Of course this isn’t all baptists but over time it really has made protestantism look dramatically different to Catholicism or orthodoxy to me
I was just reading the text of the divine liturgies, common to eastern Catholics or orthodox… it sounds like a lot more overlap in beliefs. And then you get protestants who can widely diverge from this.
I’ve seen these kinds of things create practical issues. Like, if all you need is faith to be saved, why does it matter if they have a lesbian minister or not? They can tend towards moral anarchy or antinomianism as a result.
Theologically, antinomianism is the belief that there are no moral laws God expects Christians to obey.
Of course also there are a lot of protestants who believe they ought to live good lives on the honor system because they have faith, and they do make some attempt, and so in practice I’m not sure how much a “faith alone” approach affects their approach to doing good works.
Sometimes it goes to the opposite extreme with the protestant work ethic. I’ve also seen some polls that seem to indicate a lot of protestants do seem to think works matter for salvation (even though this was traditionally associated with Catholicism… and orthodoxy?)
But yeah in the West there’s often a focus on Catholic versus protestant and idk why orthodoxy gets forgotten.
Protestantism, to me, is often really just Bible only beliefs and they’ve stripped from it many of the benefits of the classic Church. I can be empathetic with them in the sense that the Church at times was far from correct in its applications. It is, after all, an institution that is run by fallible men.
… But when you go over to Bible only concepts with no heritage of theology that is 100% adhered to in terms of necessities, it creates this sort of chaos, doesn’t it?
BTW, the article I linked was because it was an interesting, obscure part of history. I think that guy is a massive liberal Chrisitan if he is a Christian at all. He wrote another article abshing Chesterton.
Sometimes it goes to the opposite extreme with the protestant work ethic. I’ve also seen some polls that seem to indicate a lot of protestants do seem to think works matter for salvation (even though this was traditionally associated with Catholicism… and orthodoxy?)
Yes and I prefer to think of it as transforming your life through repentance as a sort of work… but it is actually just the manifestation of the prayer life, IMO.
But yeah in the West there’s often a focus on Catholic versus protestant and idk why orthodoxy gets forgotten.
I am glad that this is changing more and more but I must admit too many Orthodox get self-righteous or overbearing on a lot of this stuff.
They also published two formal documents in support of Roe right after it was decided.
All that was before the fundamentalists took over and drove all the centrists and progressives out and made themselves an arm of the GOP. Ref. also: Moral Majority and Southern Strategy and the fundamentalist takeover of the NRA all around the same time.
That is interesting, I am unfamiliar with that.
… and this is some mind blowing content:
When Roe was first decided, most of the Southern evangelicals who today make up the backbone of the anti-abortion movement believed that abortion was a deeply personal issue in which government shouldn’t play a role. Some were hesitant to take a position on abortion because they saw it as a “Catholic issue,” and worried about the influence of Catholic teachings on American religious observance.
Shortly after the decision was handed down, The Baptist Press, a wire service run by the Southern Baptist Convention — the biggest Evangelical organization in the US — ran an op-ed praising the ruling. “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision,” read the January 31, 1973, piece by W. Barry Garrett, The Baptist Press’s Washington bureau chief.
Religious bodies and religious persons can continue to teach their own particular views to their constituents with all the vigor they desire. People whose conscience forbids abortion are not compelled by law to have abortions. They are free to practice their religion according to the tenets of their personal or corporate faith.
The reverse is also now true since the Supreme Court decision. Those whose conscience or religious convictions are not violated by abortion may not now be forbidden by a religious law to obtain an abortion if they so choose.
