The Medieval Church (590 AD - 1517 AD)

So, continuing our church history series, the next time period we're going to look at is the medieval church. This is from 590 to 1517, so if you have your handout, you can look at that, 590 to 1517, the medieval period, and it's not medieval as in E-V-I-L, you know, now that the Roman church is in control, now they're doing all this evil stuff because it's the medieval time, that's not what it's referring to, because although this is a time period where a lot of evil was done in the name of Christ, you have the Crusades and the Inquisition done during this time where many people were tortured and killed because they went against the Catholic church and the Pope.

Matter of fact, if you go to Europe, there are still cathedrals where if you go into the basement, there are basically dungeons where there are prison cells and they would create these torture devices and do that to people right underneath the churches.

So the medieval period is also called what? It's called the Dark Ages, and there's a real reason why it's called that. Also, it's the time period before the Enlightenment, but a lot of evil things were done.

But medieval, it's spelled M-E-D-I-E-V-A-L, so it refers to basically just the Middle Ages. Okay, so this time period, which lasted about a thousand years, is probably the darkest time in church history.

The Rise of Islam and the Split Between East and West

So we're just going to do a century-by-century review of this, and then we'll go back over some of these major events in more detail. So from 600 to 700, this is when a new religion was formed, and who knows what that religion was.

It would rival the Catholic Church in Eastern Europe and in Africa. What is this religion? I think it's the world's second largest religion today. Muhammadism? Yep, or as it's called today, Islam. So Muhammad, between 600 and 700 A .D., Muhammad writes the Quran, and Islam is spreading rapidly all throughout North Africa and Asia Minor.

So the church in the East and West, another thing that happened, they are starting to separate. So you have the Roman Catholic Church in the West, and what we know as the Eastern Orthodox Church in the East.

So the rise of Islam, these two churches are starting to separate. In 700 to 800 A .D., this time period is known as the official start of the Holy Roman Empire. It was officially recognized as a Christian empire, and the term they used was Christendom.

Who's familiar with that term, Christendom? Okay, so a Christian empire, and it's interesting that this term is sort of making a resurgence today with the whole Christian nationalism debate, if any of you have heard about that, where people are seeing how our nation has gone secular and all the, well, evil and insanity that happens in the United States and Europe.

Some people are wanting to kind of go backwards to Christendom, to have a Christian empire. Of course, we're far away from the possibility of that happening again. So there was the Holy Roman Empire. There was the iconoclastic controversy, where there was a debate between the Eastern and Western Church over the use of religious images.

Let's turn to a biblical passage, Exodus chapter 20. This is something that is not a real issue in our church that we deal with because we pretty much have it settled, but the Western Church would worship, or let me be fair, they bow down to and would venerate graven images, so statues.

It's still common today to find Roman Catholics bowing down to statues. And in fairness, they would say they're not worshiping them, although look at what Exodus chapter 20 says. This passage is known as the Ten Commandments, obviously.

So Exodus chapter 20, starting in verse three, the Lord tells Moses, you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image. Any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. So that's a pretty clear command that don't make these statues, don't bow down to them, do not serve them. And yet that's what many people are doing. So the church in the East, the Orthodox Church, they recognize this as a problem.

So they were against graven images. So they had paintings. And it's still common for Eastern Orthodox when they enter into a church, they'll, you know, kiss the painting and they show veneration to a flat image because it's not a graven image.

It's a flat image. And these are some of the things that Christians were arguing over, and it did lead to a split between the church in the West and in the East. All right, 800 to 900 AD. The most significant figure during this time period was a man named Charlemagne.

He's considered to be one of the most powerful kings in history. So he had a profound impact on European culture and a profound impact on the Catholic Church. The interesting thing about Charlemagne, he was the first king to be crowned king.

Actually, he was crowned emperor of the new Holy Roman Empire, and he was crowned by who? The Pope. He was crowned by the Pope despite the fact that that title was held emperor of the Romans. That title was already held by another man, and the Pope crowned him anyway.

So this shows the great power that the Pope had, that he could crown kings. And that became standard practice in Europe, where really the Pope was, he was the real authority in the remnants of the Roman Empire.

So Charlemagne was considered the first Holy Roman Emperor due to the Pope's decree and support. All right, any questions so far? Some of this familiar to you, you've probably heard of some of these figures before.

From 900 to 1000 AD, at the end of this century, 50 of formerly Christian areas now came under Islamic control. So Islam is just spreading all over, and they are conquering Christian territory. And of course, the Catholic Church and the nations in Europe didn't like that very much, and this led to warfare, this led to their crusades.

So while the Islamic faith was spreading, the church was also spreading north. The Catholic Church was spreading north into Norway and Greenland, also west, and also into the Ukraine. So you have Islam spreading, you have Catholicism spreading north and west.

From 1000 to 1100 saw the Great Schism, where it was made official, Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, 1054, they officially split, and they remain divided to this day. They were once united, now they're divided.

More on that in a moment. From 1100 to 1200 saw the Crusades. So more on that in a moment. 1200 to 1300, the two important figures of this period were Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Aquinas.

Most people who refer to these individuals today, they call them something else. Actually, they just kind of put a word in front of their names. Most of the time you hear them called what? Saint. Right.

Saint Thomas. People don't say, oh yeah, Thomas Aquinas. No, it's Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Francis of Assisi, and the current pope is named, or he took his name after Saint Francis. So Francis started his order, which emphasized simplicity and ministering to the poor, and Thomas Aquinas was a philosopher and theologian.

Many today, even, they still consider him to be one of the greatest minds who ever lived. I think that school in Northfield, right? There's the Moody campus, and then half of it is Saint Thomas Aquinas.

So Catholics still look to Saint Thomas today, or if you're a Protestant, you might just call him Thomas, but depending. This is all from what angle you're looking at it from, right? 1400 to 1500. This century saw the fall of the Byzantine Empire, where Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453.

So Constantinople. Where is that? What is that? Who knows? Today, it's called Istanbul, right? And it was originally Constantinople named after, guess who? Emperor Constantine. So he named the city after himself, but once the Muslims took over, they obviously changed that name because they didn't want this Christian emperor, they didn't want the city named after him.

So that happened in 1400 to 1500. So the Byzantine Empire, that is the eastern half of the Roman Empire. So the Western Roman Empire fell much earlier and then morphed into the Holy Roman Empire, but the Eastern Byzantine Empire endured much longer, but eventually fell around this point.

Also between 1400 and 1500, there were men laying the groundwork for the Protestant Reformation because that's the next, after this period, the medieval church, then you get into the Reformation period.

That's where most of us know a little bit more about that time period in history. But John Huss, who knows John Huss or Jan Huss, does anyone, is anyone familiar with this name? John Huss. Okay. We got one.

God bless you. I see that hand. He was like a pre-Protestant reformer of the church. So a lot of these guys started out as Roman Catholics or a Catholic priest, and then they would study the Bible for themselves and they'd realized that what the Catholic church is teaching and what we're doing is not, it's not lining up.

So John Huss, he started to notice this great divide between the Bible and what the Catholic church was doing. And he started to go in really an anti-Catholic direction. Make a long story short, he was condemned by the Catholic church and he was burned at the stake.

Now, the interesting thing about this is Huss, the name Huss means goose. So if you've ever heard the term, your goose is cooked, right? You've heard that. That comes from him. Huss was burned at the stake.

His goose was cooked. The next century is the reformation period, which we'll cover in the next lesson, maybe next week. So let's go backwards and look at some of these important events that happen during the dark ages.

The Great Schism and the Filioque Controversy

The first event we'll touch on is the great schism. So this is the split between the Eastern church and the Western church. Again, this is in the year 1054. So if you think of it going back to when Constantine adopted Christianity or it was made official, the official religion of the empire after him, but you have one, this is what they would say.

There was one united church, right? And then it split into two. And then in the reformation, this Western church split into all these other groups. So the church keeps splitting and splitting and splitting.

But this first happened in 1054. This is the split between who's in the West, which churches in the West, right? Roman Catholic. And the church in the East is what Orthodox where you say Eastern Orthodox.

So here's the thing. Both churches claim to be the true church. So the Catholic church and the Pope, they say we are the true church founded by Jesus. And then the Orthodox will say, no, no, no, we're the true church founded by Jesus.

Typically, you don't hear Protestants talking like that, but both claim to be the true church. So one of them will say, well, they split from us and they say, no, no, no, you split from us, right? It's again, depending on how you look at it.

So there were many things the Eastern church took issue with, such as the authority of the Pope. I like to, and I know this bothers some people, but just make it very simple. People say, what does the Eastern Orthodox church believe?

And I say, well, they're a lot like the Catholic church minus the Pope. So they look a lot like the, there are a lot more differences, but that's, they are very similar and there's ecumenical talks between the Pope and the Orthodox patriarch.

So I could see them someday coming together. That's going to happen before the Catholic church and the Baptist come together, certainly, but that ain't ever going to happen. Maybe the apostate Baptist in the tribulation will do that, but that's not going to take place.

So there's a lot of things that the two churches, East and West, were arguing over. The authority of the Pope was one of the big ones because remember the Pope says, I'm the head of the whole church. I get to tell you what to do and they're like, no, no, you don't.

They also disagreed over the doctrine of purgatory. So the Orthodox church, they do not believe in purgatory. Also the graven images thing that Catholics have graven images, Orthodox have the two dimensional images.

The Orthodox church has patriarchs. So instead of one man, the Pope ruling over the church, they have several men known as patriarchs. The Roman church was more dogmatic. They use logic and reason. That's not to say that the Orthodox didn't use logic, but the Catholic church tended to be more dogmatic in the things that they would pronounce where the Eastern churches kind of left things open for mystery, that they didn't have to be certain about every little thing.

So while there were many things that divided the two churches, uh, the official reason given was a disagreement about the Holy spirit. So we remember we read the apostles creed was that two, two weeks ago, I think.

And uh, the thing that split the churches is known as the Phileo quay controversy. So the question is, did the Holy spirit proceed from the father or did the Holy spirit proceed from the father and the son?

I, that's the type of thing that I just, I've never heard Christians arguing about this. I'm not saying it's not important that there's no right answer, but have you ever heard a debate between Christians?

So let me just ask you, do you have an opinion on this? Did the Holy spirit proceed from the father or did the Holy spirit proceed from the father and the son? Neither. Okay. Neither. Okay. So that would have gotten you condemned as a heretic by the Catholic, you would have been burned at the stake maybe, no, but, um, but that's the type of thing that you're like, did they really divide over this?

It was probably the final straw that, you know, broke the camel's back is probably what it was, but the apostles creed was changed and filio quay means and son. So the Holy spirit proceeds from the father.

That's the way the creed originally was. And then they added and the son and they disagreed about it and the church is split. Okay. So that's the official reason given, but like I said, uh, there was really more going on than that.

Okay. So the next of any questions on this, this is the division between the Orthodox church and the Catholic church. And what was the year? 10, 10 54. Good. So the next event that we're going to look at is the crusades.

The Crusades, Just War, and the Inquisition

So these are two things I think everybody at least has heard of when it comes to the middle ages or the dark ages, the crusades and the inquisition. And what people know about them is they were bad, right?

Usually when maybe an atheist or an agnostic wants to take a shot at Christianity or make Christians look bad, they will bring up the inquisition or the crusades. It's kind of seen as a stain upon the church or something like that.

Critics will often place the blame on the Roman Catholic church. And I want to be fair. I don't want anyone to hear me giving this presentation of church history and think that I just have it in, uh, in a being unfair towards the Roman Catholic church.

Fair is fair. It wasn't all the Catholic church's fault. Uh, who are they fighting against in the crusades? What's the, what's the religion that's on the rise capturing all this territory, right? Islam was just as much to blame for the crusades as the Catholic church, maybe more so now fighting a war in the name of Jesus.

I mean, that's the thing that people really struggle with, but in all fairness, there was a lot of, uh, terrible things being done by the Muslims. So you can blame it on them, but there would be pilgrims, Christians who would travel to the Holy land.

They would want to visit Jerusalem and they had often get attacked by Muslim raiders and sometimes killed. So remember the Catholic church and the government is united. So if one goes to war, it's like the church is going to war and they were protecting their own people.

So if that helps, I'm not saying that's a justification. I'm not saying that there weren't abuses, but I don't think the crusades were as bad as people, uh, make them out to be the inquisition. That's totally different.

The inquisition was horrific, really, uh, but that's just a, something to help you out with the, the crusades. What have you heard about the crusades? I think we've all taught it was taught this in school, right?

We've heard people referenced any of you want to share anything, your impression, maybe of what the crusades were all about. Okay. Um, most Protestants and evangelicals today would probably say, uh, that most of the people involved in the crusades were probably not Christians at all.

Remember, uh, the church and state are united. So anyone who lived in that country was automatically considered a Christian, whether they really were or not is totally different story. But, um, so a lot of these people fighting were probably not true followers of Jesus.

So the crusades took place from about 1095 to 1230. And I just like to read this. I pulled this off, uh, got questions .org. So this is a pretty good website. If you want to look up questions, got questions .org.

This article says from approximately AD 200 to the year 900, the land of Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Syria, and Turkey was inhabited primarily by Christians, or at least professing Christians. Once Islam became powerful, Muslims invaded these lands and brutally oppressed, enslaved and deported, and even murdered the Christians living in those lands.

Now, if you were alive, then you would want your government to do something about it. Right? So you can at least understand that, uh, the Roman Catholic church and Christian Kings and emperors got Christian in quotation marks, but Christian Kings and emperors from Europe ordered the crusades to reclaim the land.

The Muslims had taken the actions that so many so-called Christians took in the crusades were still deplorable. This is what they say, got questions .org. There's no biblical justification for conquering lands, murdering civilians, and destroying cities in the name of Jesus Christ.

At the same time, Islam is not a religion that can speak from a position of innocence in these matters. And it would always sort of bother me when, well, I won't mention any names, but when former us presidents would say, you know, Islam is what would they call it?

Islam is a religion of peace. Remember that, you know, and after nine 11, we were told Islam is a religion of peace and it's like, well, it doesn't look like it, but we understand there's violent people in all different religions, right?

There's good, you know, good people, generally speaking, as far as law abiding, they're not looking to harm anyone. And there's a mix between good and bad everywhere. But all that to say this, there's some justification, I think, in the crusades, but obviously there were abuses.

I don't know when it was formed, but there's something called just war theory. Basically, the idea is it's viewed as warfare is justified before God if it's self-defense. If it's a war of aggression, however, that is not justified before God.

And then obviously there's some Christians who are pacifists, but final comment on the crusades. It's not as bad as some people would make it out to be, but it was still bad. Next the inquisition, this was probably the most terrible thing ever done in the name of Jesus.

So here's an article I found, it says the inquisition, it was basically tribunals that were established by the Roman Catholic Church in order to seek out, try, and sentence people that the Roman Catholic Church believed to be guilty of heresy.

So the purpose of the inquisitions was to secure and maintain religious and doctrinal unity in the Roman Catholic Church and throughout the Holy Roman Empire, through either the conversion or persecution of alleged heretics.

Now what did Jesus or the Apostle Paul, what did they say to do to heretics? False teachers. You know, Paul called them ministers of Satan, the false teachers, the Judaizers. According to the New Testament, what should be done to heretics?

They have nothing to do with them. Yeah, you have nothing to do with them. You kick them out of the church, you shun them, mark and avoid them, but you don't burn them at the stake. You don't torture them.

You don't kill them. Now if you were living in Israel under the law of Moses, heretics were put to death. So the Catholic Church had to go to some of these Old Testament passages, and remember in the Old Testament, Israel essentially was a theocracy, right?

So there is no toleration of that in the nation of Israel, but that's not the way it is in the New Testament church. So they would point to biblical passages to justify some of the, and torture is not able to be justified by any biblical text, but in the New Testament church, that is not the way heretics are to be dealt with.

They are to be avoided and shunned. So in 1252, Pope Innocent IV, and I commented on this a couple weeks ago, like some of these guys naming themselves like Pope Pius and Pope Innocent, it's just, I don't know, sort of makes me laugh a little bit based on some of the things they did.

But in 1252, Pope Innocent IV officially sanctioned torture as a way of extracting the truth from suspects. I mean, just think about this. Pope Innocent, sanctioning torture. Prior to that time, this type of extreme punishment was foreign to church tradition and practice.

During the Spanish Inquisition alone, as many as 2 ,000 people were burned at the stake within one decade. That's a lot of people. Over the course of its history, the Spanish Inquisition, which was just one of the Inquisitions, there were many, the Spanish was the worst one.

They tried more than 341 ,000 people of whom 32 ,000 were executed. And just for a moment to jump beyond that, beyond the middle ages, the last period, you think the Inquisition, you're like, well, thank God that's over.

It's not actually over. They just don't have the power and authority to be killing people. They wouldn't be able to get away with that. You realize the Inquisition is still there. It's still in effect.

They just don't call it the Inquisition. So this last period known as the Roman Inquisition, what happened was, well, let me go back. Galileo, you remember, he was condemned by the Catholic church because he taught that what?

Who knows this? Yeah. So people believe that the earth was the center of the solar system and Galileo said it, it's not. Sue, you had. Okay. He would, he would know. Yeah. So that, that was the belief in the Catholic church that the, the sun revolved around the earth, but Galileo discovered that no, it's the other way around.

The earth revolves around the sun and he was condemned as a heretic. Now, I don't know what biblical texts they were pointing to, but the point is he opposed the Catholic church. He opposed the Pope. So he was condemned by the church, but make a long story short in 1965, Pope Paul, the six, he reorganized the office of the Inquisition and he renamed it.

So it's the Inquisition is still there, but today it's called the congregation for the doctrine of the faith. And if you remember Pope Benedict, the 16th who died, what, six months ago before he became Pope, he was the head of the Inquisition because he was the head of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith.

Again, they, they're not killing people anymore, but they are, they're doing it the right way today in the sense that they're excommunicating people. But if they have the power to kill, you wonder if they would, you can't really prove it one way or another, but the Catholic church really lost most of its power.

You know, in the 17, 18 hundreds by the 1900s, they really didn't have the ability to do this anymore. Okay. Any questions on the Inquisition and you know, to be perfectly fair as much as we would look at this and say, oh, that that's terrible.

The things that they did a lot of Roman Catholics today, and even priests and bishops would recognize that this was wrong. And actually I think the Pope several Popes, but at least one of them did, you know, sort of apologize on behalf of the church that we were sorry this happened.

So just mentioned that in all fairness. Okay. So we're good on this time period. All right, let's move on to the next lesson. This would be the Reformation period. So next is the Reformation. This is from 1517 to 1648.

The Reformation, Indulgences, and Martin Luther

We'll also be covering some of the churches that emerged out of the Reformation. I don't know if we're going to get to that tonight, but it has been said that the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century next to the introduction of Christianity is probably the greatest event in history.

The Protestant Reformation really did change the world, certainly the Western world. So it marks the end. The Reformation marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of what is considered modern times.

I know 1500, 1600s doesn't sound like modern times, but that's the way historians view it. So what is the Reformation? What happened? It's also called what? The Protestant Reformation. So this was a major movement within Western Christianity.

This does not affect the Eastern church. So the Byzantine church or the Orthodox churches, this is all happening in the Catholic church. So in the 16th century or the 1500s, there was posed a religious and political challenge to the authority of the Catholic church, to the authority of the Pope arising from what were perceived to be errors and abuses and discrepancies by the Catholic church.

One of the things that really kicked it off was the selling of indulgences. So what happened was they, the church had spent all of its money and maybe wasteful spending, and they wanted to build this project known, what we know today as St. Peter's Basilica.

So the Vatican today, that structure was built basically from money collected from the sale of indulgences. So the Catholic church sent salesmen all throughout Europe. And what they were doing is you could, they'd say, you know, your, your grandmother is in purgatory and she's suffering in the flames of purgatory.

If you just give, you know, this much money, you can help to get her out. So if you donate, let's just say a hundred dollars, we'll give you this certificate and that will get your grandmother out of the flames of purgatory.

And of course, you know, the devout Catholics, they, wow, I can do that. Then they paid up. So these salesmen were going around collecting all this money. That's how St. Peter's Basilica was, was built.

And Martin Luther, who is a German monk, he saw this and he saw it for what it was like. This is not, he, he knew the Bible enough to like, this is not biblical. This is a, this is a con. This is a scam.

These people are being taken advantage of. This little piece of paper does not get anyone out of purgatory. Of course, I think Luther eventually stopped believing in purgatory altogether. But I mean, when you look back at what happened, yeah, it was, it was really, really an abuse.

But the idea was that the Pope had the authority, you know, he has the keys of the kingdom, just like Peter. So he could, he could pronounce it to be so and get people out of purgatory. I think Luther said that, you know, if the Pope is such a godly man, why does he just let everyone out of purgatory for free?

You know, I have his grace, but that wouldn't have collected much money for the church. So when Luther saw the sale of indulgences, that made him angry and he posted his 95 thesis to the, you know, to the door and they took it and made a bunch of copies because the printing press was just invented.

Without the printing press, the reformation wouldn't have happened. So they took Luther's writings and made endless copies and sent them all throughout Europe. And that's really how the reformation got started.

You remember hearing about this in school probably, or yeah. So the reformation was the split. And by the way, you know, like I said, the inquisition from the last period that there's still an inquisition today, in a sense, people say, well, at least they don't do indulgences anymore.

Yeah, they do. You can go to Rome and there's places that you pay and you see this artifact or climb up these steps and kiss this holy item and you can still get time off purgatory for your loved ones today.

They still do indulgences. As a matter of fact, the Pope said, if you follow me on Twitter, you will get X amount of time off your stay in purgatory. Now, I know people think that that's a joke, but that actually took place.

The Vatican put that release out years ago and they caught a lot of backlash. Go ahead, look it up. I know you said you're making that up. I wish I was. So the reformation was the split of the Western church into two groups, the Roman church and then the differing Protestant denominations.

Although some would claim that there is a third and separate line of Baptist churches that existed prior as Anabaptists and separatists and that they go all the way back to the beginning. So I just want to throw this out there because it is a theory.

I was talking with someone just this past week who believes in this version of church history and I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just saying that this is a disputed thing. So remember the Catholic church, they say that we're the true church.

We go all the way back to Jesus. The Orthodox church says, no, we're the true church. We go all the way back to Jesus. But both of those lines kind of go back and merge at some point. So there's like one line of Christianity going back way, way, way back to the first century.

But there are Baptists today and independent churches who claim that we, you know, we go back that there's a totally separate line of Christians that existed outside of the Catholic church. You understand?

Some people say that's fantasy. That's all made up. That's not true. Others firmly believe it. I think you can look at churches that practice infant baptism and you can say, yeah, they have ties to the Reformation churches or to the Catholic churches, but Baptists do not practice infant baptism.

So the idea is that Baptists will say we're different. We're different from all the Protestants. We're different from the Catholics, and we've always been different. And there's been people like us ever since then.

I kind of like that theory, and I would like to identify, I can't prove that that's true, but that's a belief that's out there just to let you know. Any comments on that? Have you heard anything like this?

Okay. Either way, the Reformation is considered to be one of, if not the most significant events of the last thousand years. The main figure, we already said it was a German monk named Martin Luther, and it's not Martin Luther King Jr., okay?

We were going to do a movie, was it two or three years ago? We did a movie here at movie night where we showed, what was it? The movie was called Martin Luther, I think. And some people thought we were showing a movie about Martin Luther King Jr.

Same name. I know it can get confusing, but totally, totally different. So Martin Luther was a German monk. So now there's even more division in the so-called Holy Apostolic Catholic Church, because it already split once in 1054, and now it's splitting again.

And this is one thing that the Catholic Church will say, and it's a powerful argument for a lot of people. They say, we are united. We are the united Holy Catholic Church. We are one church. And look at these Protestants.

There's 30 ,000 Protestant denominations. It's just filled with confusion, but we are united. And a lot of people, because the Catholic Church is old, they go back a long way, and people view that as, well, that means credibility.

Is there really 30 ,000 Protestant denominations? Not really. That's kind of a fake number. There's really only about between 10 and 20, maybe 18 real Protestant traditions. So don't buy into that too much.

And by the way, the Catholic Church really isn't that united. I mean, I know Catholics who, they do not recognize Pope Francis. They do not like Pope Francis. Others love him, and there's a lot of division within the Catholic Church, truth be told.

But anyways, the church is starting to fracture more and more during the Reformation era. So there's the Reformation churches. Which is the first Reformation church? Lutheran. Lutheran. Good. Good. Then you have the Church of England.

You know, the event that's happening is that this week, Prince Charles is being coronated as the King of England. You know, one of his titles is Defender of the Faith. So Prince Charles is considered the head of the Church of England.

I've heard that he's going to take the title Defender of the Faiths, plural, that he's trying to be inclusive of other religions. I don't know if that's going to end up happening or not. But the story of the Church of England is an interesting one.

King Henry VIII, who was king at the time, during the Reformation, he wanted a divorce. And the Pope would not grant him a divorce. So he said, well, forget you, I'm breaking away, and I'm the head of the church now.

So the Church of England was formed because King Henry VIII wanted a divorce. The Pope wouldn't get him one. So he broke away from the Catholic Church. So that's the story of the Church of England. So there was the Lutherans, the Church of England, then the Reformed Churches from the Reformed Churches.

You get the Presbyterians and on and on it goes, and then you get the Congregationalists and the Methodists came from the Church of England. You got the Wesleys, and then you have the Methodists and the Wesleyans, and it just keeps fracturing into what we have today.

Any questions, comments? So this will be interesting when we get into, I find it interesting, I don't know if you will, but just each, we'll cover each of the major church traditions and who started it, where they come from.

So we'll cover the Methodists and the Church of England more, and the Presbyterians and the Baptists. And it's just an interesting story of how this all happened. Just that claim that we're the one true church, we're the one true church, I don't think you can say that any one institution is the one true church.

The true church is a spiritual organism. The true church is a spiritual body. I believe there are true Christians who are part of the true church in all of these different denominations, in all of these different groups.

So any time one institutional church claims that we are the true church, I just don't think that's the way it works. But the claim is there. So you had the formation of the Catholic Church, which started to become Roman, remember going back a couple weeks, started to become Roman under Constantine.

From that tradition came the Orthodox Church, then the Protestants, and the one thing that unites all of those churches, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, is what? What's one practice that unites all of them that we would stand opposed to, or we would differ?

Baptism. Infant baptism. And that, again, leads to this other claim that there's this minority that doesn't really get talked about in church history. This minority of separatists, independent believers outside of the Catholic Church and the established churches that practice believer's baptism.