Editor’s Note: This guest post from Helena Tabry a medical doctor from the UK, provides an excellent follow up to “Global Christianity In Discussion” She seeks to answer a second more deeper question regarding why the fractures in Christianity have occurred and why there is hope.
Until we answer the second question ‘Why do we disagree?’, it’s difficult to understand why we need unity and what, in fact are the real differences between Christians which need to be worked out. A very brief history of the first 2000 years of the church, will give you an introduction to the differences. Until the year 451 AD, all of the congregations were united. Everyone was catholic and orthodox and very, very evangelical (in spreading the good news about Jesus). There were some heretics, like Arians, and they were put out of the church but everyone else agreed.
In those days it was dangerous to be a Christian so there were not many people who attended church simply for appearances.As it became somewhat safer to be a Christian, certain church leaders started started seeking to concentrate power in their own hands. The church leaders of the churches in Syria, Egypt, Palestine/Israel and the places that are now Greece and Turkey started to argue among themselves and fight about who was the strongest. They also fought about who could explain God the best (in other words, who was the best theologian). It is impossible to know what really happened in 451 A.D. because all the historical documents are biased, blaming one side or the other but the debate had reached a breaking point. The Church split into the Oriental Orthodox churches (today these are Coptic, Syriac, Indian Orthodox and Armenian) and the rest of the churches. (Today these are the Eastern Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches). The Roman empire was crumbling and in 1056 AD, there was another big Church split. Read more of this post
