CHRISTIAN CHURCH REFORMATIONS AND COUNTER REFORMSTIONS
VERN BENDER
William Tyndale was an English scholar who became a leading figure in the Protestant, which saw Reuchlin’s Hebrew grammar publication in 1506. Four English translations of the Bible were published in England.
The King James Version (KJV), also known as the King James Bible (KJB), sometimes as the English version of 1611, or simply the Authorized Version (AV), is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, commissioned in 1604 and completed as well as published in 1611. Note: The Geneva Bible was one of the most historically significant translations of the Bible into English, preceding the King James Version by 51 years.
Noted for its “majesty of style,” the King James Version has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in shaping the English-speaking world. It became the go-to Bible in America.
While the Enlightenment was challenging Christianity in Europe, it experienced a surge of renewal in the American Colonies. A second Great Awaking (the first one had occurred in the early 18th century) started in 1801. The movement began in the Lexington, Ky area. The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant revival movement during the early nineteenth century. The campaign started around 1800, had begun to gain momentum by 1820, and declined by 1870. Revivals were a crucial part of the movement and attracted hundreds of converts to new Protestant denominations. The second great awakening focuses less on religion and more on reforming America’s bad things. The first great awakening is primarily about promoting religion. … Women were given a lot more freedom in the second great awakening. Their rights were promoted in education and voting. Stone and Campbell were the leaders. The Methodists started the horseback circuit-riding preachers throughout the southern states’ rural areas.
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), also called Mormonism, traces its origins to a religion founded by Joseph Smith in the United States in 1830. Mormons believe in the crucifixion, resurrection, and divinity of Jesus Christ. Followers claim that God sent more prophets after Jesus’s death. They say that the original church has been restored in modern times. … The LDS church considers Joseph Smith, who founded Mormonism, a prophet. Smith claimed that an angel named Moroni appeared to him. Moroni revealed that Smith had been selected to translate the Book of Mormon, a sacred text written around the 4th century and named after Moroni’s father, Mormon.
After Smith died, the church was divided. Many Mormons followed Brigham Young, who became Smith’s successor. Young led many persecuted Mormons from Illinois to search for religious freedom. In 1847, Young and the other pioneers reached Utah’s Salt Lake Valley. Today, the LDS church is most prevalent in the United States, Latin America, Canada, Europe, the Philippines, Africa, and Oceania.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Baptists in America during the First and Second Great Awakening increased church membership in the United States. In 1686, Huguenots (French Protestants) were established in America. RogerWilliams experienced religious transformations. He was increasingly uncomfortable with established Puritan practices; for a brief time, he became a Baptist and co-founded North America’s first Baptist church in Providence in 1638
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Historians mark 1652 as the beginning of the Quaker movement. One day Fox climbed up desolate Pendle Hill (believed to be a haunt of demons) and saw “a people in white raiment, coming to the Lord.” The vision signified that proclaiming Christ’s power over sin would gather people to the kingdom.
Quakers in America: They are widespread throughout Canada and the United States but are concentrated in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. Pastoral Friends emphasize the Bible as a source of inspiration and guidance. They practice programmed (i.e., planned) worship led by ordained clergy. Quakers believe in: integrity, equality, simplicity, community, stewardship of the Earth, and peace. Thie beliefs arise from an inner conviction and challenge our standard of living ways.
In the narrowest meaning of the term, fundamentalism was a movement that began in the late 19th- and early 20th-century within American Protestant circles to defend the “fundamentals of belief” against the corrosive effects of liberalism that had grown within the ranks of Protestantism itself. Fundamentalism arose in the United States, starting among conservative Presbyterian theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary in the late 19th century. It soon spread to conservatives among the Baptists and other denominations around 1910 to 1920.
Although Pentecostalism statistics are difficult to obtain, it has been estimated that there are more than 10 million Pentecostals in the United States, including 5.5 million members of the Church of God in Christ and 2.5 million members of the Assemblies of God. Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing religious denomination globally, with an estimated 500 million adherents. Pentecostalism is a form of Christianity that emphasizes the Holy Spirit’s work and the direct experience of God’s presence by the believer. Pentecostals believe that faith must be powerfully experiential and not something found merely through ritual or thinking. Pentecostalism is energetic and dynamic.
The Enlightenment had produced this: In 18th-century Biblical criticism, the term “higher criticism” was commonly used in mainstream scholarship in contrast to “lower criticism.” In the 21st century, historical criticism is the most widely used term for higher criticism, and textual criticism is more common than the loose expression “lower criticism. Historical-biblical criticism includes a wide range of approaches and questions within four primary methodologies: textual, source, form, and literary criticism.
