A Little About Me

Welcome to originalchristianity.net. My name is Mark and I am the guy behind this site. I am looking for people with an interest in Christianity and especially what it was originally.

I became interested in this a long time ago being raised in a house with a Catholic father and a Protestant mother. As the rules were for Catholics who married non-Catholics at that time, that meant that I had to be raised as a Catholic and I went to Catholic schools. But there were problems with that for as long as I can remember.

You see, my grandfather (mom’s side) was a hellfire and brimstone itinerant preacher. Raised in a godless house he was a whiskey-drinking, ball-playing, whirling dervish of a young man when he heard the call. He gave it all up: no more drinking, swearing, or even dancing or going to the movies. As intensely as he was at playing baseball, dancing, swearing, and drinking he was the same with Christianity. No half-speed for Sam Leddon. He went from one intense world to another.

Holiness was bigger then than now, and Sam wanted to be holy. Sam wanted his family to be holy. So my mom says, she couldn’t even go out as a kid, let alone think about anything as unholy as dancing, movies, and the like. Still, she believed in the Lord, just not as radically as Grandpa Leddon.

Catholic school religion was mostly learning the catechism, rote memorization of questions and answers that most kids didn’t understand. On the other hand, while I wasn’t supposed to talk with my Protestant family about God, I did. The way they talked about things made more sense. They talked about salvation and quoted bible verses to explain it. They talked about a lot of things that were just plain exciting.

So one day when I was seven I realized that I believed that God raised Jesus from the dead, and decided to make him Lord in my life. Great, right? I thought so. Except, I made a mistake and decided to talk with my Catholic teachers about it. Whoa, you would have thought that I had stolen their lunch. Next thing I knew a priest was talking to me and he was mad. What was I doing suddenly believing that God had raised Jesus from the dead? Of course, I believed it they said, I was born into “the” church, the Catholic Church. I was told to stop talking about these things with my Protestant family. I was told all kinds of things that just didn’t make sense, not the least of which was that I wasn’t going to see my Mom’s side of the family in heaven because, you see, Protestants are inferior, and go to an inferior heaven than Catholics.

That was the beginning of my curiosity about what was the true, original Christianity. It wasn’t that I didn’t see people following Christ in the Catholic Church, the Methodist Church, and or the Disciples of Christ. It was that having all these denominations preaching things opposed to each other while all claiming to be inspired by God causes too much confusion, and as a result, doubt as to what is true Christianity.

I feel a burden, a call, if you will, to investigate this and present what I find.

God Bless you and enjoy.

admin

November 28, 2010 at 7:19 pm

Hi Libby,

Thank you for your kind comments.

While there are numerous books that give bits of information I haven’t found any book that does what I am trying to do on this site which is give an all encompassing view of what the early church believed and was involved in, and then trace how the church developed from its original form to today’s multiple denominations with all of its divisions over multiple doctrines.

When you look at the books that are out these, you have to be careful to see if the writer is writing history or rewriting history to reflect current beliefs.

To look at the what the early church fathers wrote do a google search on antenicene fathers.

Here are a few books you might want to start looking at:

A CRITICAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN LITERATURE AND DOCTRINE: FROM THE DEATH OF THE APOSTLES TO THE NICENE COUNCIL, James Donaldson, Macmillin & Co, London, 1964

A DICTIONARY OF EARLY CHRISTIAN BELIEFS, David W. Bercot, Editor, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, MA, 7th Printing, March 2008, ISBN 978-1-56563-357-5 (has excerpts from the antenicene fathers categorized to topic)

A History of Early Christian Doctrine Before the Council of Nicaea, Vol. I: The Theology of Jewish Christianity, Jean Danielou, Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1964,

EUSEBIUS The Church History, Translation by Paul Maier, Kregel, Grand Rapids, 2007

Again, I am not endorsing all the interpretations that are in these books, but they help gain perspective.

I hope this helps,

Mark

Original Christianity

This web is a look at primitive, original Christianity, how it developed over time into innumerable denominations and divisions and how original Christianity compares to current practices. It is a resource for looking systematically at the beliefs and practices in the original Christian church, numerous movements and churches since, the modern Christian church, with discussion about how all these changes happened and especially focusing on how well each of these compares to scripture.

Why?

"Jesus Christ is Lord" is the common belief of billions of Christians. But there are tens of thousands of denominations. While ancient denominations like the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox claim to be the original and consequently "true" church, innumerable churches and denominations have started citing error in these ancient bastions and/or the leading of the spirit to reform the church and restore the church.

There are numerous disputed issues. Cessation doctrine (prophecy and the gifts of the spirit ended with the apostles), infant baptism, the inerrancy of Scripture, the form of Church government, the role of women in the church, and currently, the acceptance of homosexuality are just some of the many disputed doctrines that cause the Christian body to be so divided.

The Reformation movement performed an invaluable service. But instead of simply reforming the church or simply working to create one more correct alternative church the Reformation movement worked to increase the number of disputes over scripture and consequently the number of splits has increased exponentially.

The problem with looking at all the denominations is that it can become confusing to just compare this church or denomination to that one. The complexity of looking at all the theological implications can become overwhelming. For many busy people that means just making the best, less than fully educated decision they can, and staying with the church of their heritage or finding a church where they feel they can grow. Just finding the information can be an overwhelming task. Putting it into some understandable framework is an even more complicated task.

This web site, rather than trying to just compare all the current positions on the differences goes back to the beginning (primitive, original Christianity) and evaluates Christianity starting at that point. This includes looking at the gospel accounts, but also includes looking at early church documents as well as other ancient documents, both secular and religious. (There is also a section on Philosophy because its profound impact on Christian theological development.) The articles have numerous references to works both in print and online.

Next the web site looks at the developments in Christianity from original Christianity forward to see how the church developed over time comparing each development with what we know about original Christianity. The goals are:

To trace the development of the church from start to now to see how the church at large wound up with all these competing churches/denominations today, and

To equip people with the knowledge of original Christianity to enable people to make an informed decision on what is the true faith and practice of the church Jesus Christ started.

For an overview of the articles by category, go to the Table of Contents Page.

This is a work in progress. My prayer is that sharing my journey is helpful to you and that together we can grow in the faith that Jesus Christ made available some two thousand years ago.

Also Please Pardon our Dust. There are hundreds of posts and some of them still have typos. If you find typos You can contact Mark at [email protected]. Please be so kind as to mention the name of the post as well as to copy and paste the section with errors. Thank you and God Bless You.

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