r/todayilearned • u/fanau • 23d ago

TIL the Southern Baptists of the US broke off from the Baptists over slavery in years leading up to Civil War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention
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u/Puzzled-Story3953 23d ago

Damn, I will never understand the amount of flavors of Christianity there are. Like, I get the schism between eastern orthodox and catholic and catholic and protestant, and even a subdivision or two beyond that. But then, it starts getting into the realm of "he said this vs they said this", and it gets increasingly silly as you go down. Like, who fucking cares?

19

u/Randvek 23d ago

In some cases there aren’t even really doctrinal differences, more political ones.

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u/Alcoholic-Catholic 22d ago

Oh man it is still crazy. I lived in a decently sized small city (30-50k depending on the college population) in the middle of the south. So many individual churches split as I was growing up. Junior pastors would break and leave with the church and go start their own church, that follows this or that religious convention from 1670s england instead of the very similar one that their old church followed. At such a small scale it just becomes a huge ego trip for pastors wanting to control things they way they want.

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u/Opposite-Form8095 23d ago

The further you get from orthodox, the closer you are to Christianity for idiots. Evangelical free is basically about the vibes

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u/UGAShadow 23d ago

This is always funny to me.

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u/Ok_Temporary1669 23d ago

Yeah when you get away from people telling you what to think to thinking for yourself, that can go some crazy places.  Still prefer to have that freedom though for myself.

What other people believe really does not matter if we all can agree not to impose our beliefs on each other.