re: Church Politics - Yet another Presbyterian denomination…PCUSA to EPC to WCA

Mainstream Protestants have literally strangled their denominations to death by secularizing their foundational dogma…

[quote]Believing that Jesus is the son of God does not save you. Making him the Lord of your life does. Although the first thing listed is a necessary requirement, it is not sufficient on its own.[/]

Ok give me an image of what this looks like? Tell me what your life looks like and how you’ve accomplished this?

And let me edit this to say don’t waste your time because you haven’t. You are still working to enter God’s sabbath rest which has been fulfilled in Christ. The gospel is the good news that Christ saves sinners who believe in him. Not some works based system of behavioral standards and procedures. Thats not good news. That just a new law that no one can keep.

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Im a PCA member. The EPC is pretty good except for letting individual churches rule on egalitarianism.

I know the PCA has its problem children, but not sure we needed another Presbyterian denomination.

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I'm an ECO member. I honestly align more with PCA (complementarianism vs egalitarianism), but the local PCA church's service is a little more contemporary than I like... Like no choir, guitars, worship leaders, minister isn't robed, etc.... We've got an organ, choir, rarely sing a hymn less than 100 years old, sing every verse, bigger into the Scottish heritage, etc.

I think we (PCA, ECO, EPC) are all aligned in the fact we don't want anything to do PC(USA) though.

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What do you know about faith? You support a fake, gay preacher lol you are just wasting your time

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I don’t know of any fake, gay preachers, fwiw.

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If they actually did this they’d be joining the Roman Catholic Church.

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Nah, the RCC of today looks almost nothing like the Church from the first few centuries.

The point of the Protestant Reformation was to return to the roots of the apostles by cutting away the fat of tradition and reclaim the Faith according to the Scriptures.

Protestants and Catholics can both say there is one holy and apostolic Church, but only Protestants are referring to the Faith delivered by the apostles. Catholics are referring to lineage, like the Jews who claimed succession from Abraham but rejected the teaching of God in favor of their traditions. Jesus and Paul corrected that notion.

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The gospel saves souls. Religious names, titles and denominations do not.

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Thank you for saying that. Most of what I see in the Catholic vs. everyone else discussions is very childish. Jesus loves you and wants you to love others. Jesus would quickly shut down all of these prideful voices about how they're right and others are wrong. We're all God's children. It's not about you.

A few comments before my main OP.

Huge Presbyterian churches are very common in Birmingham where I live. The three most common types of churches here are Non Denominational, Baptist, and Presbyterian from what I typically see.

Most non-denominational churches tend to follow the Baptist doctrine. If you pull up their websites and read their beliefs, it is usually the same. The non-denominational church I attend follows the Southern Baptist Faith and Message Statement.

Sermons in every Protestant church I have been a member of take a section or chapter of scripture and teach the meaning and application. Usually there are months of sermons dedicated to going through each chapter of a book. For example, a church may dedicate and entire quarter to going through the book of Exodus or Ephesians. They are not Ted Talks at churches I have been a member of.

Main Point -

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I don’t get Protestantism.

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Protestants don’t get the non-scriptural practices of Catholicism. With that stated, the elephant in the room that stands out to Protestants is the practice of praying to Mary and the saints.

I find the origin of differences in Christian theological practices interesting. I was recently curious as to how and when Catholics (or early church in general since that was all there was for centuries) made the decision to begin to pray to Mary and what the theological driver was. The link below is a good summary of when and how it came into practice. Basically the author believes giving Mary greater recognition was meant to dispel the heretics that were promoting that Jesus was not born and showed up directly appearing in human form only. This gradually resulted in the church aiding the dispelling of this by placing a higher emphasis on Mary and proclaiming her as the mother of God. The type of arguments over Jesus’ humanity and divinity were no longer being debated by the church at the time of the Reformation and the practice certainly didn’t exist for the first 500 years or so after Christ and there is no scriptural basis for the praying to Mary, so the practice was dropped by the Reformers.

When did the practice of praying to Mary begin?

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and the obviously incorrect teaching that she remained a virgin her whole life.

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Luther, Calvin, Zwingli all held this view.

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Exactly.

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I believe if more persons actually studied the history of the Church that they would profess a faith much closer to that of Roman Catholicism, and, dare I say, come home.

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The Protestant argument would be if more Catholics studied the scripture, they would notice major discrepancies between what they practice and scripture, and dare say, would demand reform. There are lots of Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants that don’t study, read, or know the scripture or the basis of what they pseudo practice. It is a universal issue.