thought this would be an interesting poll to have

Observant Episcopalian

Why differentiate between Catholic and Christian if youre not going to differentiate between the protestants? (some of which have more differences than say an Episcopalian have with a Catholic)

Because the Catholic church is the biggest of all the Christian churches worldwide. Just explain whichever sect you are if you want

pacino wrote:Because the Catholic church is the biggest of all the Christian churches worldwide. Just explain whichever sect you are if you want

Nah, I dislike all organized religions anyways.

What's agnostic again? I can't decide if I want to pick that or not

You should have at least made a choice for fundamentalist mormom/polygamist.

I've been called Wacko-Catholic, Cathaholic, and other assorted things.

I've heard both Catholics and Episcopalians refer to Episcopalian as Diet Catholic: Tastes More Like Regular Catholic

Woody wrote:What's agnostic again? I can't decide if I want to pick that or not

he's here all night, folks
try the veal

Non-practicing Catholic here. I'm a free agent though, looking for something different.

GunbladeVIII wrote:I've been called Wacko-Catholic, Cathaholic, and other assorted things.

I've heard both Catholics and Episcopalians refer to Episcopalian as Diet Catholic: Tastes More Like Regular Catholic

All the ceremony, none of the guilt!

GunbladeVIII wrote:I've been called Wacko-Catholic, Cathaholic, and other assorted things.

I've heard both Catholics and Episcopalians refer to Episcopalian as Diet Catholic: Tastes More Like Regular Catholic

Episcopalians exist because King Henry wanted a divorce and the Pope wouldnt grant one. So basically he formed the Anglican church (aka Church of England) which was everything Catholic without the papal authority. Of course when the Anglicans moved to the US they changed to Episcopalians after the revolutionary war because they wouldnt recognize the monarchy of England as the head of their church.


So Episcopalians= Catholicism- papal authority- monarch authority

Just a slice of Christianity:


Adventist Family- Adventist groups, Jehovah's Witnesses, and British Israelism

Baptist Family- Southern Baptists, American Baptists, etc.

Christian Science-Metaphysical Family- Christian Science, New Thought

Communal Family- The Jesus People, Twin Oaks, etc.

Eastern Orthodox Family- Various Orthodox churches -- Russian, Greek, Serbian, etc.

European Free-Church Family- Amish, Brethren, Mennonites, Quakers, Shakers, etc.

Holiness Family - Christian and Missionary Alliance, Church of the Nazarene, etc.

Independent Fundamentalist Family- Plymouth Brethren, Fundamentalists, etc.

Latter-day Saints Family a.k.a. LDS Restorationists- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, The community of Christ

Lutheran Family - Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Lutheran church - Missouri Synod, etc.

Messianic Judaism- Jews For Jesus, and other similar groups

Pentecostal Family- Assemblies of God, Church of God (Cleveland, TN)

Pietist-Methodist Family - Scandinavian Pietism, United Methodist Church, other Methodists

Reformed-Presbyterian Family- Reformed, various Presbyterian churches, Congregational, United Church of Christ

Western Liturgical Family - Anglican Communion; Roman Catholicism, including the Latin Church and the Eastern Rite Churches: (Armenian 5 Catholic Church, Chaldean C.C., Coptic C.C., Marionite C.C., Melkite C.C., Syrian C.C.); Old Catholicism; and the Ukranian Catholic Church

More interesting history of Christianity from religioustolerance.org:


How the Christian "families" evolved:

With the exception of the first few years after the execution of their founder Yeshua of Nazareth (a.k.a. Jesus Christ), Christianity was never a unified religion.

By the end of the 1st century CE three main movements remained:

Pauline Christians: a group of mainline congregations, largely of non-Jewish Christians. Some had been created by Paul and his co-workers. They evolved to become the established church.

Gnostic Christians: They claimed salvation through special, otherwise secret gnosis (knowledge). Some were members of mainline congregations; others were part of Gnostic groups. They were declared heretics and were gradually suppressed and exterminated.

Jewish Christians: remnants of the group originally headed by James, the brother of Yeshua, and including Jesus' disciples. They were scattered throughout the Roman Empire after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, and gradually disappeared.

Circa 400 CE: The Bishop of Rome began to be recognized as the most senior of all bishops. Siricius (384-399 CE) became the first bishop to be called Pope.

1054 CE: A lengthy power struggle between eastern and western Christianity culminated in a schism between the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Western Rite (later often called the Roman Catholic Church). Many Christian sects broke away from the Western Rite throughout the Middle Ages (Cathars, Knights Templars, etc.). These were generally exterminated by the central church in various genocidal wars.

1517 CE: Martin Luther attacked certain practices and beliefs of the Church, and the authority of the Pope. He was followed by other reformers which produced a mass movement -- the Protestant Reformation. They were driven largely by two fundamental principles:

"Sola Scriptura" (Scripture Alone): The belief that the Holy Bible was the ultimate authority for all matters of religious belief and practice.

The Priesthood of all Believers: The belief that no priest or other intermediary is needed between the Christian believer and God.

1820: Joseph Smith, at the age of 14, received his first vision. He reported that God and Jesus Christ had appeared before him as separate entities and told him that all of the Christian sects and denominations were in error and that he should not join any of them. He founded The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830. It attracted 1,000 members during its first 12 months and has since grown rapidly. About 13 million believers who are members of almost a hundred faith groups trace their church's history back to the church that Smith founded.

Into modern times: Protestant Christianity became fractured into over 1,500 individual denominations, as individuals and groups began to interpret the Bible in their own unique ways. They continually formed new sects that they felt were closer to Jesus' intentions for the church. In the past fifteen decades in North America schisms occurred over the legitimacy of human slavery, and whether to allow women to be ordained. A number of mainline denominations -- Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal -- are attempting to keep their organizations intact in spite of differences of belief about sexual orientation. They are debating whether to grant equal rights to gays and lesbians, and whether to recognize same-sex relationships.

more:

Size of religious groups in the U.S.

Polling data from early 2001 indicate that:

76.5% (159 million) of Americans identify themselves as Christian. This is a major slide from 86.2% in 1990. Identification with Christianity has suffered a loss of 9.7 percentage points in 11 years -- about 0.9 percentage points per year.

52% of Americans identified themselves as Protestant.

24.5% are Roman Catholic.

14.1% do not follow any organized religion. This is an unusually rapid increase from only 8% in 1990.

1.3% are Jewish.

0.5% are Muslim, followers of Islam.

The fastest growing religion (in terms of percentage) is Wicca. It went from 8,000 in 1990 to 134,000 in 2001. Their numbers of adherents are doubling about every 30 months. 3

The percentage of Americans who are Protestants are expected to dip below 50% at sometime before the end of 2006.

Born Jewish, culturally Jewish (the guilt, the food), voted "agnostic," but I'm a little biased on the question: I want a Higher Power to exist, so maybe I'm better described as a Deist.

See, its even more murky, almost all of my Jewish friends are agnostic/athiest in belief but culturally/traditionally Jewish. I bet a bunch of the agnostic/athiest choices are Jewish.

Uncle Milty wrote:Can I become jewish?

Yes, study the Torah, stop eating shellfish and pork and cut a small part of your penis off.

The Red Tornado wrote:

Uncle Milty wrote:Can I become jewish?

Yes, study the Torah, stop eating shellfish and pork and cut a small part of your penis off.

"Walter, you're not even Jewish, you're [TOS] Polish-Catholic, man... you're living in the past."

"3000 years of tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax, you're goddamn right I'm living in the past!"

The Red Tornado wrote:See, its even more murky, almost all of my Jewish friends are agnostic/athiest in belief but culturally/traditionally Jewish. I bet a bunch of the agnostic/athiest choices are Jewish.

that's kind of silly to base that off of your own friends. given that there's more practicing Catholics, I'd imagine that far more switch to agnostic