All religions viewed more positively when people know tenets of that faith, except for Evangelicals

[Skill and Chance]

Your average American couldn't come up with a coherent theological definition of what an Evangelical is ... including most Evangelicals.

Further thought on this ... let's use this very simplistic definition.  An "Evangelical Christian" is more or less a "born-again" (Protestant) Christian, and therefore they do not practice infant baptism.  They tend to be theologically and politically conservative, but this is not always the case.  I really do believe a fundamental component of Evangelism is the belief in a "born again experience" of some kind, and this removes groups mentioned above like conservative Anglicans, Lutherans, etc.  I'd also argue groups like American Baptist Churches USA and the Disciples of Christ - regardless of their baptism traditions - have done more than enough to identify as "Mainline" and are not really "Evangelical."  FWIW, using Pew's numbers that would break down Protestants (46.6% of the country) about like this:

22.5% Evangelical
17.6% NOT Evangelical ("Mainline" means different things to different people)
6.5% Historically Black Protestant

The more you get into religion and theology, the less meaningful "Evangelical" (as the media uses it) means anything.  Southern Baptists do not look favorably upon Pentecostals.  LCMS Lutherans (who I don't consider Evangelical but Pew does) would want absolutely nothing to do with a Non-Denominational church service.  Members of breakaway Anglican groups wouldn't see themselves as having anything in common with ANY Evangelical group, etc.

I don't think anyone thinks the Disciples of Christ churches and the American Baptist Churches are evangelical.

I know, I was saying that because using my first definition (which pretty much amounted to adult baptism) might have technically included them.  I pretty much defined an Evangelical as a Protestant who practices "Believer's Baptism" and then excluded both of them after that for being part of the Seven Sisters group.

     The issue is that Protestantism is too much of a big tent to coherently define because there are numerous sects with widely diverging beliefs today that are loosely connected by a couple of subjectively-defined priors. The concept of Evangelicalism as a category is mostly a product of a desire to try to make the topic easier to grasp. The factors used to distinguish that category will inevitably be largely arbitrary.

I've long wished "Protestantism" was divided into three main categories by academics that spoke more to origin/tradition than "ideology."  Protestant traditions that descend more directly from the Reformation like Lutheran, Reformed/Calvinist (Presbyterians, Continental Reformed, Congregationalists, etc.) and Anglican/Episcopalian really should be a different category than Restorationist/new age groups like Pentecostals, Adventists or Churches of Christ, and those from the Radical Reformation like Anabaptists or Baptists (yes, I consider them Radical Reformation) should honestly be a third category.  "Mainline," "Evangelical" and "Historically Black" at BEST leave a lot of groups like conservative Anglicans/Lutherans or progressive Baptists in strange categories.

     I think that is overall reasonable. My priest has advocated for a division between "Protestant" (Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican) and "Evangelical" (everyone else). It's pretty close to yours, but it does not make a separate category for the Radical Reformation, which is hard to handle in historical terms because while those groups are rooted in the 16th century their standardbearers today act much more like Restorationists in practice.

     Overall, it strikes me as odd that people largely ignore historical development of Protestant denominations in developing their typology, but I come from that perspective as an Apostolic Christian wherein these sorts of historical considerations are central to understanding how we exist as different groups. Different ecclesiology leads to different ways of thinking about the faith.

This is why I think Nassim Taleb was onto something when he suggested that ethnic/language groups would latch on to minor theological distinctions in order to separate their churches.  This strikes me as a reasonable way of understanding Christianity given that we principally have a Romance language church (Catholic), a Germanic language church (Protestant), a Greek/Slavic language church (Eastern Orthodox), a Coptic/Arabic language church (Oriental Orthodox), and a Syriac language church (Church of the East).  Within Protestantism, the Evangelicals are approximately the part that split off within America.

 It's not an exact fit, because our part of the world is thankfully several centuries removed from the new leader using deadly force to convert you, but it's reasonable. 

[Associate Justice PiT]

This is why I think Nassim Taleb was onto something when he suggested that ethnic/language groups would latch on to minor theological distinctions in order to separate their churches.  This strikes me as a reasonable way of understanding Christianity given that we principally have a Romance language church (Catholic), a Germanic language church (Protestant), a Greek/Slavic language church (Eastern Orthodox), a Coptic/Arabic language church (Oriental Orthodox), and a Syriac language church (Church of the East).  Within Protestantism, the Evangelicals are approximately the part that split off within America.

 It's not an exact fit, because our part of the world is thankfully several centuries removed from the new leader using deadly force to convert you, but it's reasonable. 

     What bothers me about the language of "latch on" and "in order to" is that it makes it sound like these people were simply using these things as a pretext in order to foment schism, when historically these were consistently treated these as legitimate theological disputes and early Christians also aggressively attacked schism as an un-Christian activity that incurred serious penalties. I do agree that language plays a big factor in forming how we think about the world and thus different linguistic groups have had different approaches to theology.

[jojoju1998]

Your average American couldn't come up with a coherent theological definition of what an Evangelical is ... including most Evangelicals.

Further thought on this ... let's use this very simplistic definition.  An "Evangelical Christian" is more or less a "born-again" (Protestant) Christian, and therefore they do not practice infant baptism.  They tend to be theologically and politically conservative, but this is not always the case.  I really do believe a fundamental component of Evangelism is the belief in a "born again experience" of some kind, and this removes groups mentioned above like conservative Anglicans, Lutherans, etc.  I'd also argue groups like American Baptist Churches USA and the Disciples of Christ - regardless of their baptism traditions - have done more than enough to identify as "Mainline" and are not really "Evangelical."  FWIW, using Pew's numbers that would break down Protestants (46.6% of the country) about like this:

22.5% Evangelical
17.6% NOT Evangelical ("Mainline" means different things to different people)
6.5% Historically Black Protestant

The more you get into religion and theology, the less meaningful "Evangelical" (as the media uses it) means anything.  Southern Baptists do not look favorably upon Pentecostals.  LCMS Lutherans (who I don't consider Evangelical but Pew does) would want absolutely nothing to do with a Non-Denominational church service.  Members of breakaway Anglican groups wouldn't see themselves as having anything in common with ANY Evangelical group, etc.

I don't think anyone thinks the Disciples of Christ churches and the American Baptist Churches are evangelical.

I know, I was saying that because using my first definition (which pretty much amounted to adult baptism) might have technically included them.  I pretty much defined an Evangelical as a Protestant who practices "Believer's Baptism" and then excluded both of them after that for being part of the Seven Sisters group.

     The issue is that Protestantism is too much of a big tent to coherently define because there are numerous sects with widely diverging beliefs today that are loosely connected by a couple of subjectively-defined priors. The concept of Evangelicalism as a category is mostly a product of a desire to try to make the topic easier to grasp. The factors used to distinguish that category will inevitably be largely arbitrary.

I've long wished "Protestantism" was divided into three main categories by academics that spoke more to origin/tradition than "ideology."  Protestant traditions that descend more directly from the Reformation like Lutheran, Reformed/Calvinist (Presbyterians, Continental Reformed, Congregationalists, etc.) and Anglican/Episcopalian really should be a different category than Restorationist/new age groups like Pentecostals, Adventists or Churches of Christ, and those from the Radical Reformation like Anabaptists or Baptists (yes, I consider them Radical Reformation) should honestly be a third category.  "Mainline," "Evangelical" and "Historically Black" at BEST leave a lot of groups like conservative Anglicans/Lutherans or progressive Baptists in strange categories.

     I think that is overall reasonable. My priest has advocated for a division between "Protestant" (Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican) and "Evangelical" (everyone else). It's pretty close to yours, but it does not make a separate category for the Radical Reformation, which is hard to handle in historical terms because while those groups are rooted in the 16th century their standardbearers today act much more like Restorationists in practice.

     Overall, it strikes me as odd that people largely ignore historical development of Protestant denominations in developing their typology, but I come from that perspective as an Apostolic Christian wherein these sorts of historical considerations are central to understanding how we exist as different groups. Different ecclesiology leads to different ways of thinking about the faith.

This is why I think Nassim Taleb was onto something when he suggested that ethnic/language groups would latch on to minor theological distinctions in order to separate their churches.  This strikes me as a reasonable way of understanding Christianity given that we principally have a Romance language church (Catholic), a Germanic language church (Protestant), a Greek/Slavic language church (Eastern Orthodox), a Coptic/Arabic language church (Oriental Orthodox), and a Syriac language church (Church of the East).  Within Protestantism, the Evangelicals are approximately the part that split off within America.

 It's not an exact fit, because our part of the world is thankfully several centuries removed from the new leader using deadly force to convert you, but it's reasonable. 

The Germanic world has a ... well used to have a Strong Catholic Component. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI after all was German. And there were other influential germanic speaking Catholics as well.

[Skill and Chance]

This is why I think Nassim Taleb was onto something when he suggested that ethnic/language groups would latch on to minor theological distinctions in order to separate their churches.  This strikes me as a reasonable way of understanding Christianity given that we principally have a Romance language church (Catholic), a Germanic language church (Protestant), a Greek/Slavic language church (Eastern Orthodox), a Coptic/Arabic language church (Oriental Orthodox), and a Syriac language church (Church of the East).  Within Protestantism, the Evangelicals are approximately the part that split off within America.

 It's not an exact fit, because our part of the world is thankfully several centuries removed from the new leader using deadly force to convert you, but it's reasonable. 

     What bothers me about the language of "latch on" and "in order to" is that it makes it sound like these people were simply using these things as a pretext in order to foment schism, when historically these were consistently treated these as legitimate theological disputes and early Christians also aggressively attacked schism as an un-Christian activity that incurred serious penalties. I do agree that language plays a big factor in forming how we think about the world and thus different linguistic groups have had different approaches to theology.

It's not a perfect model and it struggles most with Protestantism.  In a world where there were just 3 Protestant churches, Lutheran, Anglican, and a single congregationalist type denomination with clear majority support in America, the ethno-linguistic model would be an ideal fit, but Protestantism is considerably more complicated than that. 

Iconoclast Calvinists with double predestination and credobaptists with 100% symbolic communion are clearly a bigger step out theologically than leavened vs. unleavened bread, proceeds from the son, miaphysite vs. monophysite, Mother of God vs. Mother of Christ, etc. and a lot of it came bottom up rather than top down from a scholarly class.  The earlier disputes, up to and including Luther and Henry VIII really do strike me as elites searching for a legitimate reason to break off from other elites and establish local control.  I don't think you can say about stuff that developed after the average person was literate with a mass-produced Bible in their hand.

[Associate Justice PiT]

This is why I think Nassim Taleb was onto something when he suggested that ethnic/language groups would latch on to minor theological distinctions in order to separate their churches.  This strikes me as a reasonable way of understanding Christianity given that we principally have a Romance language church (Catholic), a Germanic language church (Protestant), a Greek/Slavic language church (Eastern Orthodox), a Coptic/Arabic language church (Oriental Orthodox), and a Syriac language church (Church of the East).  Within Protestantism, the Evangelicals are approximately the part that split off within America.

 It's not an exact fit, because our part of the world is thankfully several centuries removed from the new leader using deadly force to convert you, but it's reasonable. 

     What bothers me about the language of "latch on" and "in order to" is that it makes it sound like these people were simply using these things as a pretext in order to foment schism, when historically these were consistently treated these as legitimate theological disputes and early Christians also aggressively attacked schism as an un-Christian activity that incurred serious penalties. I do agree that language plays a big factor in forming how we think about the world and thus different linguistic groups have had different approaches to theology.

It's not a perfect model and it struggles most with Protestantism.  In a world where there were just 3 Protestant churches, Lutheran, Anglican, and a single congregationalist type denomination with clear majority support in America, the ethno-linguistic model would be an ideal fit, but Protestantism is considerably more complicated than that. 

Iconoclast Calvinists with double predestination and credobaptists with 100% symbolic communion are clearly a bigger step out theologically than leavened vs. unleavened bread, proceeds from the son, miaphysite vs. monophysite, Mother of God vs. Mother of Christ, etc. and a lot of it came bottom up rather than top down from a scholarly class.  The earlier disputes, up to and including Luther and Henry VIII really do strike me as elites searching for a legitimate reason to break off from other elites and establish local control.  I don't think you can say about stuff that developed after the average person was literate with a mass-produced Bible in their hand.

     And I don't see how that squares with the patristic conviction that their opponents were actual heretics, or that schism is a damnable offense. Early Christian history sees some lasting schisms but far more healed ones because the focus was always on preserving the unity of the Church alongside defending the truth. You're welcome to think they were wrong to care so much about these things, but I definitely believe they were sincere in claiming to care about them.

     One thing I will mention is something a friend who converted to Orthodoxy from Lutheranism told me, which is that Protestants make soteriology the basis of their theology while patristically Christology is the basis of theology. Christ is indeed the cornerstone of our faith, and it seems obvious to me that our methods of theology should treat Him as such. With that said, I know that due to the Protestant influences in the founding of this country most Americans don't think of it in that way, even if they don't realize it.

[RINO Tom]

Your average American couldn't come up with a coherent theological definition of what an Evangelical is ... including most Evangelicals.

Further thought on this ... let's use this very simplistic definition.  An "Evangelical Christian" is more or less a "born-again" (Protestant) Christian, and therefore they do not practice infant baptism.  They tend to be theologically and politically conservative, but this is not always the case.  I really do believe a fundamental component of Evangelism is the belief in a "born again experience" of some kind, and this removes groups mentioned above like conservative Anglicans, Lutherans, etc.  I'd also argue groups like American Baptist Churches USA and the Disciples of Christ - regardless of their baptism traditions - have done more than enough to identify as "Mainline" and are not really "Evangelical."  FWIW, using Pew's numbers that would break down Protestants (46.6% of the country) about like this:

22.5% Evangelical
17.6% NOT Evangelical ("Mainline" means different things to different people)
6.5% Historically Black Protestant

The more you get into religion and theology, the less meaningful "Evangelical" (as the media uses it) means anything.  Southern Baptists do not look favorably upon Pentecostals.  LCMS Lutherans (who I don't consider Evangelical but Pew does) would want absolutely nothing to do with a Non-Denominational church service.  Members of breakaway Anglican groups wouldn't see themselves as having anything in common with ANY Evangelical group, etc.

I don't think anyone thinks the Disciples of Christ churches and the American Baptist Churches are evangelical.

I know, I was saying that because using my first definition (which pretty much amounted to adult baptism) might have technically included them.  I pretty much defined an Evangelical as a Protestant who practices "Believer's Baptism" and then excluded both of them after that for being part of the Seven Sisters group.

     The issue is that Protestantism is too much of a big tent to coherently define because there are numerous sects with widely diverging beliefs today that are loosely connected by a couple of subjectively-defined priors. The concept of Evangelicalism as a category is mostly a product of a desire to try to make the topic easier to grasp. The factors used to distinguish that category will inevitably be largely arbitrary.

I've long wished "Protestantism" was divided into three main categories by academics that spoke more to origin/tradition than "ideology."  Protestant traditions that descend more directly from the Reformation like Lutheran, Reformed/Calvinist (Presbyterians, Continental Reformed, Congregationalists, etc.) and Anglican/Episcopalian really should be a different category than Restorationist/new age groups like Pentecostals, Adventists or Churches of Christ, and those from the Radical Reformation like Anabaptists or Baptists (yes, I consider them Radical Reformation) should honestly be a third category.  "Mainline," "Evangelical" and "Historically Black" at BEST leave a lot of groups like conservative Anglicans/Lutherans or progressive Baptists in strange categories.

     I think that is overall reasonable. My priest has advocated for a division between "Protestant" (Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican) and "Evangelical" (everyone else). It's pretty close to yours, but it does not make a separate category for the Radical Reformation, which is hard to handle in historical terms because while those groups are rooted in the 16th century their standardbearers today act much more like Restorationists in practice.

     Overall, it strikes me as odd that people largely ignore historical development of Protestant denominations in developing their typology, but I come from that perspective as an Apostolic Christian wherein these sorts of historical considerations are central to understanding how we exist as different groups. Different ecclesiology leads to different ways of thinking about the faith.

This is why I think Nassim Taleb was onto something when he suggested that ethnic/language groups would latch on to minor theological distinctions in order to separate their churches.  This strikes me as a reasonable way of understanding Christianity given that we principally have a Romance language church (Catholic), a Germanic language church (Protestant), a Greek/Slavic language church (Eastern Orthodox), a Coptic/Arabic language church (Oriental Orthodox), and a Syriac language church (Church of the East).  Within Protestantism, the Evangelicals are approximately the part that split off within America.

 It's not an exact fit, because our part of the world is thankfully several centuries removed from the new leader using deadly force to convert you, but it's reasonable. 

The Germanic world has a ... well used to have a Strong Catholic Component. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI after all was German. And there were other influential germanic speaking Catholics as well.

While this is true, and (what would later become) Southern Germany, Austria and the Netherlands have all had historically Catholic areas, I think the "Germanic world" - and even just the German world - is definitely mostly Protestant in spirit. 

This is all historically speaking, ignoring recent secularization trends, of course.  The Scandinavian countries are nearly monolithically Lutheran.  England has historically been nearly monolithically Anglican.  While the Netherlands now even has more Catholics than Protestants, I believe the monarchs historically were always Dutch Reformed, and most of the culture seems more similar to Protestant countries than Catholic ones.  Even with Germany, given that Prussia led the charge to unite the country into the German Empire and gave its Protestant ruling family to the throne, it definitely had more of a Protestant feel than a Catholic feel.  Before World War II, Protestants outnumbered Catholics roughly 2:1, which is a similar margin to the current one in the US.

[Skill and Chance]

This is why I think Nassim Taleb was onto something when he suggested that ethnic/language groups would latch on to minor theological distinctions in order to separate their churches.  This strikes me as a reasonable way of understanding Christianity given that we principally have a Romance language church (Catholic), a Germanic language church (Protestant), a Greek/Slavic language church (Eastern Orthodox), a Coptic/Arabic language church (Oriental Orthodox), and a Syriac language church (Church of the East).  Within Protestantism, the Evangelicals are approximately the part that split off within America.

 It's not an exact fit, because our part of the world is thankfully several centuries removed from the new leader using deadly force to convert you, but it's reasonable. 

     What bothers me about the language of "latch on" and "in order to" is that it makes it sound like these people were simply using these things as a pretext in order to foment schism, when historically these were consistently treated these as legitimate theological disputes and early Christians also aggressively attacked schism as an un-Christian activity that incurred serious penalties. I do agree that language plays a big factor in forming how we think about the world and thus different linguistic groups have had different approaches to theology.

It's not a perfect model and it struggles most with Protestantism.  In a world where there were just 3 Protestant churches, Lutheran, Anglican, and a single congregationalist type denomination with clear majority support in America, the ethno-linguistic model would be an ideal fit, but Protestantism is considerably more complicated than that. 

Iconoclast Calvinists with double predestination and credobaptists with 100% symbolic communion are clearly a bigger step out theologically than leavened vs. unleavened bread, proceeds from the son, miaphysite vs. monophysite, Mother of God vs. Mother of Christ, etc. and a lot of it came bottom up rather than top down from a scholarly class.  The earlier disputes, up to and including Luther and Henry VIII really do strike me as elites searching for a legitimate reason to break off from other elites and establish local control.  I don't think you can say about stuff that developed after the average person was literate with a mass-produced Bible in their hand.

     And I don't see how that squares with the patristic conviction that their opponents were actual heretics, or that schism is a damnable offense. Early Christian history sees some lasting schisms but far more healed ones because the focus was always on preserving the unity of the Church alongside defending the truth. You're welcome to think they were wrong to care so much about these things, but I definitely believe they were sincere in claiming to care about them.

     One thing I will mention is something a friend who converted to Orthodoxy from Lutheranism told me, which is that Protestants make soteriology the basis of their theology while patristically Christology is the basis of theology. Christ is indeed the cornerstone of our faith, and it seems obvious to me that our methods of theology should treat Him as such. With that said, I know that due to the Protestant influences in the founding of this country most Americans don't think of it in that way, even if they don't realize it.

It's fascinating to me that the two extremes Orthodoxy/the more trad side of Catholicism and "Pastor Bob's Bible Church" style American Protestants are both holding their own in the modern West, while everything in between (the more moderate side of Catholicism, nearly all high church Protestants, and even some of the older Evangelical denominations) is bleeding out to secularization.  I don't know what to make of it?

[Associate Justice PiT]

This is why I think Nassim Taleb was onto something when he suggested that ethnic/language groups would latch on to minor theological distinctions in order to separate their churches.  This strikes me as a reasonable way of understanding Christianity given that we principally have a Romance language church (Catholic), a Germanic language church (Protestant), a Greek/Slavic language church (Eastern Orthodox), a Coptic/Arabic language church (Oriental Orthodox), and a Syriac language church (Church of the East).  Within Protestantism, the Evangelicals are approximately the part that split off within America.

 It's not an exact fit, because our part of the world is thankfully several centuries removed from the new leader using deadly force to convert you, but it's reasonable. 

     What bothers me about the language of "latch on" and "in order to" is that it makes it sound like these people were simply using these things as a pretext in order to foment schism, when historically these were consistently treated these as legitimate theological disputes and early Christians also aggressively attacked schism as an un-Christian activity that incurred serious penalties. I do agree that language plays a big factor in forming how we think about the world and thus different linguistic groups have had different approaches to theology.

It's not a perfect model and it struggles most with Protestantism.  In a world where there were just 3 Protestant churches, Lutheran, Anglican, and a single congregationalist type denomination with clear majority support in America, the ethno-linguistic model would be an ideal fit, but Protestantism is considerably more complicated than that. 

Iconoclast Calvinists with double predestination and credobaptists with 100% symbolic communion are clearly a bigger step out theologically than leavened vs. unleavened bread, proceeds from the son, miaphysite vs. monophysite, Mother of God vs. Mother of Christ, etc. and a lot of it came bottom up rather than top down from a scholarly class.  The earlier disputes, up to and including Luther and Henry VIII really do strike me as elites searching for a legitimate reason to break off from other elites and establish local control.  I don't think you can say about stuff that developed after the average person was literate with a mass-produced Bible in their hand.

     And I don't see how that squares with the patristic conviction that their opponents were actual heretics, or that schism is a damnable offense. Early Christian history sees some lasting schisms but far more healed ones because the focus was always on preserving the unity of the Church alongside defending the truth. You're welcome to think they were wrong to care so much about these things, but I definitely believe they were sincere in claiming to care about them.

     One thing I will mention is something a friend who converted to Orthodoxy from Lutheranism told me, which is that Protestants make soteriology the basis of their theology while patristically Christology is the basis of theology. Christ is indeed the cornerstone of our faith, and it seems obvious to me that our methods of theology should treat Him as such. With that said, I know that due to the Protestant influences in the founding of this country most Americans don't think of it in that way, even if they don't realize it.

It's fascinating to me that the two extremes Orthodoxy/the more trad side of Catholicism and "Pastor Bob's Bible Church" style American Protestants are both holding their own in the modern West, while everything in between (the more moderate side of Catholicism, nearly all high church Protestants, and even some of the older Evangelical denominations) is bleeding out to secularization.  I don't know what to make of it?

     There are a few different factors, but I think the most important one is ultimately that of being a solid rock among the tides. The problem that a lot of the in-between groups face is that they seem to be playing "follow the leader", where the leader is the current state of secular society. If you are representing something that claims to profess metaphysical truth, changing your profession to reflect what secular people have already believed for a few years belies the claim. Adhering to such a religion ultimately seems pointless in any case.

[RINO Tom]

^ This is why, regardless of my personal theological and ideological beliefs, I think the Mainline Protestants made a huge mistake chasing SJW adherence.  This is mostly just my conjecture and based off of anecdotal comments I have seen, but there are a lot of people who yearn for a traditional religious experience but also feel kinship with the historic fact that America mostly has a Protestant heritage.  If I'm of predominantly German or English or Scottish heritage and I want a religious experience that is rooted in tradition and provides the more "scared" feel of high church worship, I'd want to be Lutheran or Episcopalian or Presbyterian myself!  That SHOULD provide you with the same connection to your heritage that Italian and Irish people who are Catholic feel, but that is obviously not the case, as you never hear of "Cradle Lutherans" or "Culturally Presbyterian" people, lol.

[jojoju1998]

This is why I think Nassim Taleb was onto something when he suggested that ethnic/language groups would latch on to minor theological distinctions in order to separate their churches.  This strikes me as a reasonable way of understanding Christianity given that we principally have a Romance language church (Catholic), a Germanic language church (Protestant), a Greek/Slavic language church (Eastern Orthodox), a Coptic/Arabic language church (Oriental Orthodox), and a Syriac language church (Church of the East).  Within Protestantism, the Evangelicals are approximately the part that split off within America.

 It's not an exact fit, because our part of the world is thankfully several centuries removed from the new leader using deadly force to convert you, but it's reasonable. 

     What bothers me about the language of "latch on" and "in order to" is that it makes it sound like these people were simply using these things as a pretext in order to foment schism, when historically these were consistently treated these as legitimate theological disputes and early Christians also aggressively attacked schism as an un-Christian activity that incurred serious penalties. I do agree that language plays a big factor in forming how we think about the world and thus different linguistic groups have had different approaches to theology.

It's not a perfect model and it struggles most with Protestantism.  In a world where there were just 3 Protestant churches, Lutheran, Anglican, and a single congregationalist type denomination with clear majority support in America, the ethno-linguistic model would be an ideal fit, but Protestantism is considerably more complicated than that. 

Iconoclast Calvinists with double predestination and credobaptists with 100% symbolic communion are clearly a bigger step out theologically than leavened vs. unleavened bread, proceeds from the son, miaphysite vs. monophysite, Mother of God vs. Mother of Christ, etc. and a lot of it came bottom up rather than top down from a scholarly class.  The earlier disputes, up to and including Luther and Henry VIII really do strike me as elites searching for a legitimate reason to break off from other elites and establish local control.  I don't think you can say about stuff that developed after the average person was literate with a mass-produced Bible in their hand.

     And I don't see how that squares with the patristic conviction that their opponents were actual heretics, or that schism is a damnable offense. Early Christian history sees some lasting schisms but far more healed ones because the focus was always on preserving the unity of the Church alongside defending the truth. You're welcome to think they were wrong to care so much about these things, but I definitely believe they were sincere in claiming to care about them.

     One thing I will mention is something a friend who converted to Orthodoxy from Lutheranism told me, which is that Protestants make soteriology the basis of their theology while patristically Christology is the basis of theology. Christ is indeed the cornerstone of our faith, and it seems obvious to me that our methods of theology should treat Him as such. With that said, I know that due to the Protestant influences in the founding of this country most Americans don't think of it in that way, even if they don't realize it.

It's fascinating to me that the two extremes Orthodoxy/the more trad side of Catholicism and "Pastor Bob's Bible Church" style American Protestants are both holding their own in the modern West, while everything in between (the more moderate side of Catholicism, nearly all high church Protestants, and even some of the older Evangelical denominations) is bleeding out to secularization.  I don't know what to make of it?

American Catholicism is only holding thanks to immigration from Africa, and Asia.

This is why I think Nassim Taleb was onto something when he suggested that ethnic/language groups would latch on to minor theological distinctions in order to separate their churches.  This strikes me as a reasonable way of understanding Christianity given that we principally have a Romance language church (Catholic), a Germanic language church (Protestant), a Greek/Slavic language church (Eastern Orthodox), a Coptic/Arabic language church (Oriental Orthodox), and a Syriac language church (Church of the East).  Within Protestantism, the Evangelicals are approximately the part that split off within America.

 It's not an exact fit, because our part of the world is thankfully several centuries removed from the new leader using deadly force to convert you, but it's reasonable. 

     What bothers me about the language of "latch on" and "in order to" is that it makes it sound like these people were simply using these things as a pretext in order to foment schism, when historically these were consistently treated these as legitimate theological disputes and early Christians also aggressively attacked schism as an un-Christian activity that incurred serious penalties. I do agree that language plays a big factor in forming how we think about the world and thus different linguistic groups have had different approaches to theology.

It's not a perfect model and it struggles most with Protestantism.  In a world where there were just 3 Protestant churches, Lutheran, Anglican, and a single congregationalist type denomination with clear majority support in America, the ethno-linguistic model would be an ideal fit, but Protestantism is considerably more complicated than that. 

Iconoclast Calvinists with double predestination and credobaptists with 100% symbolic communion are clearly a bigger step out theologically than leavened vs. unleavened bread, proceeds from the son, miaphysite vs. monophysite, Mother of God vs. Mother of Christ, etc. and a lot of it came bottom up rather than top down from a scholarly class.  The earlier disputes, up to and including Luther and Henry VIII really do strike me as elites searching for a legitimate reason to break off from other elites and establish local control.  I don't think you can say about stuff that developed after the average person was literate with a mass-produced Bible in their hand.

     And I don't see how that squares with the patristic conviction that their opponents were actual heretics, or that schism is a damnable offense. Early Christian history sees some lasting schisms but far more healed ones because the focus was always on preserving the unity of the Church alongside defending the truth. You're welcome to think they were wrong to care so much about these things, but I definitely believe they were sincere in claiming to care about them.

     One thing I will mention is something a friend who converted to Orthodoxy from Lutheranism told me, which is that Protestants make soteriology the basis of their theology while patristically Christology is the basis of theology. Christ is indeed the cornerstone of our faith, and it seems obvious to me that our methods of theology should treat Him as such. With that said, I know that due to the Protestant influences in the founding of this country most Americans don't think of it in that way, even if they don't realize it.

It's fascinating to me that the two extremes Orthodoxy/the more trad side of Catholicism and "Pastor Bob's Bible Church" style American Protestants are both holding their own in the modern West, while everything in between (the more moderate side of Catholicism, nearly all high church Protestants, and even some of the older Evangelical denominations) is bleeding out to secularization.  I don't know what to make of it?

     There are a few different factors, but I think the most important one is ultimately that of being a solid rock among the tides. The problem that a lot of the in-between groups face is that they seem to be playing "follow the leader", where the leader is the current state of secular society. If you are representing something that claims to profess metaphysical truth, changing your profession to reflect what secular people have already believed for a few years belies the claim. Adhering to such a religion ultimately seems pointless in any case.

^ This is why, regardless of my personal theological and ideological beliefs, I think the Mainline Protestants made a huge mistake chasing SJW adherence.  This is mostly just my conjecture and based off of anecdotal comments I have seen, but there are a lot of people who yearn for a traditional religious experience but also feel kinship with the historic fact that America mostly has a Protestant heritage.  If I'm of predominantly German or English or Scottish heritage and I want a religious experience that is rooted in tradition and provides the more "scared" feel of high church worship, I'd want to be Lutheran or Episcopalian or Presbyterian myself!  That SHOULD provide you with the same connection to your heritage that Italian and Irish people who are Catholic feel, but that is obviously not the case, as you never hear of "Cradle Lutherans" or "Culturally Presbyterian" people, lol.

The Conservative Lutheran Missouri Synod church whom no one considers to be liberal; has seen a stagnation and decrease in recent years. A conservative high church denomination.




That aside; " traditionalism " and SJW need not to be enemies. Catholic Social Doctrine shows that.

[jojoju1998]

This is why I think Nassim Taleb was onto something when he suggested that ethnic/language groups would latch on to minor theological distinctions in order to separate their churches.  This strikes me as a reasonable way of understanding Christianity given that we principally have a Romance language church (Catholic), a Germanic language church (Protestant), a Greek/Slavic language church (Eastern Orthodox), a Coptic/Arabic language church (Oriental Orthodox), and a Syriac language church (Church of the East).  Within Protestantism, the Evangelicals are approximately the part that split off within America.

 It's not an exact fit, because our part of the world is thankfully several centuries removed from the new leader using deadly force to convert you, but it's reasonable. 

     What bothers me about the language of "latch on" and "in order to" is that it makes it sound like these people were simply using these things as a pretext in order to foment schism, when historically these were consistently treated these as legitimate theological disputes and early Christians also aggressively attacked schism as an un-Christian activity that incurred serious penalties. I do agree that language plays a big factor in forming how we think about the world and thus different linguistic groups have had different approaches to theology.

It's not a perfect model and it struggles most with Protestantism.  In a world where there were just 3 Protestant churches, Lutheran, Anglican, and a single congregationalist type denomination with clear majority support in America, the ethno-linguistic model would be an ideal fit, but Protestantism is considerably more complicated than that. 

Iconoclast Calvinists with double predestination and credobaptists with 100% symbolic communion are clearly a bigger step out theologically than leavened vs. unleavened bread, proceeds from the son, miaphysite vs. monophysite, Mother of God vs. Mother of Christ, etc. and a lot of it came bottom up rather than top down from a scholarly class.  The earlier disputes, up to and including Luther and Henry VIII really do strike me as elites searching for a legitimate reason to break off from other elites and establish local control.  I don't think you can say about stuff that developed after the average person was literate with a mass-produced Bible in their hand.

It should be noted that the " growing " parts of Anglicanism, Methodism, Lutheranism, Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, are minority groups.