Every Christian has a starting point.
Maybe yours is Baptist.
Methodist.
Lutheran.
Presbyterian or Reformed.
Anglican or Episcopal.
Pentecostal.
Evangelical.
Non-denominational.
Or perhaps you simply call yourself Christian.
This journey does not begin by asking you to abandon that identity.
It begins by asking you to locate it in history.
Four Questions
Ask:
- When did my present church or denomination begin?
- From what earlier Christian movement did it emerge?
- What came before that movement?
- If I keep going backward, where do I eventually arrive?
A Christian Family Tree
Imagine Christianity as a large family tree.
At the outer branches are today's communities.
Move inward and branches begin joining older movements.
Some modern non-denominational churches reflect Evangelical, Baptist, Reformed, Wesleyan or Pentecostal influences.
Methodism developed as an eighteenth-century renewal movement within Anglican Christianity.
Presbyterian and Reformed traditions have important roots in the sixteenth-century Reformation.
Lutheran Christianity takes its distinctive historical identity from the Reformation associated with Martin Luther.
Anglican Christianity has older English roots, while separation from Roman jurisdiction occurred during the sixteenth century.
Identifiable Baptist communities emerged in the early seventeenth century, though Baptists have debated aspects of their historical lineage.
Modern Pentecostalism emerged as a recognizable movement in the early twentieth century.
These dates do not prove that older is automatically truer.
They create a question:
What did Christians believe before my particular tradition existed?
You Inherited a Starting Point
Had you been born in another country, another family or another century, the first version of Christianity presented to you might have been different.
That does not prove Catholicism.
It demonstrates something smaller:
inheritance and truth are not precisely the same question.
An inherited belief can be true.
It can also be incomplete.
The responsible response is investigation.
Now Remove the Modern Labels
Walk backward toward approximately five centuries ago.
The Christian landscape begins changing dramatically.