From my perspective, I'm not trying to say "you don't realize they're different." What I was tryiing to point to is the distinction between the ministerial experience of Christianity and the laity. Ministers and people who mount doctrinal defenses are drilling down into the details of whether a given branch embraces, for instance, Calvinism, and if so, in what way. These are relevant to doctrinal defenses of homosexuality.
However, those distinctions are not directly relevant to a lot of churchgoers. A lot of people choose their church based on whether the choir is good, whether they like the hymnal, and whether they like the specific preacher. Most christians do not stay in one denomination their whole life; I'd say staying in one denomination is pretty uncommon. They couldn't tell you what their given denomination thinks of various heresies, only what they think Jesus would want. And it's the body of the church that tends to pressure the higher ups to change how they're reading the bible. It's very analogous to representative democracy, and how people moving from one state to another state then vote in that state.
Meanwhile, again very much like state politics, there are severe divisions even within churches. For instance, there are major splits in the Episcopal church right now over homosexuality and over the ordination of women. The lefty American churches have broken with the Church of England. the righty American churches have broken with the American bishopric and some of them now report to a bishop in Africa. There's a similar split between Scottish Rite Presbyterians and non-Scottish-Rite Presbyterians. I think it's only recently that the Southern Baptists and Northern Baptists/Anabaptists reconciled, although I think some of the Southern Baptist churches switched to being Pentacostal. (I could be wrong; I'm not as up on the status of Baptists.)
As a churchgoer, those splits only sort of influence me, because if I was going to a church that ended up on the wrong side, I'd just swap churches, like you swap candidates. What I'm trying to get at about Evangelical christianity being really by the book -- it's weird. It's not my experience of Christianity, which is almost alarmingly a la carte.
no subject
However, those distinctions are not directly relevant to a lot of churchgoers. A lot of people choose their church based on whether the choir is good, whether they like the hymnal, and whether they like the specific preacher. Most christians do not stay in one denomination their whole life; I'd say staying in one denomination is pretty uncommon. They couldn't tell you what their given denomination thinks of various heresies, only what they think Jesus would want. And it's the body of the church that tends to pressure the higher ups to change how they're reading the bible. It's very analogous to representative democracy, and how people moving from one state to another state then vote in that state.
Meanwhile, again very much like state politics, there are severe divisions even within churches. For instance, there are major splits in the Episcopal church right now over homosexuality and over the ordination of women. The lefty American churches have broken with the Church of England. the righty American churches have broken with the American bishopric and some of them now report to a bishop in Africa. There's a similar split between Scottish Rite Presbyterians and non-Scottish-Rite Presbyterians. I think it's only recently that the Southern Baptists and Northern Baptists/Anabaptists reconciled, although I think some of the Southern Baptist churches switched to being Pentacostal. (I could be wrong; I'm not as up on the status of Baptists.)
As a churchgoer, those splits only sort of influence me, because if I was going to a church that ended up on the wrong side, I'd just swap churches, like you swap candidates. What I'm trying to get at about Evangelical christianity being really by the book -- it's weird. It's not my experience of Christianity, which is almost alarmingly a la carte.