This morning, in an e-mail discussion<\/strong> I participate in, someone lamented the Reformation. They wished and hoped we could all come together again soon.<\/p>\nThat’s a nice dream, and I applaud the sentiment. But in my view it’ll never happen.<\/p>\n
Here’s the thing — who’s going to be in charge of this new universal church?<\/p>\n
The pope? Then how will you force all the Christians who think the pope is the Antichrist into your church?<\/p>\n
Local congregations? How will you persuade the people who think an episcopacy is necessary?<\/p>\n
You won’t be able to do this without some kind of coercive force. A new Inquisition.<\/p>\n
And I don’t think even Catholics want that.<\/p>\n
Besides which, the divisions are far deeper and more complex than just Rome vs. Wittenberg.<\/p>\n
The divisions in Christianity go way beyond denominations. I have Catholic friends to whom I am far closer, in the fundamentals, than I am with many of my Lutheran friends.<\/p>\n
Even if you somehow shoehorned all the denominations into your new World Church, the conservative vs. liberal divisions would persist.<\/p>\n
And would probably, if history is any guide, lead to new institutional divisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This morning, in an e-mail discussion I participate in, someone lamented the Reformation. They wished and hoped we could all come together again soon. That’s a nice dream, and I applaud the sentiment. But in my view it’ll never happen. Here’s the thing — who’s going to be in charge of this new universal church? … Continue reading The Reformation: Here to stay<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[516,1782,3009],"class_list":["post-6968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","tag-church-union","tag-martin-luther","tag-the-reformation"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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