houndlove
Posted : 2/2/2007 9:54:23 PM
So, there's Roman Catholicism, there's the various protestant denominations, and there's Eastern Orthadox. The Eastern Orthodox church split from the Roman church in the 11th century. Eastern Orthodox is a much more mystical branch of Christianity than either Catholicism or Protestantism. It's pretty neat, actually.
The Protestant Reformation was not really one thing but a whole bunch of stuff done and thought and said by a whole bunch of people all over Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. For some it was primarily theological, for a lot it was political. The thing with King Henry in England was completely 100% political and had to do way more with a power struggle between the British Crown and the Holy Roman Emperor, with the Pope kind of caught in between (and held
risoner in his own castle for a little while by the Emperor). It's a really fascinating story and I went through a little phase where I read everything I could on Tudor politics.
After the Protestant Reformation, Europe was basically one giant war (civil and inter-state) for the next 300 years, the Protestants vs. the Catholics. Again, it was mostly political, but the religious differences didn't help and were used by the political leaders to rally the more "common folk" to hatred and violence. That was what the founders of this country were desperately trying to avoid by not having a state religion.
I really, really highly recommend the books written by Karen Armstrong on the Abrahemic religions:
A History of God and
The Battle for God. They are top-notch. As a non-judeo-christian I find it all quite fascinating. It's all so sort of alien to me, my anthropological antennae always go way up about monotheism.