No matter what kind of beliefs you may have, it is a nearly impossible task to keep track of all of the various Christian denominations. [/caption]How do Christian denominations define themselves? By their stated beliefs, right? Well, that is largely correct. But maybe the different church bodies are better understood in terms of their history, that is, how and why they were established and how they evolved. Both of those are really good ways of understanding the denominations, but you can slice it up another way.
I'm talking about the question of how a church governs itself.
The names of different kinds of Christians in the title of this post are all derived from the political units that were emphasized in each church body.
The Congregationalists believe in local control. The powerful political unit for them is the local congregation.
The Presbyterians govern their church with a Presbytery, a court consisting of the ministers and elders of several congregations.
The Episcopalians (although it isn't obvious) get their name from the word "bishop." Their church government depends more than anything on a national council of bishops, known in the United States as the House of Bishops.
Roman Catholics were once referred to derisively as "papists," a reference to their allegiance to the Pope and a top-down hierarchy. Animosity between various Protestant churches and the Roman Catholics was high for many years.
Simple right? So simple that we have time to ask why these differences became prominent.
Congregationalism is associated with Puritanism and, as you may know, the Puritans believed that some individuals were predestined for salvation. The mark of being chosen for salvation was some kind of conversion experience. But that is a generalization. Puritan ministers often developed some kind of "morphology of conversion," a complex explanation for who had the right to call themselves Christians. All the controversies over what made one a legitimate Christian made local control the most efficient (and probably the only possible) form of church government for the Congregationalists.
Presbyterianism (like Congregationalism) is a Calvinist denomination. Although the origin of the word is not known, to me it seems logical that this church is governed by a "court" of ministers and elders, because John Calvin himself was a lawyer by trade.
The Episcopalian Church is associated with the Church of England and the Anglicans. I imagine that explains their focus on a council of bishops.
Finally, of course, the Roman Catholic Church claims to be the original Christian church. At some point it became too big for their bishops to govern, so they developed the present system of Cardinals and a pope.
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