Re this, and "It will hasten the day when believers realise that churches are an irrelevant intrusion between themselves and their God. "
Actually, this is a cyclical phenomen. Arguably, Catholicism *was* the first to fragment, back in the days of the reformation, albeit over a different set of issues. It has done so again (in a less splashy way) several times since over various issues, and the various fragments it produced have themselves undergone various fragmentations... This is all just part of the lifecycle of churches/denominations.
Recent example: The house-church movement was an evacuation from various protestant/evangelical denominations and independant churches, primarily over the issue of exercising gifts of tongues, prophecy etc., but also over the more direct issue of church authority, where it came from and why the heck should any particular bunch of people have it. These folks didn't have priests: They had convenors (whose houses were used for meetings) and apostles (who were respected for their wisdom and teaching, but who had no formal authority over anything).
20 or 30 years on, after the memberships got too big to have their monthly lets-all-get-togethers in anything smaller than a huge custom built auditorium, and the buzz of hero worship around the apostles has effectively (but unofficially) handed them all the authority they weren't supposed to have, it's quite hard to distinguish the house churches from a generic protestant denomination, except in a few details of practice and theology and their staunch insistence that they *aren't* one.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-03-08 12:18 pm (UTC)Actually, this is a cyclical phenomen. Arguably, Catholicism *was* the first to fragment, back in the days of the reformation, albeit over a different set of issues. It has done so again (in a less splashy way) several times since over various issues, and the various fragments it produced have themselves undergone various fragmentations... This is all just part of the lifecycle of churches/denominations.
Recent example: The house-church movement was an evacuation from various protestant/evangelical denominations and independant churches, primarily over the issue of exercising gifts of tongues, prophecy etc., but also over the more direct issue of church authority, where it came from and why the heck should any particular bunch of people have it. These folks didn't have priests: They had convenors (whose houses were used for meetings) and apostles (who were respected for their wisdom and teaching, but who had no formal authority over anything).
20 or 30 years on, after the memberships got too big to have their monthly lets-all-get-togethers in anything smaller than a huge custom built auditorium, and the buzz of hero worship around the apostles has effectively (but unofficially) handed them all the authority they weren't supposed to have, it's quite hard to distinguish the house churches from a generic protestant denomination, except in a few details of practice and theology and their staunch insistence that they *aren't* one.