@jforseth210 not having watched the video, I'm hoping it was light hearted as a shirt and a productive conversation.
The real solution to the topic, of course, is for everyone to become Anglican. 😜
@realcaseyrollins @jforseth210
Oh. A serious question. Fair enough, I threw that out there.
Anglicanism came out of a theological tradition of bridging the gap between Roman Catholics and Protestants,so it is a natural fit here. There's a... 3 legged stool that supports Anglicanism: Bible, Tradition, and Reason.
I typed a lot... Will break it into a few posts...
@realcaseyrollins @jforseth210
We are a historical church and share so much in common with Roman Catholics. An Anglican service and a catholic mass feel very similar. I think the RCC will even accept Anglican (and Lutheran) priests (who if already married are the only married RC priests) .
At the same time, the church has theology shaped/corrected by the reformation. There's alignment on most things theological with anabaptist and Evangelical and non denominational, and even orthodox church traditions on all the primary issues.
It's a natural unifier.
@realcaseyrollins @jforseth210
From most of my life not in a historical church tradition, I think the fault with protestantism is that we're always ready to protest....over positions, people, music, budget, carpet color, and tertiary theological issues. I've lived through all of those.
Anglicanism values unity in the church so not easily having a split. It's not biblical to schism over those things, and one would hope Bible churches wouldn't keep doing that.
We have a church structure of deacons, priest, bishop, the biblical roles from the Greek words deacon, Presbyter, Episcopas), but with Christ as the head of the church, there's no top dog papa bishop.
@realcaseyrollins @jforseth210
Last one I think, and I look forward to any constructive dialog here....
The arch bishops are peers and if regions start to go off the biblical rails, the others can step in to hold to account or take action.
That's happened with The Episcopal Church USA, so the African bishops eventually acted and started what is now called the Anglican Church of North America, a bit of biblical reform in the US and Canada.
I LOVE the fact that I joined a Rwandan Anglican church. There is a little African liturgy in our services. I loved the international unity of it, and having a reminder that this is not an American or English thing. (It's now its own province with its own North American leadership.)
The Anglican Church is sort of....a middle way, both catholic and protestant. Or one or the other depending on which Anglican you ask.
I love the theological depth behind every part of the liturgy, which can only seem boring if you haven't been informed of that theological depth.
I've found that I'm much less judgmental of others from all church traditions since being Anglican. I love that we're not in chosen conflict with other congregations of other traditions. There is one body, after all.
And that's full circle to the topic of why Anglican to address conversing between catholic and protestant.
So...you know....covert.
🤣
@SecondJon @jforseth210 Very interesting! I’m a Reformed Baptist, which i think puts me within protestantsm. What turns me off a lil bit regarding Catholicism and Anglicanism too is a somewhat large and complicated church structure which doesn’t really mirror anything that we see in the Bible. I’m not sure if my theological gripes with Catholicism apply at all to Anglicanism, but as a whole I’m much more comfortable with a church structure which more accurately church structures that are found in the scriptures.
@realcaseyrollins @jforseth210
That's something I like about the Anglican tradition... The deacon, Presbyter (priest) and bishop (episcopas) are straight from the Bible as the church structure is described there.
Elders acting like a corporate board room or congregational vote driven styles.... I'm finding harder to biblically justify.
@realcaseyrollins @jforseth210 just got to church.... Our bishop is here today! It's a little rough as he can only move on diagonals....
The deacon, Presbyter (priest) and bishop (episcopas) are straight from the Bible as the church structure is described there.
Are these based on OT church structures, or NT structures? On the top of my head I can’t remember the early church (NT) setting up priesthoods
@realcaseyrollins @jforseth210
New testament. The three terms for church positions are below. The first two, we just anglicized the Greek, though we don't have a title of "episcopal" except for the bishop type church structure based on the new testament usage of these :
διάκονος/diakonos in Greek, we say "deacon" in English
πρεσβύτερος / presbuteros, we say "priest" in English
ἐπίσκοπος/episkopos, we say "bishop"
So priest in this sense is just an English adaptation of the Greek word presbuteros.
@realcaseyrollins @jforseth210 @maxmustermann
The post in replying to here references the new testament terms for the church positions that are present in the Anglican /episcopal tradition. There's plenty of online resources to verify all of this.
I'm fascinated that there's an assumption that this is old testament, when it's straight from the New Testament. Perhaps just a straw man because it sounds "too Catholic"?
Having studied church history and New Testament Greek in undergrad, I'm no scholar, but I'm happy to help guide discussions as I'm able and help clear up any straw men like we've seen in this thread.