Bro

You're using Catholic iconography in both pictures

 Presbyterian is a really popular church in America. There’s a lot of members dude.

-Stephen Malkmus

unusual post for this blog but i was doing reading for history courses and this one Archbishop in Scotland tied a protestant reformer with BAGS OF GUNPOWDER to the stake before burning him which prompted me to make this

Late diet of wormsposting 🐛🍝 bc i was fighting for my life now ft bad poetry. Full poem below the cut 💀 cw religious trauma and the usual suspects

"Plus Ultra"

Pariah but raised Protestant I learnt to read the moniker at face value Raised to place Luther Revolutionary against institution On a pedestal By my fire-and-brimstone preacher

Denouncing the foundations of my being Draped in priestly black He is big and brash and bullying Has a cult following Bellowing across the pulpit Whilst I try to block it out

This rebel accused Is not eloquent or commanding Like the one I thought I was 500 years ago Called to defend myself on the stand.

How the tables have turned against us. Too messy to be 'Holy' Too obscure to be 'Roman' Always being told to close my mouth Hanging open like I have something to say but no words come out I am the Emperor A newly licensed adult Skin and bone in feathered hat and flamboyant fur I look so small.

The enemy in every retelling Ugly as sin Only too easy to cast as boogeyman Too easy to distance from and turn against Lord knows what happens to those who sit with the transgressors Lest this unsightliness might be contagious.

But Charles the Fifth is not the villain in his own story And this is not how I will go down in my history.

You will nail your theses, but I'll throw them out my door No portrait can make this identity palatable but I no longer wish to be painted out I will push further, beyond I have fought to keep my crown You will not take away my legitimacy This intersectional birthright is my God-given blessing And this empire I have built from ground up is holy

So I'm done weighing all the doubts I do myself justice And sentence you heretic on my promised land.

Tired of sci-fi alternate histories where the Nazis won. Has anyone ever written an alternate history where the Protestant Reformation never happened?

The Reformation Piggy-Backers

On 29 February 1528 - Scottish Reformer Patrick Hamilton was burned at the stake. Having earlier travelling to Europe, where he met several of the leading reformed thinkers, Patrick returned to Scotland to preach. He was tried as a heretic by Archbishop James Beaton, found guilty and handed over to secular authorities to be burnt at the stake in St Andrews as Scotland's first martyr of the Reformation.

Saint Margaret Clitherow who was crushed to death by English authorities, while pregnant, for hiding a Catholic priest. She even refused to enter a plea so that her children would not be subject to torture and forced to testify in a trial.

This is the pulpit of St. Mary's, Helmingham, where J.C. Ryle ministered for 17 years.

He personally selected the text painted there: "Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel."

October 31st is Reformation Day in the Protestant world

The Smithfield Martyrs were among the many hundreds who died

“I am firmly convinced that the Reformation of the sixteenth century was as near as any mortal thing can come to an unmixed evil. Even the parts of it that might appear plausible and enlightened, from a purely secular standpoint, have turned out rotten and reactionary, also from a purely secular standpoint. By substituting the Bible for the Sacrament it created a pedantic caste of those who could read, superstitiously identified with those who could think. By destroying the monks, it took social work from the poor philanthropists who chose to deny themselves, and gave it to any rich philanthropists who chose to assert themselves. By preaching individualism while preserving inequality, it produced modern capitalism. It destroyed the only League of Nations that ever had a chance; it produced the worst wars of nations that ever existed […] It produced the most efficient form of Protestantism, which was Prussia. It is [re]producing the worst part of paganism, which is slavery.”

— G.K. Chesterton

i've read that mormons and JWs are considered heretics because they don't affirm the trinity, so i was wondering what the sort-of 'cut off' point is. like would the ACOE be considered heretics because they say mary isn't the mother of God, only the mother of christ, for example

Alrighty, this is a big one. So, as far as the Jehovah's Witnesses and the (mainstream) Latter Day Saints movement go, things are.... a little more complicated in terms of whether their doctrine is "heresy" or if they are just plain non-Christian (and thus wouldn't count as heretical).

The crux of the argument that they are not Christian is that they do not affirm the Nicene Creed, which was articulated during the Councils of Nicaea (325 AD) and Constantinople (381 AD). While Mormons and JWs can affirm the most primitive of Christian creeds ("Christ is Lord"), the Nicene Creed very quickly took on the status of the σύμβολον, or symbolum in Latin; the "symbol of faith," the creed whose affirmation is itself a verification of one's Christian identity. That's why during the Council of Trent, for example, the Tridentine Fathers invited Protestants to participate in the Council on the condition that they could still affirm the Creed.

Of course, Mormons and JWs do not see it that way. They self-identify as Christians; and each group doesn't see themselves just as Christians, but as restorers of a purer, more original Christianity that had existed before the creation of that Creed.

But, anyway, if the conclusion of this argument is accepted, and members of the (mainstream) Latter Day Saints movement and Jehovah's Witnesses are not considered Christian, they by definition cannot be considered heretics; per the Baltimore Catechism, heretics are "baptized Christians, but do not believe all the articles of faith" (Q 1170).

The Assyrian Church of the East affirms the Nicene Creed, have Apostolic Succession, and have limited intercommunion with the Catholic Church. And, Christologically, they have an interesting situation going on. The Assyrian Church has not formally accepted the dogmatic Christological definitions of the Council of Ephesus (431). And, on that alone, the ACoE would seem to fit into the Baltimore Catechism's definition of heretic.

But over 1550 years after that split, the leaders of both the Assyrian Church of the East and the Catholic Church signed a document that affirmed that both Churches saw the other's Christological doctrines as valid, and that both theologies were expressions of the same Apostolic faith. You can read the full document, which is not very long, here.

But to abstract the discussion of heresy for a moment (bold of me to do, admittedly, after saying the last ask was a little vague); we need to make a distinction between formal heresy and material heresy. As Pope Benedict noted in 1993, which itself was an echo of the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia's description of heresy, the defining characteristic of formal heresy is pertinacia, which can be translated as "stubbornness." What makes a person a "heretic" in a condemnable sense is this pertinacia, this holding fast to falsehoods in defiance of correction by proper authority.

So while the first generations of Protestants may be considered formal heretics, Pope Benedict noted that this does not reflect the actual social and religious conditions of Protestants living today, who are simply living out their Christian faith in the traditions that have arisen since the Reformation. They may be material heretics, and the doctrines of Protestantism may be considered heretical from the Catholic viewpoint, but being a Protestant does not automatically incur the guilt of heresy.

And, in all honesty, most Christians alive today (and most Christians in all ages) have in all probability been material heretics - i.e., they hold some wrong or incorrect opinions concerning the faith, but simply out of ignorance and not in defiance of proper authority. And that is not a sin.

I will love you beyond our mortal sins, and wrap you gently within, embracing, all your silent prayers, a society to forgive. As the sun dissolves over Jericho, falling, inside auburn sands of time, setting you free, a Hebrew plume, blooming tragically, beside me.

Jericho Flower

I’m intrigued that in the game Timberborn, I can build shrines and temples to fulfill my beavers’ religious needs, and later on I can also build paper mills and a printing press to fulfill their knowledge needs. So, theoretically, my post-apocalyptic sentient beaver civilization can have a protestant reformation and subsequent beaver inquisition

I'm sorry, but we just don't get enough blatant, capital-R Reformation for the Jedi. The premise of "being weirdly strict and hypocritical is really the bigger sin" and "actually, priests should be allowed to marry" is already right there.

Like, give me some Martin Luke-r. You're already rebuilding the order. I'm sure the schools on Tatooine sucked, but Leia and Han would absolutely help you write 95 reasons the Jedi messed up.

Happy Halloween to all my fellow Christians out there!

On this day 506 years ago, a university professor named Martin Luther dropped a letter in the mail - a letter we know as the 95 Theses - and unintentionally started the Protestant Reformation. 

A holiday we know for its costumes and candy became the day that gave birth to the churches we attend each Sunday - Lutheran, Anglican, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Reformed, Methodist, Baptist, and Pentecostal. 

In October of 2020, while many cities, towns, and neighborhoods were debating whether or not to even have trick-or-treating, it was our churches that saved Halloween - by having drive through trick-or-treating and trunk-or-treats. 

While it is tempting to write off Halloween as a day that belongs to witches, ghosts, darkness, and Satan, nothing could be further from the truth - Psalms 118:24 still stands true - even on Halloween. 

“This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” 

Don’t join the witches in their dancing and incantations - Don’t join the demons in their prideful revelry and drunkenness. 

You and I have more important things to do - Let’s get busy rejoicing. 

The only ghost that Halloween belongs to is the Holy Ghost.