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- We look around, and we see that there
are so many different denominations,
and it is confusing when you just look at that.
But there are historical reasons
for why various denominations came into existence,
and there are different, several different kinds
of causes that resulted in that.
One of the fundamental sources of those denominational
differences is the form of church government.
Church government really is about who has responsibility
under God to determine what is the shape of the Word of God,
that is, what does the Word of God actually teach?
What is theology, true theology?
And so those areas, theology, biblical interpretation,
worship, ordinances, fellowship, and governance
are the areas that someone has to take authority for,
and the different, different Protestants
have had three different answers for that.
Some Protestants have said that Christ has invested
authority for those things, responsibility for those things,
in the bishops, bishops who are pastors
over an entire array of churches within a region.
So, the Episcopal Church, the Church of England,
the Anglican Communion, invents authority in bishops,
though shared somewhat with laypeople.
The United Methodist Church in North America,
Methodist churches generally, historically, have invested
that authority, that responsibility in bishops,
and Lutherans, in most cases, have also done that.
Another group of Protestants said, no,
Christ has invested responsibility for these church matters
in the pastors jointly, the elders, in Greek, presbuteros,
and so the name Presbyterian is the name that most commonly
has been used to identify this group of Protestants.
And so it's the elders or the pastors jointly
who have responsibility for all those things.
And then finally, one group of Protestants said no,
according to the scriptures, Christ has invested
responsibility for those things in the congregation,
the local body of believers, jointly administering
that authority and that responsibility.
And these have been the Congregationalists,
sometimes called Independents, and the Baptists.
Another fundamental source of difference
between Protestant denominations has to do with who
are the proper subjects of baptism.
And most of the early Protestants believed,
as the Roman Catholic church believes,
that infants should be baptized.
That is part of God's command, that Christian parents
should have their children baptized in the church,
and therefore, that they should become
church members through baptism.
But even from the earliest days of Protestantism,
there were some who disagreed with that,
who held that the scriptures do not teach
the baptism of infants, but rather teach
that baptism is for those who profess their faith.
So, believers baptism is what that's traditionally called.
And today we call this group of churches who hold this
view Baptists, although there are many other denominations
that have arisen, especially in the last 100 years or so,
who have accepted Baptist views.
For example, many of the Pentecostal churches
practice believer's baptism.
Another important source of difference among Protestants
over the last hundred years has to do with the nature
of the supernatural gifts, the extraordinary gifts,
or the sign gifts, speaking in tongues,
working of miracles, and the like.
Protestants traditionally with Catholics have held
that these were gifts given by Christ to the apostles,
generally, in the apostolic age,
in order for the establishment of the Scriptures
and of the church of Jesus Christ,
but which he then no longer bestowed,
because the church and the word of God were established.
In the early 20th century, a number of Protestants
began to look for a renewal of these extraordinary gifts
in the church, and several different episodes occurred
in the first 10 years of the 20th century in America
in which people experienced what they believed
was speaking in tongues of one sort or another,
that they believed were gifts of healing,
and gifts of working miracles.
And this began what we now call the Pentecostal Movement.
And the Pentecostal Movement originally held
that Christ indeed had removed these sign gifts
from the church after the apostolic age, but that
he had also promised to renew them, to restore them
to the church, just before his second coming.
And so Pentecostals, when they believed
that were experience, the Christians
who became Pentecostals, when they began to experience
these things, they believed that this
was the beginning of Christ's return.
And so, they spread not just their views
on the re-initiation, reestablishment
of the sign gifts in the churches,
but also on the imminent second coming of Christ.
Some Pentecostals today have rejected the connection
between the gifts and the second coming,
and so there are many now who are Pentecostals
one way or another who believe that Christ
never took away the extraordinary gifts;
the church merely refused to use them.
One of the enduring sources of differences among Protestants
is based upon nationality and language, and this is natural.
It's been this way at least since the third century,
that as churches grew up, as people became believers,
they tended to organize themselves
into groups of churches based on the natural identities
that they had, of language and society and politics.
In the 17th, 16th and 17th century, as Protestantism
became so prominent in many parts of Europe,
many of these Protestant churches became state churches.
And so, the Lutheran church was the state church of Germany,
Anglicanism, the state church of England.
Now, these churches sometimes had other little differences,
but as they immigrated to the New World,
to North American in particular, they retained
their identities as Lutherans or as Anglicans.
And so these differences upon national lines
also help explain why many Protestants who otherwise
have very similar theology, Lutherans, Methodists,
Anglicans, yet still have tended to retain
their separate organizational identities.
There's one other important difference
among the denominations within Protestantism,
and that has to do with the movement that began
about 130 years ago in North American
known now as Protestant liberalism.
Fundamentally, liberal thought put human reason
in the seat of authority over scripture.
So scripture came under the judgment of human reason,
and that caused a reinterpretation
of the Bible from beginning to end.
And in that reinterpretation, liberal thought
did away with miracles, did away with that
which seemed harsh, that seemed somehow hard to explain,
that seemed like superstition.
Anything that was offensive to reason
could not be held to be true,
and so by putting reason first, liberal theology undid
most of what the scripture actually teaches.
This led in the early 20th century to a fundamental division
within most Protestant denominations where many of those
who held to the traditional evangelical convictions
were either forced out or withdrew to form new
organizations of churches, effectively new denominations.
And so in the 20th century, you have a rise of a movement
that's sometimes called fundamentalism,
more broadly evangelicalism, that looks new
because you have many new denominations,
but in fact, it's not new.
It's a response to this new liberal theology.
But it is actually in continuity with the traditional faith
of Protestantism and with the early church.
And so, liberalism has introduced a fundamental divide,
and in many respects, the most fundamental divide
that now exists within Protestantism,
and it's a difference that goes right to the heart
of the gospel and how we're saved.
And that helps explain why we have
this group that we now call evangelicals.
It's important to recognize that although Protestants
have all of these different organizations, they are
not deeply divided on the fundamentals of the faith.
They in fact are agreed, those of them
that we generally identify as evangelicals,
they are agreed that the Bible is authoritative,
that it is inspired, that it has no errors.
They are agreed that salvation comes through repentance
and faith in Christ alone by his shed blood.
He suffers for our sins, that everyone who believes in him
may be forgiven, may be redeemed
and spend eternal blessedness with God in heaven.
And so, although you have these different organizations,
we call them by these different denominational names,
nevertheless, they recognize that they are one, that they
are brothers and sisters through faith in Christ Jesus
and share a blessed and joyful unity in the gospel.
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