hi. as you know I am a muslim.and I know a little about christianity.
in this thread i want to know what differents are between Ortodox,ProtestanT,Catholic?
i want to be familiar with Ortodox,Protestant and Catholic.
please help me.

Originally posted by secondboy
hi. as you know I am a muslim.and I know a little about christianity.
in this thread i want to know what differents are between Ortodox,ProtestanT,Catholic?
i want to be familiar with Ortodox,Protestant and Catholic.
please help me.

Hello again secondboy, being the first in the thread I suppose I will give just a little general information.

After the entire escapade involving Jesus occurred, and written about by various scholars, it spread out and began to grow to the West. To the West of Judea (modern-day Israel), was the Roman Empire. As Christianity grew in Rome, these cultists of Christ were persecuted for decades until the Emperor Constantine rose to power in the 3rd century A.D. (I do not know exactly the time on the hijri calendar). The entire empire converted to the religion and began into a widespread, and accepted church that spread across the European continent to all the tribes and cities. This was The Catholic Church, and it continued to grow even after the Roman empire fell a couple centuries after it had converted to Catholicism. However, the Roman Empire's Eastern half, the Byzantine Empire, remained for centuries to come.

Life went on in Europe, through the Dark Ages, and in the turn of the millenium (Again, sorry I didn't translate the times) the Byzantine Empire and Western Europe met with some friction, and out of dispute the Eastern Orthodox Church was born, also known as the East-West Schism. Catholicism continued to reign dominant in the Western side of Europe, but Orthodoxy spread to Russia.

A few more centuries passed, and more trouble appeared in the Catholic Church, this time it was to be called the Protestant Reformation. It was started by Martin Luther, a monk in what is now Germany, and others, such as John Calvin, John Knox, and Henry the VIII of England, all began to break off gradually from the Church, developing their own interpretation of the Bible and inventing their own ways to practice. This branch has many subsections in the modern day, which go throughout much of Central Europe, and the US and Canada (which still have sizable Catholic populations).

Each sect follows different interpretations of the Bible, has different practices, and different outlook on the religion itself. Much of the struggle came with corruption or political/economic/social overbearing on part of the Catholic Church. The priesthood had many faults, and had a totalitarian view of things. Some decided that is not how they believe the religion to truly be, and so now have their own separate entities as churches.
Major differences between the three major branches include the way the clergy functions in relation to the rituals, the books used in the Bible (in the Qu'ran, the suras) because different churches have different forms of the Bible, and belief in certain miracles. The acknowledgment of Saints, the existence of transubstantiation (the bread and wine becoming the true Body and Blood of Christ), the life of Jesus, the social and scientific outlook, and other things, such as taking the Bible as literal word versus spiritual guidance, are major issues that all play into it.

That's just some basics, feel free to ask more specifics and hopefully the other members, and myself, will be able to open discussion about it.

Evakian that was a good post. I visited your blog. Did you write your blog or is it cut and paste?

Originally posted by old-reb
Evakian that was a good post. I visited your blog. Did you write your blog or is it cut and paste?

All posts on my blog are original content written by me, I do it just for self-entertainment usually once a week or so, but I probably need to augment it a lot more whenever I get some time. Visit anytime you like. In any case, let's try and stay on topic :D

I look forward to secondboy or Frogger visiting the thread.

Second boy

It might be easiest for you to simply relate it to Islam.

In Islam there are Sunnis and Shiites as the two main branches of the religion. While they view the succession from The Prophet differently both sects revere him and worship Allah.

There are also sub-sets within the religion of Islam, Wahabbis, Sufis, Kharijites, Ghulats, Alawites among them.

Some groups drink wine, some are mystics, some are strict constructionists, some are liberal, some wear the burka, some wear the veil, some wear neither. They differ in many ways but they are all united in their belief that there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet.

Evakian

I have visited your blog and enjoyed it very much. In fact, I posted a comment.

Figure out who I was. It shouldn't be too difficult, especially knowing that I am a student of history and folklore.