#Congregationalist

[revdavidbsmith]

No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

[redneck-phd]

Clara Wetherald A Methodist, Then a Free Methodist and Finally a Congregationalist

Gaylord Congregationalist Church (Now First Congregational United Church of Christ) Clara Wetherald noted in her testimony at the 1890 Free Methodist General Conference that when she was younger she thought the only way a woman could preach was if she married a minister. So, that’s exactly what she did when, at seventeen, she married John Wetherald, an ordained elder in the Methodist Protestant…

[ainsi-soit-il]

I’m actually really interested in learning what your denomination thinks about sanctification if you feel up to a long post about it? (Ulterior motive: I wanna go through and find the parts where Catholics disagree/define sanctification differently.)

Sorry for taking so long to reply! Thank you for your patience, and thanks for asking!

To some degree, Wesleyan theology does treat salvation as something that's immediate, with John Wesley writing at one point, "It [salvation] is not something at a distance, It is a present thing, a blessing which through the free mercy of God you are now in possession of."

But Wesleyan theology (and I'd argue Scripture itself too) also holds that even then, justification is just the beginning, and we are continually being perfected by God's grace.

This is how John Wesley put it in The Scripture Way of Salvation:

From the time of our being "born again," the gradual work of sanctification takes place. We are enabled by the Spirit to "mortify the deeds of the body" (Romans 8:11, 13) and of our evil nature, and as we are more and more dead to sin, we are more and more alive to God.

In other words, God's grace and the power of the Holy Spirit slowly transform our deeds and desires, so that we become more and more like Christ.

In the Wesleyan understanding of sanctification, sanctification takes place as believers grow to love God more. St. John's language of "being perfected in love" in 1 John 4.

This is how love is made perfect in us, enabling us to have confidence on the Day of Judgment, because even in this world we have become like him. In love there is no fear; indeed, perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not yet achieved perfection in love. Therefore, we love because he first loved us. (NCB, v. 17-19)

Effectively, as we grow to know and love God more, we find our desires transformed. Sin becomes less and less attractive. We no longer want the same things that we wanted before, and instead our desires are increasingly aligned with the will of God.

And that is effectively what Christian perfection (or "being perfected in love", or "entire sanctification"... Wesley didn't tend to stick with one term for things) means. It's the point where there's no more room in one's heart for sinful desires, because one is that full of the love of God. Irish theologian William J. Abraham described it as, "the point in [someone's] relationship with God where disobedience [i]s no longer a live option for them."

It's worth pointing out that this perfection is not absolute. We're finite creatures, after all. We get into misunderstandings, lack knowledge, etc. and so as a result, we'll still end up sinning. But Wesleyan theology places a distinction between these sorts of sins and the intentionally-done sort of sins we are freed from when we are perfected in love. (From what I understand, Catholic theology has a similar distinction between venial sins and mortal sins.)

This is distinct from Presbyterians and most Baptists (both within the same umbrella of Protestant theology), where entire sanctification is something we never quite attain in life. Even so, a Baptist or Presbyterian might argue, we still are called to keep "running the race", to use St. Paul's analogy.

Hope this helps!

[salty-software-engineer]

when the catholics eat the body of christ it's fine but when i bring stigmata cookies to easter dinner it's weird?

[madtomedgar]

It's very funny to me how "puritan" has become the word for "someone who thinks sex is morally corrupting and/or icky" considering that they were actually comparatively chill about things like premarital sex and divorce for their time.

[dammitradar]

Not Thanksgiving not Black Friday but a secret third thing (St Squanto's Feast Day)

[mourning-again-in-america]

Ronald Reagan: Not A Theologian!

[kiragecko]

I keep hearing people say that Protestants don’t have Communion (also called the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, Mass, and the Blessed Sacrament¹). As a Protestant that has observed Communion in my church my whole life, this is somewhat confusing.

‘Protestant’ includes a lot of very different branches of Christianity. I want to find out which types of Protestants, if any, actually don’t have Communion.

So I have a set of polls for you! This one is the non-American poll². In a moment I’ll reblog with the American version. If you have ever attended a Protestant church enough to know if they did or did not practice Communion, please vote!

(If you don’t know what denomination you attend/attended, there’s some more info after the poll.)

Denominations include:

Lutheran

Anglican - also call Episcopalian, or the Church of England

Methodist - including Nazarenes and the Salvation Army

Anabaptist – including the Amish, Hutterites, Mennonites, River Brethrens, and Schwarzenau Brethren/German Baptists

English Dissenters – including Plymouth Brethren, Puritans, and Quakers

Reformed - also called Calvinists, and including Presbyterians, and Congregationalists

Baptist

United – including Free Evangelicals

Nondenominational - including E-Free and people who primarily describe themselves as Born-Again

Pentecostal - including people who primarily describe themselves as Charismatic or Evangelical (and, due to lack of space, also including Neo-charismatic and postdenominational groups like Vineyard, Newfrontiers, and New Life Fellowship)

Note - due to space restraints and my biases, major denomications may have been relegated to 'Other'. Especially non-North American ones. I apologize.

¹ Some of these terms have slightly different meanings – the goal here is to get across the general idea

² The United States has been isolated due to the unique evolution of terminology there. Ie. Your Baptists are weird, and I don't know how many other denominations also get weird when they cross the border. Plus there's lots of Americans on Tumblr, and I want to actually see other results.

[mikkeneko]

I decided to make this its own post for two reasons: one, I didn't want to derail a post that is about Judaism with a discussion of a different faith and two, it was really only one of several posts I've seen recently that stuck out to me as being "man, this is way off-base."

This is not so much about "people are saying mean things about this religion and it hurts my feelings!" but it is definitely about "people are making statements that represent a wildly skewed and inaccurate picture of the reality, and I can't tell whether they're being hyperbolic on purpose or think they're genuinely telling the truth." This is not a question of whether any given church is good or bad; this is a question of whether there is or can be a distinct entity that serves as a single unified church or faith in American Christian tradition (spoiler: No.)

Here's the basic message: Any discussion of "the Christian god" or "the Christian faith" or "American Christianity" needs to be taken with a big honking asterisk that there is no single portrayal of God, or Christianity, or spirituality and faith that conveys accurate information about the entire breadth of American Christianity.

There is no single American Christian Church. None. The single biggest branch of American Christianity, Southern Evangelical Baptist, makes up at its broadest 30% of all American Christians (12% of the overall population.) The rest are split between Catholic, Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Pentecostal, Adventist, Congregationalist, and a dozen other even tinier branches, before you even get into the more far-out variants that people have ongoing arguments as to whether they even really count as "Christian." (LDS, Unitarians, and possibly Mennonites fall into this category.) Most of the major branches share a lot of common ground, but there's an enormous amount of variation -- they disagree widely on concepts such as the existence or nonexistence of Hell; the mechanics of conversion or salvation; the requirements of baptism or confirmation; whether prostylezation is required, encouraged or even permitted; what kind of sexualities are or are not accepted; God as an active or non-active role in the world; how 'sin' works or if it's even a thing; the existence or not of saints; the divinity or not of Christ; or even the idea of an anthropomorphic God at all. Some are progressive, some are fundamentalist, some are fundamentalist in ways that are completely at odds with the popular perception of what those fundaments are. I personally know one Methodist pastor who also believes and teaches about God as a "oneness of the universe" and have met others who conceive of God as "that which spans the space between the limits of our understanding and the limits of our universe." You cannot categorically state that all American Christians share a common notion on any of these topics.

Other statements I've seen recently that just made me go "what? no?"

That the USA was founded by religious extremists and That's Why America is Like That. Only one or two of the original settlements were founded for this purpose. Some were founded with an explicit purpose of total freedom of (or from) religion; others were entrepreneurial ventures with nothing to say on the topic of religion at all. When the guiding documents of the American state were put together the clause of freedom of religion was included front and center precisely because they didn't want religious extremists to be steering the ship.

That the majority of USAmericans are in cults and don't even realize they're in cults. This requires both an extremely broad definition of “cult” (to encompass pretty much any branch of Christianity, not only the more extremely evangelical ones) and severely over-estimates how many people in the US are practicing Christians (less than half.)

That the "Christian God" is intended to function as a "Great Uniter" into which other faiths can be folded; This is not a Protestant thing. Most Protestant faiths are not syncretic to the degree Catholicism is (or at all,) since there wasn't a motivating political entity backing their creeds to make them so. Again: Not all branches of American Protestantism require, encourage, or even permit prostylezation.

On that note: Not all Christians are Catholic. This isn't news, right? People know this, right? This is one of those things that I always assumed was very common knowledge, and was very surprised to run into people who were not aware of this (who either think that all Christians or Catholic, or else that Catholics are not Christian at all, depending on which side of the equation they're approaching from.) Protestant and Catholic Christianity are very very distinct entities both spiritually and politically, and in the USA, Catholic Christianity is a minority religion and is mostly (though not exclusively) practiced in minority demographic communities. Of 46 presidents so far only one has been Catholic, and a lot of the opposition to JFK's appointment was people being suspicious of his Catholicism since it was thought that his loyalty to the Church might supersede his loyalty to the US. American Christianity is mostly Protestant, not Catholic, and Protestant Christianity does not function at all the way Catholicism does. We had a whole Reformation about this. Any take that refers to "The Church" in America as a single united entity that dictates theology to its outreaching branches is... off-base.

What certainly is true is that a number of individual churches in the US have organized around the aim of consolidating social and political power, have worked at advancing their members to positions of power in order to protect and promote their interests, and thus are over-represented and have outsized influence on the political sphere. The ones that do this, as well as the ones that put emphasis on proselytizing and on money-making, tend to self-select for being the most visible and infamous because their business model is expansive by nature. That's certainly the case for the SEB in the American South, or the LDS in Utah. I really get the feeling when people use these broad terms that they are thinking either of the SEB (again, not even a majority among American Protestants!) or of the Catholic church (even less so!)  But not only do not all Americans agree with those beliefs, they don't even agree with each other.

[revdavidbsmith]

I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water.

[racefortheironthrone]

Idk if your American or not but as a non-american (Brit) why is New York not considered part of the region of New England ?

I am an American, so I can answer this one. So it's a mix of political and cultural history: "New England" was the name commonly used to describe various governments and joint-stock companies in the region of Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. In cultural terms, New England was dominated (in a demographic and religious sense) by Puritans and their dissidents who had come over from East Anglia and other Puritan regions of southeastern England.

By contrast, New Netherland/New Amsterdam was a Dutch colony (later transferred to given to James, Duke of York following the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War), although the (white) population was as likely to be German or Scandinavians as they were to be Dutch. However, this meant that they were Dutch Reformed Calvinist rather than English Congregationalist Calvinist - and the narcissism of small differences really kicked in over points of doctrine and church organization. When New Amsterdam became New York, the English who settled in New York were Anglicans rather than Puritans, so there's that too.

[gatheringbones]

[“Another thread in the American privileging of forgiveness over repentance has to do with how theology was used in the service of power in the wake of the Civil War.

Shortly after the conflict ended, northern white clergy began preaching forgiveness, reconciliation, and unity with white southerners, at the expense of justice, or even safety, for Black Americans, whether newly emancipated or already free.

One of the main proponents of this viewpoint was the white Congregationalist minister Henry Ward Beecher, long known for his support of abolition alongside other progressive issues like Darwin’s theory of evolution and women’s suffrage. And yet, by 1865, he was preaching things like, “There are no antagonistic interests between the North and the South. Religion, blood, business are same, and if there are no social or political reasons for hatred, why should we not be the best of friends?”

But more than that, Beecher encouraged white northerners to ignore reports of abuse committed by white southerners against Black Americans—writing, for example, in the New York Independent, “You must not be disappointed or startled because you see in the newspapers accounts of shocking barbarities committed upon”newly liberated people.

One reason for this approach, as the white historian Dr. Hanne Blank puts it, is that

forgiveness—and finding common ground—between white southerners and northerners was part of the larger political project of thinking about the U.S. as a union that was “unbreakable.” The stress that state-level autonomy placed on the federal identity of the U.S. as a whole was seen as something that had to be “managed,” and one of the ways to manage it was to [approach it as] “Okay, we’ve had our fight and now we need to kiss and make up so we can be Americans again.”

But that reunification was predicated not only on white northerners ignoring white southerners’ violence against Black people, but on the assumption that the “we” who had been fighting were white, that the “we” who would kiss and make up were white, and that “we” would not ask anything of those so attached to the institution of slavery that they were willing to wage the bloodiest war in American history over it. “We” were all fine now, went the logic. And perhaps “we,” united in this way, could thus also exclude Black Americans from the equation, making it easier to deny them the full rights of citizenship and belonging.”]

rabbi danya ruttenberg, from on repentance and repair: making amends in an unapologetic world, 2022

[forkingandcountry-if]

Hi! I really enjoyed the prologue and I'm very impressed with your worldbuilding so far. I was wondering if you'd be willing to tell us more about the Church? What are its virtues (other than charity and compassion)? What does it consider to be sinful? Does it have any rules or guidelines with regards to clothing? What's its priesthood like? Is it gender restricted? I hope you have a lovely day! :D

I can tell you about the Church, I have far too many details about this:

I'll start with the clergy, it isn't gender restricted, while there once was a historical precedent for it being male-only that was quickly overturned by the Redeemists in the process of doctrinal evolution where they assert that the Words of our Faith call for all men (as in mankind) to prepare the world for His eventual return.

That doesn't mean that the Church is gender-balanced or even close, but there is no official reason why a woman couldn't become the Pontiff.

The Clergy in modern day—much to the chagrin of the Congregationalists—is formed of a highly educated, very wealthy, quite young cohort of priests and priestesses with the majority of them following quite a similar career progression.

They are born as not the heir child to a vassal house or into some well-off yeoman family, they spend the first few years of their lives as Scholar Postulants where they are educated at their local chancel or convent or priory. Then if they have enough money and don't particularly want to be stay as a Parish Priest for the rest of their lives, they go to a Theological University, once they graduate they usually are parish priests or priestesses for about two or three years before being parachuted into a Scholar Archivist or Scholar Priest in the capital. Those who are particularly talented at theology or networking with noble houses become bishops, some become archbishops and the very best becomes the Pontiff.

In regards to clothes there are uniforms for all members of the church, generally there's an expectation of modesty for men and women but the church doesn't place much emphasis on austerity, should you be wealthy enough to get your clothes tailored and made of fine fabrics you are entirely allowed to.

As you might be able to tell there are two distinct sort of religious factions in the Church namely the Redeemists and the Congregationalists.

Redeemists believe in the Churches' central authority and are mostly focused on textualism and theological rigour, if they can't find evidence for it in the texts they don't believe it should be enforced or banned by the Church and so they end up being the more 'liberal' or 'permissive' social force.

Congregationalists however believe that the central church is deeply corrupt, see how nearly all of its officials are very wealthy and very urban and very liberal, and that it is disconnected from the beliefs of ordinary people. They also claim to be textualists but the text they believe in, is simply a set of the doctrines laid out in the early, very conservative days of the Empire. They are the other big social force in the Empire.

A lot of the stuff you'll see in the story that you think, hey that wouldn't be fine usually in such a setting is thanks to the Redeemists: homosexuality, them. Transgender issues, them. Gender-non conformity, them.

That doesn't however mean they aren't deeply suspicious and reactionary for example as a homosexual, the Church will allow you to get married to the same sex but if you refuse to have children and cannot provide a good enough reason why as a noble? They will annul your marriage and say it's fruitless and hence stagnant and must be cleared away.

The virtues of the church are different by region and what faction they align with more but besides Compassion and Charity which are two very big ones a lot of it is quite esoteric, theological rigour, justice, morality, fruitfulness, restraint & mercy, scholarliness, consensus.

The Church has the power to hold its own trials outside of the powers of the King's Justices of the Peace and while they technically have coercive religious power very few kings have refused to sign an arrest warrant requested by the Pontiff.

Anything else in particular you'd like to hear about regarding it?

[benjhawkins]

Us, driving past a Congregationalist church that’s having a bonfire in the parking lot:

Me: waves

Pentecost: “don’t wave at the Centurions! They killed Jesus!”

Me:

[bethelctpride]

How to find the local queer people when there don't appear to be any queer events nearby

are you sure there are no events?

Because they're a lot more common than you think, but you have to look in the right place! The social media algorithm sadly will not feed them to you. You will generally have to go through at least one layer of introduction before you meet folks directly.

Yes, this is a bit of a secret social club. Because many of these people lived through being too public might get you raided by cops or get you dead. They're rightfully cautious. They want to make sure people showing up aren't there to do harm. And the more rural the area, the tougher it will be to find people, but they're definitely THERE and likely having the same thoughts that nobody else is there.

Queer social activities are overwhelmingly run by middle aged folks (who have time, money, skills, and energy to do so) and they tend to use different social media because that's where they originally built communities!

The advice here for hunting down groups assumes you are an adult who can figure out logistics and safety of contacting other adults and getting yourself somewhere safely.

For social media, check Facebook and Meetup. These are most likely to have large local-ish groups putting on events. Join some groups. Many may be private and require approval before you see content. Even if there's not one immediately nearby, join the closest one, whatever "close" is. Even if it's not a perfect fit, they generally know the other even smaller groups nearby and may give you an invite to closer group or even direct contact info for The Local Guy where you text him.

Next up, Instagram. You'll pick up some folks a little younger and more business and pop up events this way. Sometimes you may not see an event until after it happened! Message the person and ask when next one is. Good odds there's a repeat.

Still no luck? Check out specific types of businesses/orgs in your area that tend to have an overlap. Maybe the local bar or coffee shop has a gay night once a month. Check their posts for last month, or if you can filter by date, look specifically in June. If they had one, message and ask about if they have an upcoming one. Even if they don't, they may put you in contact with organizer from past one.

For organizations, check for groups serving HIV+ populations and the neurospicy. Even if you fall into neither category, because of the overlap, there's good odds they offer specific services FOR queer folk. Contact them and they'll know who in the area is putting on events.

Check furry groups. Generally they do most organization via Telegram, which will require an invite. Find the nearest furry convention, check to see if they have a message board. Search for telegram. there's likely one attached to the convention and asking there of "hey, is there a furry telegram group that covers X area?" there will be one. I hope you like bowling, because this is by far the most common non-convention furry event.

(and if your reaction is EW Furries, you need to kill the little Puritan living in your head that hates people having fun doing stuff in a way you think is Cringe. Bowling is not that uncool.)

Still no luck? Now you're going to have to go search for individual queers in the wild! Your best luck is going to be with three other types of groups: 1. SOME Church activities 2. activities that attract the neurospicy (train groups, collecting groups, etc)

3. Tiny specialty groups where everyone is old and its in danger of dying out

If you're really rural sometimes the ONLY group doing any activities is the local church. If they're listed as "open and affirming" that's what you want. Unitarians and Congregationalists are most likely to fit that definition. But you should be able to run web search for that exact phase of "open and affirming church" + "your town" and it'll show you SOMETHING nearby. You may still come up with nothing, but the ones that are doing that tend to be really dedicated, so they will have info about what local groups are friendly to queers, if not open about that. They will also have non-religious activities like knitting or potluck even if you don't want to go to a service.

Neurospicy activities- check your surrounding libraries for activities as well. Even if you're not that brand of spicy, the overlap is high. Find an activity you are reasonably interested in and go meet locals. You'll find out which ones are queer after a few meetings. Often it will turn out everyone is and nobody said anything until one person does. (like our local hackerspace. secret trans hangout)

Endangered skills- do you really want to learn some weird, specialty skill that's dying out? Ask around. call the senior center and have them post a note. Post at the library. stick a thing on a bulletin board at the grocery store. Pick something you are GENUINELY interested in learning like flint knapping, or how to cook a regional dish, local history, how to spin llama wool. Weirder and more endangered the better. Post several! Give them a way to contact you by phone. Unless they are horrendously bigoted up front, you are about to learn a skill and once you disclose "hey I'm gay", you are about to be introduced to every solitary queer in the area that is a friend of a friends' granddaughter's classmate. Often your mentor won't quite GET it, but you're their favorite person now so they're trying. And as you get introduced, suddenly the local flint knapping group is also the queer flint knapping group! and you should post on social media about your cool new activity and SURPRISE, you found them all! Also they now all have cool knives. win-win!