Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity: theological differences

Protestant Christianity

Throughout the period after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, there was a split between the Christian Church along East-West lines. In the East, Orthodox Christianity became the dominant form while in the West, Roman Catholicism ruled. But in the 15th century the Western Christian Church suffered a series of uprisings against Roman Catholic supremacy which resulted in a split of the Western Church called the Protestant Reformation. "Religions of the World: Protestant Christianity," narrated by Sir Ben Kingsley, explains the causes and results of the Protestant Reformation.

Beginning with Martin Luther, there was a series of protests over what many called abuses of the Catholic Church, leading to groups refusing to accept the authority of the Pope and the establishment of new Protestant Churches. The two main issues were the Protestant belief in the supremacy of scripture and the belief that salvation did not have to earned but was given freely as a gift from God. But once a split has occurred what is to stop the splitters from splitting again? And this is exactly what happened when the Protestants began to split into smaller groups over issues of theology. Eventually four main categories of Protestants were formed: Lutheran, Reformed, Radical, and Anglican which, although similar, differed in their beliefs about the transubstantiation and the importance of the Lord's Supper.

As these groups spread out into the New World, they subdivided further based on such factors as geography, politics, and theology. In America, after a spontaneous outbreak religious fervor, the Protestant religion evolved into a myriad of groups ranging from the Amish to the Quakers to the Evangelicals. But there was also a theological evolution from the importance of scripture to the importance of living one's faith in their daily life. But as the modern world came into existence, its problems, mostly racial, led to even more divisions of American Protestant churches based on race.