The Church Expands Slide Show #1: Our Christian Heritage

Confirmation for Youth

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Slide 2: Our 1,700-Year Faith Heritage in the Catholic and Anglican Churches
All Christians trace our roots to the early church in Jerusalem following Jesus’ death and resurrection. The church would eventually set up base in Rome and become what we know today as the Roman Catholic Church. As United Methodists, we trace our faith history through the Catholic Church until the 1500s, when the Church of England, or Anglican Church, split off. Methodism was born out of the Anglican tradition.

Slide 3: Christianity Gets off to a Rough Start
At first, many people were not happy with Christianity. Christians would not make sacrifices to the Roman gods; and, unlike Judaism, Christianity had spread throughout the Empire. Off and on for about three hundred years, Christians were persecuted by the government.

Slide 4: Things Changed With Constantine
In 312 the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Constantine felt that he owed his success to the Christian God and decided to commit himself to the religion that was growing throughout the Empire.
Later in the fourth century, in 380, Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Empire.

Slide 5: Eventually the Church Splits
Over the first millennium of Christianity, differences in language and culture slowly divided the eastern church (based in Constantinople) from the western church (based in Rome). Eventually, small differences in doctrine—or how they understood the faith—arose; and, in 1054, the church split into the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Orthodox Church in the East.

Slide 6: Martin Luther Calls for Reform
Because the church was (and is) made up of imperfect people, the church developed some imperfect practices. In 1517 a monk named Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses, calling for reform in the Catholic Church, on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Luther felt that the church had put so much emphasis on church tradition that it had distorted the truth found in Scripture. He was especially upset by the selling of indulgences: Purchasing an indulgence would absolve a person of some of his or her sins and, the church said, lessen the number of years a person would have to spend in purgatory before going to heaven. Luther felt that if all Christians could read Scripture in their own language, such corruption wouldn’t take place.

Slide 7: The Protestant Reformation Continues
After Luther protested some of the teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church, other reformers followed. Christians who left the church in protest became known as Protestants. Those who followed Martin Luther became Lutherans; those who followed John Calvin, another well-known reformer, became Calvinists. Today’s Presbyterians trace their faith heritage through the Calvinist tradition.

Slide 8: King Henry VIII Starts the Church of England
England’s King Henry VIII was a Roman Catholic until the Pope would not allow him to get a divorce. In 1534 Henry reacted by leaving the church and starting the Church of England. The King ended up getting divorced (several times), kicked the Catholic Church out of England, and took away the church’s land and money.

Slide 9: The Church of England Grows Up
Despite it’s controversial beginnings, the Church of England (also known as the Anglican, or Episcopal, Church) became an important Christian denomination in England and elsewhere in the world. Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church cleaned up its act. Nonetheless, the hard feelings of the Protestant Reformation remained; and the Protestant denominations that formed during the sixteenth century would from then on be independent of the Catholic Church.

Slide 10: The Church Needs Reform Once Again
Because the church was (and is) made up of imperfect people, the Anglican Church, like the Catholic Church before it, was eventually in need of reform. An Anglican preacher named John Wesley set out a different path for the Anglicans—a path that emphasized God’s grace, personal holiness, and social responsibility—and the Methodist Movement began.

Slide 11: John Wesley’s Message to the People
John Wesley preached and lived a message of God’s grace and holy living that spoke to the common people—people who often were not welcome in the Church of England. His Methodist movement attracted several people in England and eventually made its way to the United States, where The Methodist Episcopal Church was born in 1784.

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