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Ramblinman wrote:My church remains tolerant and deliberately silent on matters that cannot be directly proved from scripture.
natman wrote:Ramblinman wrote:My church remains tolerant and deliberately silent on matters that cannot be directly proved from scripture.
Ramblinman, you may have mentioned it before, but what denomination are you a member of?
I have found that, generally, the larger the church body, the more tolerant they are of such things. The smaller the congregation, the more dogmatic they are on topics they have not thoroughly studied.
How detailed does that handbook get when it comes down to identifying the doctrines of the various denominations? I would think it would be either a very crude instrument or incredibly thick otherwise. Although I can still see it might be a starting place.Ramblinman wrote: ....... I recommend " The Handbook of Denominations in the United States " as a guide to others in their search .........
Petros wrote:This is where I came in - started to write this last night and lost me web connection.
The descriptors may be as detailed as you like for denominational discriminators - but each individual church is its own case. The quirks of priest / pastor, spouse if any, board, and congregational house rules can total;ly change the picture.
That may well be true in many "congregational" denominations. But in my "birth church," the Seventh Day Baptists, it is less true, mostly because there are many in the churches who know many others, attend General Conference regularly, and see other SDB churches as "family" in the same way their own congregation is "family." Any pastor--and there have been some--who tried to set up his (usually "his," although we have women pastors) own fiefdom because "I am the LORD's anointed!" would only succeed in alienating the best, most mature and dedicated members of the church, who may well set up their own church. So the "body of believers" itself functions as a check and a balance for folks with delusions of grandeur.Petros wrote:There will be more denominational consistency in more centralized groups - where you have a bishop or a synod with teeth watchdogging it. But where there is a more congreghational format, a loose confederacy rather than a hierarchic structure, then Pastor Joe "the Lord's Anointed" can, if so inclined - and some are - pretty much Big Brother it as he chooses.
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