Some Christian Symbols

Christianity comes in many brands. It originally evolved from Judaism, but by the end of the 1st Century it had spun off to become a separate religion. The big burst of growth came when Rome made it the official religion in the 4th Century. For about a thousand years, there were only three versions: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Coptic. Then in the 16th Century, Martin Luther created the Protestant Reformation. The first Protestant Denomination was the Lutheran Church. About the same time, King Henry VIII split from the Catholic Church and formed the Church of England.

Over the next 100 years we had the Anabaptists, Calvinists, Puritans, Quakers, and numerous other groups. In the 18th Century, John Wesley split off from the Church of England to form the Methodist Church. The other mainline Protestant denominations were formed about the same time. The splintering continued in the 19th Century forward to where we have hundreds of Protestant Denominations today. The Roman Catholic Church is still the largest Christian Church in the world today.

The Seven Deadly Sins by Hieronymus Bosch

The seven deadly sins of: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth, are contrasted with the four cardinal virtues of: prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude and the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. These characteristics seem somewhat archaic in today’s society. Let’s start with truth and honesty. Lies and disinformation.

For generations, when people spoke of public morals, that was code for strict limits on sexual behavior. From the beginning, the church had a problem of dealing with sex. The Roman Catholic Church survived for more than a thousand years before deciding that priests had to be celibate. Celibacy, abstinence, and chastity are not the same. Celibacy is a voluntary choice not to marry. Abstinence is a temporary avoidance of sex. Chastity is more than abstaining from sexual activity.

Since I no longer am a member of the denomination nor the Reconciling Ministries Network, I am reluctant to comment on recent events. Even though I am now just an outsider, I still am biased.

After having survived 50 years of this acrimonious debate, I am glad the division is finally occurring. The political maneuvering back and forth only resulted in grid lock and a lack of focus and purpose for the denomination.

The Special Called Session of the General Conference in 2019 supposedly was to resolve the debate. Instead, the Book of Disciple not only retained the discriminatory phrases, but it added more rules to enforce them. That didn’t work when many conferences ignored the rules.