Decius in 250, though he spared Jews from it because he considered their religion to be more legitimate because it was older.

It’s worth noting that the sinfulness of the Church was also present. Christian culture had adopted the practice of using girls for sexual activities, as well as a legitimate abortion issue.

4. A Legal Religion

The actual canonization of the Bible emerged as a natural community-led movement, and it’s difficult to place when the 27 books of the New Testament were first established, though Origen of Alexandria may have first compiled it around 250 AD.

By the time Constantine came into power in 306, about 40% of Rome was Christian.

Christian evangelism was highly prominent everywhere.
The poor, slave class, and women were largely Christian.
Christians were shown as largely law-abiding citizens, with the small exceptions of the Montanists, Novationists, and later the Donatists.
Christian prayers and miracles often worked, which demonstrated the validity of the message.
As further evidence of their faith, many of them were dying in the arena.

Constantine himself practiced Sol Invictus, which was a less-popular worship of a sun god. But, he became more sympathetic to Christians around the year 313 AD:

As a child, Constantine had “seen” Apollos or Mithros, so he had a strong sense of the miraculous.
Before a decisive battle with Maximius over 2/3 of the Roman Empire, he saw a vision of something like Jesus, the cross, or the Greek letters for Jesus, which he attributed to his victory.
The Edict of Milan was part of a peace treaty with Licinius, who had the final 1/3 of the Empire. It was one of the first legal documents to enforce fair treatment of Christians (though technically not the first, which was Galerius’ Edict of Toleration a few years prior).
He built multiple basilicas of the saints, and established sites showing Jesus’ walk by his mother’s guidance (which are still in Israel to this day).
Constantine used a lot of solar imagery, which was likely merging Christianity and Sol Invictus, and it has persisted in Catholic tradition.
He set Sunday as the day of rest for all Christians, and assembled a canon of the Bible.
Constantine sought for Christians to peaceably work out their differences, and financed the first Ecumenical Council, which was able to get all Christians to theologically agree on issues about core doctrine, especially on Arianism.
In many ways, he broke the precedent of the Roman emperors of the past, which utterly destroyed the Roman Empire while also bringing a Catholic presence into the political void.

The new freedoms for Christians in the 4th century opened up room for the Church to expand. This expansion meant that the Church leadership became a modified form of Roman government (with the pope and emperor side-by-side), and the theological discussions added in a hefty grade of Greek philosophy.

Ecumenical Council #1 in 325 AD – the First Council of Nicaea, feat. Pope Sylvester I and Emperor Constantine and 318 bishops present

Condemned Arianism as heresy (that Jesus was absolutely separate from the Father)
Created the Nicene Creed
Resolved some petty disputes about what day to celebrate Easter

However, Constantine’s three children were bitter over him killing their mother in 327, and the government descended into standard Roman chaos again after Constantine died in 337. But, Roman politics had now become inextricably commingled with Christianity.

In the year 380 AD, emperor Theodosius I declared Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, which destroyed the last portions of Rome’s polytheistic culture until its official end in 476 AD by instituting the Roman Catholic Church.

When everyone is a Christian, most people really aren’t, and from 380 AD onward the world’s culture had completely merged with Christian culture. The religion of the Hebrew God wasn’t technically Jewish-inspired anymore after that, and pagan influence became ubiquitous among Christian culture. While some Christian leaders stood out among the rest (e.g., Augustine of Hippo starting in 386), the pagan influence would continue.

It’s worth noting that the attitude of the Church at this time was that the State was responsible to lead the flock to Christ alongside the church leadership. Across centuries, they suppressed pagans, Jews, and later Muslims, though they were a bit more favorable toward Jews among the rest.

Ecumenical Council #2 in 381 AD – the First General Council of Constantinople, feat. Pope Damasus I and Emperor Theodosius w/ 150 bishops

Condemned the Arianism as heresy (again)
Condemned Macedonianism as heresy (that the Holy Spirit isn’t equal to the other persons of the Trinity)
Modified the Nicene Creed to reflect the Holy Spirit as well

Ecumenical Council #3 in 431 AD – the Council of Ephesus, feat. St. Cyril of Alexandria, representing Pope Celestine I and Emperor Theodosius II w/ 200 bishops

Condemned Nestorianism as heresy (that Jesus wasn’t 100% God and 100% man), who eventually became groups like the Assyrian Church of the East
Defined Mary as God’s holy Mother
Condemned Pelagianism as heresy (that we simply must choose God and don’t need His grace for salvation)

Ecumenical Council #4 in 451 AD – the Council of Chalcedon feat. Pope Leo the Great and Emperor Marcian w/ 150 bishops

Condemned Monphysitism/Eutychianism (that Jesus’ God and human natures were one and the same), who eventually became groups like the Coptic Orthodox

Ecumenical Council #5 in 553 AD – the Second Council of Constantinople, feat. Pope Vigilius and Emperor Justinian I w/ 165 bishops

Condemned the Three Chapters (a body of 3 works by different people that made a gigantic controversy) as perverted by Nestorianism
Condemned Origenism as heresy (that the Bible is merely symbolic and not necessarily literal)
Reaffirmed the first 4 Councils’ authority, especially #4, to crush arguments against it

Ecumenical Council #6 in 680 AD – The Third Council of Constantinople, feat. Pope Agatho and Emperor Constantine IV w/ 174 bishops

Condemned Monothelitism as heresy (that Jesus only has one will instead of two broken out as God vs. human)
Censured Pope Honorius I for making a vague statement which wasn’t infallible (which would risk the doctrine of papal infallibility)

Ecumenical Council #7 in 787 AD – The Second Council of Nicaea, feat. Pope Hadrian I and Emperor Constantine VI and his mom w/ 300–367 bishops

Condemned iconoclasm as heresy (that using images constitutes idolatry) and venerated holy images
Condemned Adoptionism as heresy (that Jesus wasn’t the natural Son of God, but was only adopted)

Ecumenical Council #8 in 869 AD – The Fourth Council of Constantinople, feat. Pope Hadrian II and Emperor Basil w/ 102 bishops, 3 papal legates, and 4 patriarchs

Condemned Adoptionism (again)
Deposed Photius as the patriarch of Constantinople (to take a side in whether the Church had influence in the East’s political power, which was all part of the Photian Schism)

5. Breakup #1 – Different Catholic Churches

The issues with deposing Photius were among a vast range of cultural differences between the East and West Catholic Church. The region we know as Russia had just come under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church ~950 AD, and they weren’t too happy with some ways the centralized authority went back to Rome.

This all came to a conflict in 1054, where the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches broke apart in the Great Schism.

From the outside, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox are mostly the same, though the Orthodox priesthood tends to grow grandiose beards. Eastern Orthodox had some smaller adaptations to Ecumenical Council #6, and there was also a tremendous amount of contention over the filioque, which essentially argues over 3 words in the Nicene Creed, and there were quite a few political battles regarding the precise authority over the Pope.

Eastern Orthodox ended up freezing their cultural values around the year 800 AD or so, and hasn’t changed much with Roman Catholic trends since then.

6. More Politics

From this point, the Councils took on a different tone. Instead of focusing on high-ended theological doctrines, they started wrestling more often with the mundane political activities of everyday Catholics.

Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council #9 in 1123 – The First Lateran Council, feat. Pope Callistus II and Emperor Henry V w/ ~900 bishops and abbots

Confirmed the Concordat of Worms (basically prevented the Emperor from appointing clergy, but let the Emperor be present to influence the election of that clergy)
Decided to recover the geographical state of Israel from Muslim control with a crusade

Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council #10 in 1139 – The Second Lateran Council, feat. Pope Innocent II and Emperor Conrad III w/ ~1000 prelates (with the effects of the recently deceased antipope Anacletus II)

Condemned Arnoldism as heresy (that the Catholic Church should renounce property ownership)
Reaffirmed baptism of infants
Reaffirmed the sacramental nature of priesthood, marriage, and the Eucharist
Declared that priests can’t have valid marriages

7. The Protestant Prototype

The Roman Catholic Church was starting to develop an unfavorable reputation among certain fringe groups. Their attempts to suppress them only worked temporarily.

Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council #11 in 1179 – The Third Lateran Council, feat. Pope Alexander III and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa w/ 302 bishops

Required 2/3 of the cardinals vote to elect the pope
Condemned Waldensianism as heresy (a proto-Protestantism that had doctrinal differences with the Catholic Church)
Condemned Albigensianism as heresy (probably a proto-Protestantism value system, though we don’t know because they were mostly destroyed and the surviving documentation was from their opponents)
There were numerous directives for moral reformation

Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council #12 in 1215 – The Fourth Lateran Council, feat. Pope Innocent III and Emperor Otto IV w/ 72 archbishops, 412 bishops, and 800 abbots (very significant council in Middle Ages history)

Ruled 70 decrees including use of church property, tithes, judicial procedures, and requirements to appoint church leadership
Ordered Jews and Saracens to wear distinctive clothing
Required all Catholics to make an annual confession and receive Communion during the Lenten season
Officially defined the Eucharist as transubstantiation (that the wine and bread become Jesus’ blood and body)
Condemned Albigensianism as heresy (again)
Prepared for another crusade to claim Israel

Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council #13 in 1245 – The First Council of Lyons feat. Pope Innocent IV and Emperors Frederick II, Baldwin II, and St. Louis w/ 140 bishops

Excommunicated and deposed Emperor Frederick II
Prepared for another crusade to claim Israel

Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council #14 in 1274 – The Second Council of Lyons feat. Pope Gregory X and Emperor Rudolf I w/ 15 cardinals, 500 bishops, and >1000 dignitaries

Made new rules for electing the pope
Temporarily reunified the Greek Church with Rome
Prepared for another crusade to claim Israel

Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council #15 in 1311 – The Council of Vienne feat. Pope Clement V and Emperors Henry VII, Philip IV, Edward II, and James II w/ 114 or 300 bishops

Suppressed the Knights Templars, Fraticelli, Beghards, and Beguines (for various political reasons)
Made decrees to create moral reform
Instituted teaching Oriental languages in universities
Prepared for another crusade to claim Israel

In the 1370s and 1380s, university theologians and intellectuals in Prague started adopting conciliarism (that an ecumenical council should have more authority than the pope) and called for the priesthood to live less extravagant lifestyles, educate poorly educated priests, and practice the Eucharist more often.

In 1412 in Prague, Jan Hus criticized selling indulgences (paying money to atone for sins instead of paying later in the afterlife). Before he left, he appealed to Jesus Christ as the supreme judge (which, in effect, bypassed the laws and structures of the Church). Once he traveled the countryside, he saw the lack of education for the poorer Czech priesthood, and started writing many texts in Czech instead of Latin (the dead language that most Catholic texts were written in).

Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council #16 in 1414 – The Council of Constance feat. Popes Gregory XII and Emperor Sigismund w/ ~600 people

There were leadership scuffles, and so there were 2 popes, then 3 popes at a certain point when the cardinals tried to resolve the problem, and the council somewhat resolved the dispute
Condemned John Wycliffe as a heretic, who taught sola scriptura
Condemned the Moravian movement as heresy (originally from Jan Hus’ ideas)

Jan Hus’ execution in 1415 served to radicalize his followers, and it developed into the Hussite Wars in Bohemia from 1420 to 1438, built on the Four Articles of Prague:

People can be free to preach the Word of God.
Anyone can take the communion of the chalice.
The clergy can’t have expensive things or run the government.
Anyone, no matter who, will be strictly punished for “mortal public sins” (i.e., really obviously bad things).

Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council #17 in 1438-1443 – The Council of Basle/Ferrara/Florence feat. Pope Eugene IV and Emperors Albert II and Frederick III w/ ~117 people

Bohemia was having issues, so the council was established to pacify it
Reaffirmed the pope’s authority over an ecumenical council
Temporarily reunified part of the Greek Church with Rome

Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council #18 in 1512-1517 – The Fifth Lateran Council feat. Popes Julius II and Leo X and Emperor Maximilian I w/ 15 cardinals and ~80 bishops/archbishops (The last straw for what later became the Protestants)

A lot of miscellaneous political moves, partly because the reforms of Councils #16 and #17 didn’t take
Prepared for another crusade to claim Israel (which didn’t happen)
Reaffirmed the doctrine of indulgences
Attempted to reform the Church, but it didn’t work

8. Breakup #2 – The Explosion

In 1517 in Germany, Martin Luther very bluntly asserted his opinion of the Catholic Church’s doctrines with 95 Theses:

1-4 – we must repent ourselves and act on it, and the clergy aren’t part of that experience
5-7 – the pope can only announce God’s forgiveness of sin, but can’t do it himself
8-13 – the church leadership can’t do anything directly about a person’s spiritual payment for sins
14-29 – only God manages purgatory, so church leadership can’t change anything about it
30-95 – indulgences are a corrupt money-extraction scheme, and following Christ is the only way to enter heaven

There were echoes of resistance against the Catholic Church before Martin Luther, but his message was the trigger to the Protestant Reformation.

In 1521, Emperor Charles V issued the Diet/Edict of Worms that made this contrast abundantly clear: nobody was allowed to read or distribute Luther’s ideas.

In 1522, Martin Luther went on to translate the Bible into German, which was the plain language of the region.

In 1525, William Tyndale translated the Bible into English, which was the plain language of that region.

In the 1520s, Hundrych Zwingli in Switzerland publicly attacked the custom of fasting during Lent. He discussed a wide variety of topics, including clerical marriage and the use of images in places of worship. He also broke the tradition of the Catholic Mass by using biblical exegesis to go systematically through the entire New Testament, and introduced a new communion liturgy to replace the Mass. While Luther started Protestantism, Zwingli started the Anabaptists.

There was another problem the Catholic Church hadn’t considered, starting in 1492. Christopher Columbus had discovered the New World, and people were starting to colonize it. This meant anyone willing to take on the risks of starting life in a new place could be as self-governing as they wanted, with much less religious influence from the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church’s authority was under attack from more than the heretics, too. Henry VIII wanted to legally divorce, but the Catholic Church forbade it, so he simply broke off the Church of England to fulfill his specific desire (which had been around but until that point was aligned with the Roman Catholic Church).

Lutherans closely followed and advanced the idea of Pietism (individual piety and devotion to God is most important, not the corporate body of worshipers), and they culturally froze around the year 1530.

9. The Protestant Renaissance

The Protestant/Radical Reformation opened the floodgates for new ideas, and there were a few value systems that emerged within Protestant denominations:

Restorationism/Restitutionism/Christian Primitivism – the Christian Church should be restored back to the way the early Church did things.
Lesser Magistrate Doctrine – the lower-ranking ruler has the right and responsibility under certain ethical situations to resist a higher-ranking ruler.

In 1527, the Hutterites (a type of Anabaptist) created the Schleitheim Confession, probably written by Michael Sattler. It had 7 articles, written during a time of extreme persecution, and forces a culture that’s relatively ascetic and not very influential:

Baptism should only be for people who consciously believe in Christ and repent, and specifically denounces infant baptism.
A Christian should be privately admonished twice, but the third time openly disciplined and excommunicated, and always before breaking bread to preserve the unity and purity of the Body of Christ.
Only people baptized in the Body of Christ are members of the Body, and only they can take part in Communion.
The Christian community should never associate with people who are rebellious against God, which includes organizations, works, church services, meetings, and civil affairs.
All church leaders must have a good reputation, as described in Scripture, and are responsible for teaching, publicly reading Scripture, discipline, applying bans, leading in prayer, and performing sacraments. The church must support them, but they must also be disciplined if they sin.
A Christian must never be violent, which also means they must never run a government, since a government official is required to sometimes administer violence.
A Christian must never swear on an oath or make a contract, and must instead be completely honest.

Starting in 1536, John Calvin mixed his ideas into the dialogue. Calvinism stood strongly against any assertion of the Church’s inherent authority, and it developed into the Reformed denomination. As a value system, it’s theologically very broad, but the denomination is culturally frozen around 1550.

The Presbyterians started in the 1560s as Scots who were heavily influenced by John Calvin’s Reformed values. They have had many transformations throughout the centuries.

All throughout the 1500s, the Anabaptists were relentlessly persecuted, sometimes by both the Protestants and Catholics. The Mennonites were some of the most successful Anabaptists, and many of them escaped by fleeing Europe (many of them settling in the New World) and culturally froze against most technology made after that time.

Some people tried to create a middle road between the two opposing views, and that hybrid became Anglican/Episcopal. Their value system was very conflicted (since it was a hybrid of two generally distinct cultures), and got worse over the centuries as the political unrest in the colonies forced Christians to choose sides.

The Puritans were a vaguely defined but highly influential group who worked for a few centuries to remove the Church of England’s Catholic influence. However, their purposes changed dramatically once they settled in New England’s colonies, and they were all called some other denomination by 1700.

Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council #19 in 1545-1549 – The Council of Trent, feat. Popes Paul III, Julius III, Pius IV and Emperors Charles V and Ferdinand I w/ 5 cardinal legates, 3 patriarchs, 33 archbishops, 235 bishops, 7 abbots, 7 generals of monastic orders, and 160 doctors of divinity

Reaffirmed teachings on almost everything Protestants had problems with:
- The role of the Bible and Tradition
- Sin and grace, including how venial sins worked (“lesser” sins)
- Justification by faith, but not “faith alone“
- Transubstantiation is not Aristotelian pseudo-philosophy and the Mass is a sacrifice
- Clarifications about purgatory and the importance of indulgences connected with it
- The pope’s 100% legitimate jurisdiction
Affirmed the authority of the Deuterocanon (the “Apocrypha” from Protestants, a collection of ancient Jewish writings written between 300 and 30 BC that Hebrews hadn’t considered Scripture)
Initiated the Counter-Reformation, which created dramatic reforms of how church was conducted
Ordered establishing seminaries to train future priests
By Pope Gregory XIII’s request, corrected errors to the Julian calendar that made scheduling Easter every year easier (the Gregorian calendar we still use today)

The discussion of sin was a key part of the Reformation. Catholics at Trent said that righteousness was imported to people when they became Christians, while Luther and the Protestants asserted that righteousness was imported (“imputed”). For Protestants, then, holiness becomes a separate work entirely, and also implies that saints can’t exist (since everyone is still a sinner) and purgatory doesn’t make sense (since we’d all go there after dying).

Around 1604, King James saw some issues with the precision of the current English translations (most notably because he wanted to know what the Bible said about divorce), so he paid to have the Bible translated more reliably, which created the King James Version.

Certain leftist ideals mixed into Christian doctrine as early as the 1620s that emphasized completely removing the clergy and strongly emphasizing Bible study, all for the purpose of bringing about God’s Millennial Kingdom. That group became known as the Seekers, and they had a few other odd ideas, like mortalism (that upon death the soul sleeps until Jesus comes back) and rejecting the Trinity.

After the English Civil War from 1642-1651, many dissenting Christian groups emerged, such as the Quakers (who drew from many of the Seekers). For the time, they established a very emotional and romanticized spiritual tradition.

In 1693, Jakob Ammann tried to reform the Mennonite community to include shunning, hold communion more often, and other differences (such as less gaudy colors in clothing). This didn’t work out, so Ammann’s followers became the Amish.

The First Great Awakening was a movement in the 1730s and 1740s. It created a clear dividing line, and many of the existing denominations believed it was supporting fanaticism. It drew in relatively uneducated but very enthusiastic teachers, and started the Evangelical movement (an emphasis on evangelism efforts toward non-believers). The original denominations before this movement culturally froze in the mid-1700’s.

It played a major role in women’s’ lives, where they started focusing more on discussing their feelings with each other, as well as becoming more independent in their decisions.
The ideas of the First Great Awakening were highly influential in starting the abolitionist movement (getting rid of the institution of slavery).

The Methodists started largely from John Wesley in the mid-1730’s as a derivative of the Anglicans.

10. The Protestant Romantic Era

The Second Great Awakening came between the 1790s and 1840s. It was an even further emotional appeal that prioritized supernatural experience and rejected values from the Age of Reason (e.g., skepticism, deism, rationalism). The focus was to renounce understanding in the pursuit of a more meaningful experience.

Almost all the denominations from before this time culturally froze somewhere in the mid-1800’s:

The Stone-Campbell/Restoration Movement arose from Barton Stone (which eventually became the Churches of Christ) and Thomas Campbell and his son Alexander (who eventually became the Disciples of Christ). They were hyper-restorationist and tried to reproduce the original New Testament Church.
The Advent movement was led by people such as William Miller, who focused heavily on Jesus’ second coming, which developed after 1840 into the Millerites, who spent a lot of time setting timetables for when He was coming back.
The English Separatist movement in the late 1600s had created a group theologically similar to the Reformed, and they officially became the Baptists during the Second Great Awakening.
The Plymouth Brethren formed from Anglicans in the late 1820s as a coalition of like-minded believers grounded on sola scriptura. They’re so loosely connected that they still see themselves more as a network than a proper denomination.
The Latter Day Saints (Mormons) also arose during the Second Great Awakening, preaching a different Gospel that drew from an entirely new set of Scriptures.
Around this time, the Anabaptists created the Apostolic Christian Church, who practice adult baptism, members-only communion, greeting other Christians with a kiss, worship with limited or no musical instruments, women wearing head coverings during services. There are at least 5 divisions, with one of them in the early 1900s coming over whether some European customs were acceptable (specifically, having a mustache).

During the Second Great Awakening, the Methodists started the Holiness Movement that advanced “second work” theology (that the baptism of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost in Acts 2:1-4 is a uniquely different work for believers from God than salvation). A secondary effect of “second work” theology is the belief of Christian perfection (that Christians could become perfect in this life with the correct spiritual treatment). The consequences of this theology added a performative aspect to Christian traditions, the most sensational of the time coming from camp meetings:

In places like the unsettled USA, many people would move into an area but wouldn’t have any religious community.
On a religious festival day, a Christian denomination would hold an event where people could arrive and listen to someone preach.
The service would start with a solemn and ceremonious approach, with a preacher delivering a homily mixed into it.
As the preacher grew tired after a few hours, another preacher would swap out with them.
Over the days of the ceremony, the message and its attitude would become increasingly impassioned as they depicted dramatically scaling, vivid demonstrations of the Christian life and afterlife (especially hell).
Eventually, the congregants would start screaming during the sermon, sobbing uncontrollably, grabbing their neighbors and begging them desperately to repent, or running in terror throughout the crowd.

The Millerites predicted Jesus was coming back on October 22, 1844, after a few other recent false predictions. That didn’t really work out for them, and created the Great Disappointment, but the Seventh-Day Adventists were strengthened to believe in the “shut-door” concept (that Jesus had come, and had “shut the door” to the foolish believers like the Parable of the Virgins in Matthew 25:1-13).

The South African Revival of 1860 brought plenty of Christian culture to Africa, with Andrew Murray being a significant influence on it, as well as David Livingstone traveling all over the continent.

11. The Protestant Post-Modernism

The Third Great Awakening came between the late 1850s and late 1920s, and had a strong attitude driven by the belief that Jesus would only come after a millennium of a golden age of humanity.

They focused heavily on the Social Gospel (a more practical approach to spirituality focused on activism), and endorsed quite a few political/moral causes such as abolitionism (which at least partly provoked the American Civil War) and prohibition (preventing people from drinking alcohol).
The Pentecostals arose in the early 1890s from R.C. Horner asserting there was a third work of the Holy Spirit beyond baptism of the Holy Spirit: speaking in tongues. They exploded in membership and involvement during the Azusa Street Revival, which was regarded by most Christianity at the time as outrageous and unorthodox. Some Pentecostal, like Oneness Pentecostals, believe that God isn’t a Trinity.
There were plenty of less-than-Gospel-centered denominations/cults that arose, including:
- Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science
- The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society’s Jehovah’s Witnesses by Charles Taze Russell as an offshoot of the Millerites
- The New Thought movement’s Unity Church and Church of Divine Science
The Mission Friends based in Sweden, among many others, were interdenominational pietists devoted to evangelism. In 1884 in Boone, Iowa the Swedish Evangelical Free Mission shared fellowship with a few Lutheran groups that year, then across a few places all over the USA, then expanded from there to become the Evangelical Free Church.
In 1893, the Evangelical Church of West Africa was established by three white people who wanted to spread the Gospel to West Africa on an “evangelical suicide mission” from the risks of malaria known at the time. They’ve since expanded their name to become Evangelical Church Winnning All (ECWA) to reflect their broader mission.
The Manchurian Revival was a series of events in 1908 that rapidly invoked a Christian presence in the modern-day Liaoning Provide of China.
Around 1920, Bruderhof Communities were established, which were communal living arrangements away from the rest of society as a new Hutterite movement.
The Christian Catholic Apostolic Church was founded by John Alexander Dowie in 1896 by founding a city called Zion in Illinois, which was an attempt to create God’s Kingdom on earth. They emphasized faith healing, not eating pork, and wearing white robes. They weren’t relevant in the USA much, but had a profound impact on Africa:
- In 1908, the Apostolic Faith Movement was founded in Africa as a Pentecostal amalgamation that combined the South African Revival of 1860 with the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church. Other African Independent Churches arose with a similar background.
- The Zion Christian Church was founded by Engenas Lekganyane in 1910 from his claim he had received a revelation from God. His life and subsequent succession of leadership is marked by constant conflict, including conflicting testimonies.

Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council #20 in 1869-1870 – The First Vatican Council feat. Pope Pius IX w/ 6 archbishop-princes, 49 cardinals, 11 patriarchs, 680 archbishops/bishops, 28 abbots, and 9 generals of orders

Decreed important canons relating to the Faith and the constitution of the Church
Decreed the pope is infallible when speaking “ex cathedra” (from “the chair”)

The Church of the Nazarene arose as a set of mergers of various Holiness Movement churches, starting in 1907, though they slowed down on the mergers around the end of the late-2000’s. Broadly, this was one of the first churches that pioneered the Ecumenical Movement (where churches try to come together and partner even though they’re from different cultures).

In 1954, China’s new government established the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, which taught a form of Christianity that was aligned with the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. It was disbanded during their Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, then brought back in 1979 with even more government oversight. It veers very close, if not outright, into cult territory.

The Fourth Great Awakening happened in the late 1960s through the early 1970s following World War II. During this time, many members of “mainline” Protestant churches left and went to the most conservative ones (e.g., Baptists, Lutherans), and is where most of the denominations of the Third Great Awakening culturally froze.

Their focus was from a reshaping of Evangelical thought with people like Billy Graham, with a strengthened emphasis on simplified Gospel presentation and having a personal relationship with Jesus. New media technology meant “megachurches” were more capable to use that presence to draw in followers, so church attendance was heavily defined by high-quality advertising.
Megachurches were also able to direct their congregations toward political (typically conservative) purposes more than before.
Many “non-denominational” denominations rose during the Jesus Movement, started by Calvary Chapel with Chuck Smith.
The Charismatic movement was established as “second-wave Pentecostalism”, which heavily emphasized the previous Pentecostal “baptism of the Holy Spirit”. Most of them propagated with tent revivals, which involved the Holiness Movement’s camp meetings, but with far more theatrical performance and spectacle involved.

Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council #21 in 1962-1965 – The Second Vatican Council, feat. Popes John XXIII and Paul VI w/ 2,860 leaders

Issued documents on renewing and reforming the Roman Catholic Church, especially with the new technologies and trends
Established the Mass in the language of its environment, instead of simply in Latin

12. The Protestant Post-Post-Modernism

The World Assemblies of God Fellowship arose in 1989 as a cooperative of over 170 Pentecostal denominations, though it had existed on a much smaller scale since 1914. It served to give more connection and collaboration across the groups, given their cultural differences and shared theology.

The New Apostolic Movement spun off the Charismatic movements and was coined in 1996, which indicate that there are new Apostles that God appoints as an authority to run the Church. From one angle, their values could be considered a cult.

The Neo-charismatic Movement started in the early 1980s with groups like the Vineyard Movement that deviated from Calvary Chapel, and vastly expanded the scope of Charismatic spirituality.

Among other things, “third-wave Pentecostalism” promoted all varieties of miraculous healing (including as an evangelistic technique), heavy emphasis on spiritual warfare, and other odd phenomena of the Holy Spirit such as “spiritual laughter”.
Organizationally, they often have little to no formal structure to their meetings whatsoever or any cohesive hierarchy, and their theology tends to be anti-intellectual.

The Hebrew Roots Movement/Awakening emerged in 1997 when Dean Cozzens of Open Church Ministries indicated that returning to living according to the Torah was the final stage of empowerment after 3 other movements: the Pentecostal movement, faith healing, and the Charismatic movement. The movement implies the Torah is a clear way for all people (Jews and Gentiles) to live and follow God, though they typically don’t imply it’s required for salvation.

The Online Church movement started in 2007 when Life Covenant Church broadcast their church services within the online game Second Life. They renamed themselves Life.Church later, and devote their efforts to almost strictly online church attendance. The movement expanded when COVID-19 happened in 2020 and everyone worldwide was forced to stay indoors.

More to come, since I’m writing this February 2023.

??. Jesus Comes Back

At some point, Jesus will come back, and will establish His Kingdom. Most of the denominations won’t historically survive the transition.