Re: Need clarity about the christian family tree.
littlek wrote:I'm reading a book about the history of education in the US and I am bafled (once again) by all the sects of christianity. The author talks about the heavy majority of protestants in the early days and also talks of a slew of sects as if they were all the same. So, I ask you, are the following all subsets of the protestant sect?:
puritan
quaker
baptiste
presbyterian
(I thought I had more, but I lost my list)
After Martin Luther, when the Protestant Reformation took off big time, The most influential theologian was John Calvin. Although many modern fundamentalists claim that they reject Calvinism, it is at the heart of a great many fundamentalist creeds, and they only object to the Calvinist precept of predestination.
John Knox had visited Calvin's "godly republic" which he had founded at Geneva with Ulrich Zwingli. He returned to northern England, and then moved to Scotland, where he founded the Scottish Kirk, which became the established church of Scotland during the regency of Mary of Guise (early 16th century--Mary Queen of Scots, who became queen when she was just six days old, her father James V dying immediately after her birth, was raised in France from age five, and later married the short-lived King Francis II of France). The Calvinism espoused by John Knox spread south of the border into England, and adherents of the Church of England called the followers of Calvin and Knox "Puritans" in derision. But those boys wore the title as a badge of honor, and called one another Puritans. Eventully, the Scots Kirk became the Presbyterians, based on the term presbyter, meaning an elder of the church--the point was that the church was governed by the elders of the congregations. The Presbyterians remain the most Calvinist sect, although Calvinist principles are found throughout fundamentalist Protestant creeds.
Many of the Puritans eventually became independent congregationalists, and the Independents of England and the Congregationalists of America are their descendants.
The Society of Friends was founded by George Fox. Fox was considered a dissident and a rabbel rouser because he and his followers would attend Anglican services, and then disrupt the service. It is said that he once appeared before a Lord Lieutenant (rougly, royal governors of districts of England who were also superior court judges), and that he leapt up and shouted: "Tremble before the majesty of the Almighty God!" (or words to that effect). The Lord Lieutenant is said to have looked at him briefly, and then drily commented: "Yes . . . well, if the quakers will be seated, we will proceed." The name Quaker has remained attached to the Society of Friends ever since. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of those quotes, but that is the basic gist of the event.
So, the Scots Kirk was Calvinist, and became the Presbyterians. The Puritans were Calvinists who eventually became "Independents" or Congregationalists. The established churches in Massachusetts and Connecticutt before the Revolution were Congregationalists. The Society of Friends became known as Quakers, and were garden variety Protestants who followed the teachings of George Fox.
The Baptists are as old as the Calvinists. Not all Germans who rejected the Catholic Church automatically became Lutherans. Some German Protestants formed the German Reformed Church, and some of them rejected the concept of infant baptism--they held that only adults could make the conscious choice to accept Jesus into their lives, and so they practiced adult baptism. They were originally called Anabaptists by other Protestants who were using propaganda--because the Baptists rejected infant baptism, Lutheran propagandists claimed they rejected baptism altogether, which wasn't true. The Protestants hated and fought the Catholics, and vice versa, but the Lutherans and the Calvinists hated and fought each other, and everybody hated the Anabaptists. Extravagent claims were made against them, such as that they lived in communes (only partly true, they banded together for self-defense) and that they practiced free love, that they shared their wives. Pretty hilarious given the modern American view of Baptists. The Baptists and the Congregationalists, and to a lesser extent, the Presbyterians were all fragmented in America in the early 18th century because of an event known as "the Great Awakening." Because our early history has an unrealistic New England bias, the Great Awakening is treated as a more significant event than it actually was. Most Americans in the colonies were not affected by it. But the itinerant evangelica preachers made a lot of trouble in Congregationalist and Baptist congregations, and in some Presbyterians congregations. The established chruches of Massachusetts and Connecticutt used their political power to drive out the preachers and to suppress the new sects, which lead to a lot of bitterness, and which still affected political divisions at the time of the Revolution. The Congregationalists (remember, the heirs of the Puritans--often referred to here as the Pilgrims) split into "Old Light" and "New Light" believers, and because there were no established churches in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the Baptists and Presbyterians there fragmented into separate sects because of the upheaval of the Great Awakening.
The Congregationalists mostly settled down after that, and the Presbyterians were eventually reconciled and re-united. The Baptists continued to fragment right up to the twentieth century, and there are today many separate sects which call themselves Baptists.
