Schismatic Charismatics

On the way home yesterday, I drove past Heritage Fellowship Church, which was sporting this mildly witty marquee: “UNDER SAME MANAGEMENT 2000 YEARS”

I wonder whether the parishioners ever really stop to think about this.  I’m assuming they don’t, but that doesn’t have to stop us from doing so. Since this is a Pentecostal church, it grew out of the Pentecostal movement, which itself grew out of the Southern Methodist Church, which had in turn had split from the Methodist Episcopal Church over the slavery question in 1844. Methodism grew out of an  evangelistic revival movement (originally lead by John Wesley and his brother Charles) which bubbled up from within Anglicanism throughout the mid 1700’s. The Anglican Church, of course, split off from the Catholic Church when King Henry the Eighth decided that he really deserved a second wife. The Roman Catholic Church had in turn split off from the older Eastern churches in 1054.

All that is to say merely this: The pithy idea that the church has been “under same management” for two millennia should probably be taken with a leaf of history and a grain of salt.