Alright, well we're continuing. This morning with our church history, specifically, we're in the part about the non-Lutheran Reformation. So, over the last couple weeks, we've covered these three topics. We talked about Zwingli, and he was down in Switzerland, and he was kind of a contemporary of Luther. A lot of things were the same, but the big difference between them was, as I said, the sacramenistic, and that great comment Wednesday when we were talking about Moses, because that was just a representation, right? That's what he saw. The sacramenistic, we talked about the radical Reformation, the Anabaptists, remember they were you know so we call them the radical reformers they went you know much further in in a lot of different areas and of course but the big distinctive here was with baptism uh they believed in baptism only by immersion and also only when people had reached this kind of age accountability when they were old enough to decide for themselves uh they could be baptized you know and and uh again A lot of the churches that don't baptize infants today, they're not going to be direct descendants of the Anabaptists, but it's basically the same theology about baptizing. My aunt and uncle were visiting this week and got to see them Wednesday a little bit and they actually, I left a few minutes before them and they were going up to the cabin my parents and they stopped by the church and came in and looked around and everything uh they were coming you know one of their daughters uh the gentleman she married you know he goes to basically like a i guess i think it's like a non-denominational church you know so uh they you know she she's been going there for some time and like she was saying like let us know so we can be part of it." And she was like, so is there, will they start some kind of instruction program before that or anything? And they're like, no, no. So it's just, you know, it's just different, you know, just when it's time, it happens. And, you know, that was Shoshana's experience in the Baptist church. She was actually baptized in the Oconee River down, you know, south of So the Anabaptists, but again, they went much further. It was separation from the world and all this kind of stuff. And then last week we talked about Calvinism. And we said Calvin next to Luther has the biggest, is really the biggest name in the Reformation. So you got Luther and then Calvin's main impact, is it a little later than Luther or at the same time? What did we learn, this review from last week? Is he, when is his big, like when he's doing most of his influence, I guess. Yeah, he's a little after. In their lives, you see overlap some there, but he's born, you know, a decent amount of time after Luther. So they were contemporaries a little bit, but really kind of the peak of Calvin was And he was a Frenchman, but where did he end up? In Zwingli's land, right? Switzerland, right? And we said that Calvin's biggest work is the Institute of Christian Religion. And we said, remember, a word we could use to describe like the Calvinist, I guess, motif, you would say, how they interpret the scripture. What's like the main thing they focus on in their theology and their scriptures, really kind of two things we talked about. One of us, what's an attribute of God? Well, systematic. Yeah, their theology is very systematic. Ours is somewhat, but not nearly to that level. So again, so systematic and there you get him influencing more of like reason and this idea of things have to make more sense, so to speak. And he said, that's where they kind of go off on a few things. But what about the attribute of God? Where would Calvin start? Well, I think that's definitely part of it, but I think maybe you could say that would be God's sovereignty. That's huge. You hear Calvin talk about sovereignty all the time, but really it's the glory of God. You know, everything's to God's glory, which is not a bad thing, either of those things. Sorry, not that we don't, we certainly believe in all those attributes, just like Calvinists would say God is love, yes. There's a Bible verse that says that, right? In 1 John, it literally says God is love. So, but kind of their starting point is with the glory and sovereignty of God is where they're gonna start. What's an example of a Calvinist church today that pretty much everybody's heard of? John Knox started it in Scotland. Presbyterian, right. Presbyterian movement, strongly Calvinistic. And again, that's coming out of Scotland. And we talked a little bit about even in this area pretty early on, even before America was its own country, you had the Scots-Irish coming in and bringing Presbyterianism. And you see these little Presbyterian churches, some of them that go back to the 1700s even. The Methodist Church in Nicholson, it's off the main highway, I drive by sometimes, it's Antioch and it's like 1780-something too, so the Methodists were up here pretty early too. The Wesleys spent some time in Georgia actually. There's a Methodist retreat center down there as well that we took the youth two years ago. in the colonial period in the north the northeast of the country who are these folks these are to the p also puritans that's thanksgiving as the hint there yes i'm puritans right so so calvinism i think you know luther lutherans who came to we're going to talk about of America, Calvin has a bigger influence. Calvin really has a lot of influence, his theology on the founding of America. Now, of course, there were a lot of Anglicans who came, we're gonna get to that in a minute, but they were also influenced by Calvin. Anglicans are kind of an interesting animal. I mean, Christa was here because she went to an Anglican church prior to coming here, so she could probably give us some more insight into that, but we'll get to them here in a few minutes. Go ahead. I was going to say that the sovereignty of God is out there where the predestination, in other words, God does it, so that's it. Right. It's kind of disappointing. Well, I mean, God is certainly sovereign, but what we would call Calvin's view of destination is double predestination. We said that's where the issue comes in for us is that going to hell. And Luther would say, and Lutherans would say, well, we can't have that because God is not responsible for evil. We would say, when people end up in hell, it's their fault, okay? But we said, actually, just purely logically, Calvin's position makes more sense, right? But we say, scripturally, knowing what we know about God and what the Bible tells us, we say, well, that can't be true because that also means, remember with Calvinism, that Jesus didn't die for everyone. Right? So, again, that's logical, but it's not biblically correct, okay? So we would say, yes, God is in control, and God is going to save exactly who he is going to save. However, when people are damned, we can't pin that on God. We have to pin that on our own sinful nature. As I like to say, if someone is saved, it's 100% God's doing. If someone is damned, it's 100% their doing. Well, what a Calvinist is going to say is, well, that's what he would like, but that's not what he's doing. Basically, that's how they would answer that. look at you know we're talking about money today everybody thinks in terms of money they can understand that right so it's kind of like if everyone has this sin debt if you think of it in dollars and cents all the money got but Jesus not because all of the money to pay off all of that debt is there it was it's for everybody however it has to be deposited into your account and what and how that is done is through the means of grace right by grace through faith the holy spirit works illustration, you can use, well, people say, well, if Jesus died for one, Patriarch says, why isn't everybody saved? Well, the blood of Jesus is sufficient, but it has to be deposited, it has to come to you individually. You know, you don't just get it, you know, without that work of the Holy Spirit. You don't just get it because you live in a Christian country, so to speak. Okay, and everybody else around me is Christian, so that means I'm automatically, it has to be, it has to come to you individually. Okay, and Calvin, they would say that too, but they were saying, well, God's already, you know, it's again, so I think we've covered a bit. It gets a little, predestination gets a little confusing, but Lutherans, we certainly believe in predestination, but just not the same view as Calvin. Now, all that being said, we looked at some of the things, and of course, we're focusing on some of the differences, Is there a lot to like about Calvinism though? Is there a lot to like about it? I think there is. Calvin said the sermon needs to be, you know, primary in the service, you know, that the proclamation of the word, you know, that you attain infant baptism, most of them retain frequent communion. Again, a little bit different understanding on those things, but they're certainly a lot closer than, you know, at least than communion with Zwingli, certainly a lot closer on baptism. the Anabaptists so I mean there's a lot to like about Calvinism and you know you'll hear them preach you know it's very clearly it's by grace through faith and so even the liturgy is kind of like a stripped down it's more they took more of it out than Luther did but I mean it would you know you could kind of follow along with the same pattern that you know if you attended a heavily Calvinist. I mean very much everybody on there is Calvinist. There's a lot of Presbyterians on there, a lot of more Calvinistic Baptists, and you know once in a while even sometimes Sunday morning if I'm here I'll like click on you can see who's live and you know I'll click on and you know there's a lot of them in Scotland. You know, like a lot of them are Scotland and Northern Ireland, especially certain times today, you're seeing Presbyterians on Sermon Audio. But there's one that's up in Greenville, I think it's Second Presbyterian Church, it's pretty big, and a couple times I flipped on that, you know, and of course the pastor's wearing like kind of instead of a robe. I mean, it's pretty similar. He's doing like prayers in the church. They're reciting the Apostle's Creed. They're doing announcements and reading scripture. I mean, so it's stripped down more. It's certainly not as much as like high church, but it follows a lot of the same pattern. So it wouldn't be too strange. So there are some significant differences, of course. But I mean, I think next to Lutheranism, theolog. People ask me that sometimes, like what's the closest you know, denomination like to Lutheran, like theologically. I mean, the more I've thought about it, I'd have to say like Calvinism is. I mean, it's like if you had to go somewhere else, I mean, it's like, and now, and again, when I say that, you know, Lutheran can mean a lot of things today. Get it right? Okay, we have the ELCA, right? The ELCA, you know, it's not the same as Missouri Senate or most of the other ones. It's the same thing with Calvinism. I mean, like Presbyterians, there are Presbyterians that are very much like the ELCA. Presbyterian Church USA. Calvinist who's retained the, you know, the teachings of Calvin, theologically conservative. I mean, they, they would probably, you go down the list, I mean, the end times, basically they believed exactly the same thing. They don't have any answer rapture stuff or anything. I mean, you go down the list and it's probably, they use the word sacraments that like, like Baptists usually won't even call them. They call them ordinances. I mean, they, they use sacramental language. Calvin retained that. So, I mean, it's, it's, it's significantly different. probably the closest like if you went to like a theologically conservative Presbyterian Church, their theology would be probably the closest to Lutheran Church. But again, that's not to downplay the differences, but it's to say, you know, maybe he gets the silver. Calvin comes in with the silver here, you know, one of the things I wanted to talk about this when we moved to England, specifically, we live in Baptist country, obviously, you guys have learned that being here, right? Okay, this is this is Baptist country. If you drive out from here, you're going to find more Baptist a whole lot of different kinds of Baptists, right? Okay. There's a lot of different kinds of that. There's, you know, Southern Baptist is the biggest, the Southern Baptist convention. Um, but then you have a lot of independent Baptist churches as well that are not affiliated with any group. There's multiple other things. There's the, uh, uh, cooperative Baptist or a little bit to the left of the Southern Baptist as far as theology. you got the missionary Baptist, you've got the National Baptist Convention, or primarily, you know, mostly black churches. So, so Baptists are everywhere and they're in all different kinds of groups. So it's kind of hard to generalize Baptist, right? Because they are Lutheran I mean, the Baptist church is very much congregation-based. They give them a lot of autonomy. From your neck of the woods, you might have seen in the news, the Southern Baptist Convention, they expelled six congregations recently, including Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, which is kind of a big deal, because that was one of the, if not the biggest, one of the biggest churches in the Southern Baptist Convention. They got kicked out. And the reason they did is because they basically have female pastors. retired that couple that came in there both. I mean, it takes a lot to get kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention, because they're so congregation-based. And you know, you go to one Baptist church or another, and they be very different. Some of them are very strict on certain things, others not so much, because each congregation kind of has its own flavor. But the point is, you have to be like, I mean, they were pretty much in direct defiance of that, and this has been going on forever. two or three years since Rick Ward. I mean, if that was a Missouri Synod congregation, I mean, it wouldn't have taken that long before they were removed from the Synod because it's a clear violation. You know, it's like you can't call a woman pastor. You can't do that. But in the Southern Baptist Convention, I mean, and it made a lot of waves because, I mean, that barely ever happens. You barely ever see a church going this way with baptism i mean i've never heard of a baptist church i mean that's the whole point of their their main theological distinctive is they don't do infant baptism they do i mean you know it's kind of like a lutheran church oh we don't celebrate the lord's supper we don't do that here it's like well how can you be lutheran so i mean i don't know how you can call yourself a baptist and not believe in what they call believer's baptism by immersion. I mean, that's like the main thing, you know? Or Lutheran church, another coffee pot or something. No, that's not theological, but I mean, that'd be just as weird, you know? You go into a Baptist church and you see a baptismal font like that, something's weird, okay? They're probably using someone else's sanctuary. But again, it's kind of, you have a different stream because some Baptist churches are very Calvinistic in how they view predestination and things like that. 20 to 25 years, there has been, in the Southern Baptist Convention, a lot of strife over Calvinism, and there's been a strong revival of Calvinism in the Baptist church. Many more Baptist churches are more Calvinistic, again, not on baptism, but on some of these other things, especially as far as predestination and things like that. So it kind of depends which one you go to. I quote Charles Spurgeon sometimes and he was a Baptist pastor in England in the 1800s and he was very much Calvinistic in how he viewed sovereignty and predestination and all that. in terms of salvation. This is the most common I think thing in Shoshana project. This is what they were taught in her independent path as church. How are you saved of course by Jesus? Okay, but I mean, how does that look in most? Yeah, I mean, like, how would you get that? Like, we would say, well, when you brought, when you were brought to the baptismal font, you were, your sins are washed away and you became a child of God. Okay, but before even baptism, because remember, they separate baptism and salvation pretty hard, you know, like the Anabaptists. Okay, because baptism, they would say, is a symbol that you've been saved. It's a public proclamation. It doesn't really actually do anything. I think we use the example of it. They would say baptism doesn't make you a Christian. It's just a sign that you are a Christian. In most baptisms, you have to be baptized to join the church. You have to make that public profession of faith. Like we do, we have new members come in. They come up and answer questions and all that, but they would say, well, if you're not baptized, you have to get baptized first. is how does that work you go from a pagan to a Christian what what what is generally going to happen there in most Baptist churches okay and how does how does that look though you okay you're getting them warmer how it's been done a lot is The pastor will preach like a message where there's like an invitation to come to Christ and sometimes it'll make people like bow everybody bow their heads and then raise your hand if you want to and you'll pray with the pastor, you'll say, pray this prayer. It's basically, you know, I'm a sinner, I believe in Jesus, and I wanna be a Christian, kind of. The sinner's prayer, they call it. With Jesus, you don't see that model anywhere in Scripture. I mean, Jesus never did that, right? At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, there's not an altar call. If you agree with this, come on down. Come on down and pray this. You just don't see it. The Apostle Paul, did he ever do that? It's not recorded. There's no altar calls in scripture. Okay. I mean that you know, so that's how you become a Christian. So they wouldn't say it's the work of the Holy Spirit, but they emphasize the decision aspect. You are making a decision as a as a as a rational clear-thinking adult. You are making the decision. Yes. I want to be a Christian. That's Arminianism. Jacob Arminius was a Dutch theologian who basically said, you know, you have a choice in salvation. You can choose to be in or out. But that's probably the most common. I think this Calvinism has really surged in the last 25 years. You don't see as much of that. But you, that's, I would say is still the majority. If you popped in any Baptist church, that's what they're gonna say. If you ask a pastor, well, how do I become a Christian? He's like, well, he's gonna ask a couple questions. He'll say, pray this prayer for me, okay? And they probably do it with service, and sometimes they have like a revival meeting or something. That's a huge part of it. All right, now the other side, what would most Baptists say? Again, this is my experience, and I think it's pretty accurate. What, can you lose your salvation? Could you become a Christian, and then one day decide not to be or something you get, you start being really bad, you know, like the Pentecostals would say, well, you gotta get saved again. They're always getting saved. You're going down for altar calls. You know, you lose your salvation to the other. And it's kind of interesting. Some of them more than others, but what would most Baptist churches say though about losing your salvation? Once you've made that decision and you're following Jesus, can you lose that? They would say no. Once saved, always saved. Is that Calvinism? Yes. That sounds kind of Calvinistic, doesn't it? If you're one of us, you're one of us. I mean, you either are or you aren't. Now the problem with the fruit of that, you see it all over here. You ask people in Walmart, anywhere you are around here, about their religion, and a lot of them are gonna tell you they're Baptists. And then you ask them and say, well, where do you go to church? They might name a church just to get you to leave them alone. But if you talk to them, they don't really ever go to church. Or my grandma goes to this church, or my uncle's a pastor at this church or whatever. Because again, that's not their intention. But let's, again, logically think about this. If you were told you prayed this prayer, Now you're one of us. And the last thing, write it down in your Bible. Write the date down in the back of your Bible. This is the day you were saved. And you can never lose that. Okay? Is there, again, I'm not saying this is our primary motivation to come to church, because you're scared of going to hell, right? And we don't teach that, you know, it's like a percentage, you gotta be here, right? No. But if you believe that, once saved, always saved, and you did the thing, you maybe even baptized, you went to church for a few weeks, you got baptized, maybe you didn't. I mean, in a worldly way of thinking, is there really much motivation then to go to church unless you just like it? No, and I think that that's the fruit of this. And now with TV and everything, well, I prayed the prayer with the guy on TV. I mean, I've literally talked to people who've said and there was one guy who's really kind of a zealous Christian. It was a customer actually. He'd come in and talk to you about Jesus. And so we're hearing him talking to this guy and he said, well, you know, I went to this vacation Bible school at this Baptist church near my house when I was eight years old and I prayed the prayer. He said, so I'm good. He's like, I don't need to come to your church. I mean, this is literally what he's saying. Again, before we're too hard on our Baptist friends, don't Lutherans do that with baptism and confirmation sometimes? I graduated from church. Oh yeah, I did all that memory work stuff. Now I don't have to do anything. Okay, but this is their version of it. It's probably worse. of what they're doing, okay, my neighbor, they're supposedly Baptist, I don't ever see him go in the church, but if you talk to him, they're gonna be probably pretty assured that there's somebody, and they'll tell you, well, I went down to this altar call, I went to BBS, and I prayed this as a child, or, you know, I saw Billy Graham on TV, and I prayed the prayer, I'm in. I mean, I know I probably should go to church, but you know, like, I'm in, right, basically. So what I found is American, modern American Baptists, what they've done is they've taken the thing that people like about Calvinism, which is the one safe, always safe. I'm in and I can't get out, right? And then they take the thing that people like about the, I don't have enough here, but Arminian, which I didn't choose. We love choice as Americans, right? Choice and security. It's the American way, right? I mean, this is tailor-made for America. Now you look at the early Baptist, We'll get to this a little bit, something called the Second Great Awakening. There was a guy named Charles Finney, who was kind of like a holiness preacher, and he really started these altar calls. In the 20th century, it gets really big. Give me a name. Give me a name in the 20th century where this methodology that I, what I just described to you, this becomes the dominant way the Baptists are doing it. Give me a name, everybody knows this name probably. Except you know it, when I say it, you're gonna know it. This guy was known as the pastor to the presidents. Billy Graham. Franklin Graham, he does the same thing. Yeah, he does the same thing. Okay, this is this is the building that he didn't think this up again, but he made it this became American mainstream and he was a Southern Baptist Billy Graham. And again, I again, there's a lot to like about Billy Graham. I mean, I think he lived a very honorable Christian life, but I'm just saying if you think of what between Arminianism and Calvinism. Now again, to be fair, he would say when someone decides it's the work of the Holy Spirit, but it's still putting an emphasis on kind of something you're doing, isn't it? And kind of the dirty little secret of these mass revival things, especially they used to have on TV, they've done some research on this, like there's tons of people that pray the prayer. There's tons of people that come down for the altar call, then they've tried to find some of these people later, and what are they, they can't find them. They're not in church. They're not in church, certainly. Okay, I think it was like maybe 1990. It was a major Southern Baptist study something like they had something like 300 something thousand professions of faith in Southern Baptist in churches that year like they could find like 10,000 of them that were still active in the church. I mean, it's like over 90% these surveys of the folks that pray the prayer over 90% of them don't really go beyond that. When I was in high school, I went with one of my friends who was a Southern Baptist and he was an interesting guy because he was the only one in his family that went to church. As a teenager, he took it upon himself to go to church. He'd get a ride from somebody and he'd start driving himself to church. This is weird, right? Even in the olden days. really just not preaching the word you know it's like he's trying to change too much stuff so he went found this little country Baptist church he would drive out dude so yeah this is this is a real Baptist church you know it's like you know so anyway I went with him I went to a Billy Graham crusade And it was a very interesting experience and I'll never forget that, but in Atlanta he was, I think he was 94. Billy Graham came, Johnny Cash was there too, that was kind of cool, you know. And because he used to do a lot of stuff with Billy Graham and it was, but I mean at the end he's like this massive, he would give the altar call the whole And honestly, there were a lot of people, like my friend, he went down for the altar call, he was already a Christian, but hey, I'm at a Billy Graham crusade, I'm going, it's like how many people want to get baptized again in the Jordan River, like it's some kind of magic or something, you know? And it's like, oh, I'm here at Billy Graham, I'm going down for an altar call, you know? So I had to like wait out of, it's like, you're already a Christian, man, you know? It's like, anyway, so Billy Graham, now there was a guy in the 20s before him called Billy Sunday, who basically did the same thing. And they didn't have TV back then. But he basically did the same thing. He was a little bit more like, he was kind of like a fire and brimstone against all the devices of the day. He was very much for prohibition. And he was actually a former baseball player. And he left baseball and became this traveling evangelist, Billy Sunday. Great name for a preacher, by the way, right? Your last name is Sunday. Hey, what else? You're not supposed to say baseball, son. You gotta be a preacher. You're not supposed to say Sunday. Like we had a pastor at Trinity years ago. We called, he declined the call years ago. His name was Pastor Steve. in there but I did want to throw that in there because this is something you're going to encounter you know because you might wonder where do all these baptists fit around well the short answer is they're very diverse so some are definitely more calvinistic and they you would never see an altar call there but then some of them are kind of a more armenian and most of them are kind of a mixture of the two okay as far as how they view salvation a two or three Baptist churches when we used to visit my kids out there, but it seems to me like, how do you decide what you do in a congregational thing? The one guy said, well, you can read scripture and testimony, but it's the King James Version, because that's the only one we quit. And then, I mean, it was like the congregation decides what they do? There must be a lot of different kinds of Yeah, it's going to vary. I mean, like if you went to First Baptist Commerce here, and then you went to the church, my in-laws used to go out here, Canaan Baptist Church, which is right down the road. Very different. They're both Baptist. Okay, this one down here, it's an independent Baptist church. I think they're in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. but I still don't baptize babies. Okay, but it's more it's for Baptists. It's pretty liturgical. You go out here. You're not going to see any of that stuff. It's much more. I mean, I visited there several times and my in-laws went there for various things and very nice people, you know, but I mean, it's like the pastor during the service would call on people to pray. I mean Lutherans would die, right? You'd be hiding under the I got to go to the bathroom. It's like just pray us out brother. So-and-so and then you're supposed to stand up and free-flowing. I mean, the music minister, I mean, there's no hymns in the bulletin or anything. There probably is at First Baptist, but not out here. Like, he's just going to open up the hymnal and say, let's go to number 247 and start banging it out on the piano and singing. I mean, it's just, that's how it is. I mean, the sermons go on for a long time and seem to be a little bit more rambling. That's something for the heads of like they had an altar call for people who wanted to join the church So if you wanted to join the church, you just come up So I was talking to my father-in-law. It's like so that's it. You just come down the altar quality bring your like in and It's like, well, is there any kind of instruction about what the church believes so people know what they're getting into? Is there any kind of, you know, talking to people to see what they believe? Is there making sure that they're baptized? There's none of that. Okay, so it's very, formality or how they're doing things and things like that. But I mean, it's, it's, it's very, very, uh, you know, it's, it is kind of different, you know, all right. Anything else? We spend a good bit of time on this. That would be a great opportunity. If Martin Luther was alive today, he's got, what are they teaching? Yeah. So, um, so yeah, so the Baptist is a very broad label and I said, I didn't really have them in the study guide that much. The thing that really brings them all together is the denial of infant baptism. That's the thing that you'll find in all of them. back you know you have a lot they don't even call themselves baptist they just found this contemporary seeker sensitive model and yeah we're baptist but it's buried on our website somewhere you know um and so things like that so uh but but the southern baptist convention is the largest protestant denomination in the u.s by by far by far i think they have like 15 million members we have like a little less than two million so i mean you know uh catholic church has like 70 million so they're bigger than Protestants, as we're seeing, are splintered, right, into all these different groups. There's no mother church of Protestantism, at least not that everybody wants to go to. But we would say, you know, it's just the base around Christ and the scripture. All right, let's do talk about England a little bit today. You wanna go to jolly old England today and see how the Reformation happened there? I think we have talked about this a little bit. It's intersected already a little bit. But you have the English Reformation next. So you just got a bonus there kind of on Baptist theology. We need Shoshana out here for her take on it, but that's because she grew up in an independent Baptist church, to be honest. So let's talk about the English Reformation, the English space. Now, the thing about the English Reformation that's interesting was the primary break with Rome wasn't necessarily theological in nature. It was not. Did they have like a reformer was a lot of it with politics and power okay now there was theology of course but the impetus for it the spark for it was the king and he was mad at the Pope now the the Anglicans the Church of England they they like the Lutheran Church break away directly from However, I think you can pretty safely say if Luther had not done what he did, would King Henry VIII, would he have maybe taken this step and say, well, I'll just break off and make my own thing? I don't see that happening. But see, Luther, he shattered the glass. He broke through. So while the Anglicans didn't come out of the Lutherans directly, I think what Luther did, So I think in that way, Luther is again, paving the way for all these things. Again, the Anabaptists, would they have ever been able to do what they did without Luther? Probably not, okay? Any of these folks, okay? So what happens here, and I think we might've talked about this briefly, but you have King Henry VIII, and he desperately wants a male heir for the throne. He wants a son, but his wife, Catherine, is not giving him a son, okay? And he's going to all these different wives, everything. Anne Boleyn, okay, Anne Boleyn. And so he's a king, so he's Scott Cole with the Pope, right? Okay, so what in the Catholic Church, even this day, you cannot have a divorce recognized by the Catholic Church, okay? But what can you get? Annulment, which basically says that marriage never happened, never quite got that, especially, I mean, there are people who got annulments and have been married for like 20-something years, So theologically, you can say no, I've never been married. This is my first marriage. Good evening. You don't have to say that either. The marriage was annulled because they don't believe in divorce. But again, legalism always has loopholes, right? Well, we can't do divorce, but we can do annulments. Let's make an annulment. It's like the president, you know, the president cannot make treaties with other nations that has to be approved by two states. Yeah, exactly. This is what, you know, have influence can generally get annulments. They can pull the right strings. I'm not going to name a name. I'm thinking of a certain presidential candidate from 2004, so if you Google it, the guy who was married for over 20 years and he got an annulment from his first wife. That's kind of a prime example of that, and he remarried. I think he's an official of the Obama administration, or not the Biden administration now, this particular person. That kind of thing happens. Okay, so the king thinks he's going to get an annulment and he can just, you know, this never happened. Now I go on to next wife and she'll give me a male baby. But the problem is Catherine is related to the Pope somehow, his family. Okay, and so they say this isn't gonna happen. So there's a lot of political intrigue going on here. So they deny Henry VIII's request for annulment. He's mad, he's like, I'm a king, I should be able to get an annulment whenever I want, right? So what does he do? He says, okay, we'll just make our own church. We won't be Catholic anymore. We'll be the Church of England. And conveniently, who gets to be in charge of the Church of England? The king does. That's right. The king is in charge of the church. So if I want to get in the middle of it, I just give it to myself. Okay, how does that work? Who is the head of the Church of England? The British monarch. It's still this way today. Yeah, the king. Charles, I think he's going to be officially coronated, but that's part of their vows as king. One of the titles of the king is the Defender of the Faith. King Charles, he will be known as the Defender of the Faith. You're laughing, right? Yeah, so, you know, there's another, but yes, he will be the head of the Church of England. You know, he has the ultimate, it's kind of like the Pope almost, like, now, you know, how much do they bet on it? Probably not too much today, but the King or the Queen, like Queen Elizabeth, I think was a pretty good example of, you know, Christian charity and how she lived their life by all accounts I've read. I mean, kind of runs the thing, okay, the Anglicans. But the king is actually the head, or the queen is the head, the monarch is the head of Church England. This goes back to, look at the year there, 1534. So again, we're, what, 17 years or so after Wittenberg, right, the 95 Theses. So Luther's, and it's after the Augsburg Confession, so Luther's already done all the stuff, so I think, you know, he's looking at that, saying, well, why don't we just make our own church? Okay, we'll just make our own church, and that's what he does. Okay, so he establishes himself as the head of the Church of England. However, the story doesn't end there, because Catholicism was very much rooted in England. So the king can say this, but remember, it's a lot easier to define things on paper and make political boundaries and say, we're in charge. It's a little bit harder to change hearts and minds. Yeah, even in America, when we bought the Louisiana Purchase, we had it on paper. Did we control all that territory? No, we didn't even know what's out there. That's why we sent Lewis and Clark out, okay? It took really like 1890 before the American Indians were subjugated, okay? So we had it on, it was part of America on paper, but we didn't really control most of it. I mean, you can say anything you want. I'm the king, I'm the head of the church. Everyone believe like me. Well, a lot of people are like, well, we don't wanna believe them. So there's, again, we're not getting into all the details of it today, but for a number of years, for really about 70 years after this, there is a back and forth in England between Protestantism and Catholicism. And what did it matter whether they were going a Catholic or Protestant direction, who the monarch was? So when a monarch took the throne, whether they were Protestant or Catholic, they would try to push that. And of course, this is where you get, you see there in the 1550s, you have Mary takes the throne and she becomes known as Bloody Mary. And she was a staunch Catholic. So what did she do to the Protestants? She persecuted them and a number of them were killed, thus the nickname Bloody Mary. That's not what she called herself. It's not just a drink at Sunday brunch, okay? It's the real person, Bloody Mary, they called her. And so she persecuted the Protestants. So England is, you know, the king declares this, but there's a lot of back and forth because there's a lot of people that say, yes, let's go our own way, let's be Protestants. But then there's others who say, no, we wanna stay with Mother Rome and the Pope. Okay, so there's this back and forth, but it's during the reign, incidentally, we mentioned Queen Elizabeth II. Earlier, it was Queen Elizabeth I. You can see there from 1558 to 1603 is really a key figure. She was known as the Virgin Queen because she never married. Virginia was named after her, the colony of Virginia. And so Elizabeth I, she was a Protestant. And basically from her reign there, you can see in the late 1500s into the early 1600s, England will never again go back to Catholicism. Okay, as their official religion, so there's a lot of back and forth again, you're getting the cliff notes version of this today, but there's a lot of back and forth. But with Elizabeth, when she takes the throne, then basically from that point, England will be a Protestant nation. Okay, they will be a Protestant nation, which I remember reading a number of years ago, there's actually now more Catholics in Britain, then there are Anglicans that attend service on Sunday. Now there's more, it's kind of like Baptist here. A lot of people are Anglicans in England, but they don't really have anything to do with the church. I mean, church attendance is very low, unfortunately, in the Anglican church in England. I mean, it's really become very secularized. And about a generation, that's a warning to us, right? We're just a little bit behind the curve. But I mean, back during World War II, it was like 50% of the population went to services every week. Winston Churchill's prayed on BBC during World War II. But since then, I mean, it's really secularized. But it's still, the Church of England is the official church. It's tax payer supported. in Britain. Okay, so unless they change that it's not going anywhere because they get money from the government to pay the the records and all that. Okay, so to keep the churches up. Okay, and when we see the Coronation of Charles, we already saw some of it at the State Funeral, it's Anglican. I mean you got guys in robes praying great prayers, great sounding prayers. I mean, it's all, you know, it's definitely Anglican flavor, but it's kind of rotted out, unfortunately, on the inside. Now, there were other Reformers. There were Baptists and Puritans and all that sort. We don't have a whole lot of time, but let me mention a couple of those things here. Anglicans, where are they theologically? Now, let me make a, and I've looked into it a little bit, but I haven't read a lot of it, so I'm giving you just basically what I know, is that in Anglican theology, are they Calvinistic? Are they more Roman Catholic? Are they more Arminian? Are they more Lutheran? It's kind of like its own animal. There are some Anglican theologians And there are some that sound more Catholic. There's some that sound more Lutheran. But let me put that up there. I'm gonna put this, because this is a confusion. My students get confused about this too when we study colonial America. I'm gonna put these terms up here. I'm kind of using them interchangeably. But the Church of England, that is the official Protestant church state, Church of England. The people who are, if you are a member of the Church of England, you are an Anglican. Because that comes from the, England is Angoland. That's, you know, it's turned into just England, but the old English is Angoland. Okay, that's what England is. So if one is a member of the Church of England, they are an Anglican. But Anglicanism, is it only the Church of England? Is it only, no. There are Anglican churches all over the world. Why, what did the British do? They set up everything, the sun never sets. They went to India, they went to Africa, everywhere. So basically, if you go to the Bahamas, there's lots of Anglicans there. Go to Jamaica, wherever. Anywhere the English colonized, there's gonna be Anglicans. Nigeria, there's tons of Anglicans in Nigeria. Okay, there's way more Anglicans going to church in Nigeria than there are in England today. Okay, way more. And they've actually kind of taken the lead, the Anglican Church in Nigeria, kind of pushing back on some of the stuff the Church of England did. In America, there's lots of Anglicans. Except we changed the name, we don't call it the Church of England, because that kind of didn't sell. You know, what happened, we had this little rebellion against England, right? So they started calling it the Episcopal Church. Episcopal Church, they are part of this Anglican movement, okay? The Episcopal Church goes way back in American history, a lot of presidents and all were associated with the Episcopal Church, because that was the church of the movers and shakers. Even today, like I saw a study, the highest average income of church members, you know who it is, of all the denominations, than anything else because a lot of the movers and shakers and especially in the south in colonial america the anglican church became the established church like in virginia you couldn't vote unless you went to anglican church at least once a month you know you had to be an active church member which went at least a month a month they weren't as hardcore as the puritans you know they're like you got to go every day whatever but but you had to be a member so so anglican churches in America that have left the Episcopal Church because they've basically gone the short story, the way of the ELCA. They were actually ahead of the ELCA in moving away from some of their traditional beliefs. So a lot of them just said, well, we still want to be Anglicans, but we don't want to be Episcopalians anymore. So you see now more churches that are just called Anglican, like the one Christa went to, it was an Anglican church, but it wasn't Episcopalian, okay? You see more of these, because a lot of the Episcopal churches have left and said, well, we're just gonna be Anglicans, we're gonna fellowship with Nigeria or something, you know, because they still believe the Bible there, you know? So the Church of England, in fairness, they're in a hard position because England has become very secular. Okay, but so they but they know that the rest of the Anglican Communion, a lot of them are not on board with that. So they've kind of I just saw a thing in the last couple weeks in the news that Anglican Church, the bishop has decided this is how they've decided to deal with the same sex marriage thing. They've been wrestling with this. They're not going to let you get married in the church. the courthouse and get married and you're an Anglican, you can come into the church and have a blessing for it. Say, okay, how does that work, right? Well, see, this is trying to play both sides. So, because the bishop, he does it when he starts saying, well, we're not gonna perform the marriages, but it's okay if you do it. So he's trying to please both sides and how does that usually work out? Not so much, not so much. My guess is there's not gonna be a revival of attendance in the Anglican church. So anyway, so that's a little bit about Anglicanism. It's kind of a mixture. Now, format-wise, and we'll close in this, at least get the Church of England thing, we'll go into Catholic Reformation. But I already talked about how the Puritans, last time we talked about, they didn't think the Church of England changed enough, because they saw it as too Catholic. I said theologically, I said probably what is the closest to Lutheran is probably conservative Calvinism. know theologically conservative but stylistic wise if you had to go if you popped into a different church what would the service be the most familiar to you probably Anglican Anglican because remember they took the same approach as Luther to worship There's no degrees of separation. They came right out of the Catholic Church. They retained a lot of that. And the other thing they did is they took the same approach as Luther, maybe even more so because it wasn't quite as theological, but they said, do we need to get rid of all the traditions of the church? No, just things that are bad. So if you go to an Anglican church, a lot of times it's even more Catholic-like than a Lutheran church. Like we have incense here, you know, but like Anglicans, they love incense. you know, all this, and I'll tell you, Anglicans can build a church. You go into some Anglican churches, they are incredibly beautiful. Incredibly beautiful. Okay, they know how to build churches, if nothing else, okay? They have some nice churches. But so, again, stylistically, the thing that we would probably be able to jump in and say, this is a lot like us, would be the Anglicans. Theologically, probably more Calvinist though. Okay, but just to put that out there, and you see over my years as a Lutheran, I've seen there's a lot of, there's a lot of folks that were Anglicans that have ended up in the Lutheran church. Okay, because they're like, this isn't weird. I've had some of them say they like the Lutheran liturgy better. They say it's more, one guy used the word warm, it's warmer. You know, it's like the Anglican was more like a little bit more stuffy. But by the same token, and again, we don't have our resident former attender of a Anglican church here, but if you're a Lutheran and you live out in this area and you're trying This doesn't look weird to me, right, you know? Okay, so I've seen over the years there's a good bit of crossover. Now, the Luther did have some influence on the Anglican Church because Tyndale was basically a Lutheran who was an early reformer. He translated the Bible, and much of Tyndale's translation work was the basis for what translation of the Bible. King James. I think 40 to 50 percent of the King James scholarly work was done by Tyndale, who was a Lutheran. Okay, so there's some influence there, definitely. All right, we're out of time. I've got 20 after. We started a few minutes late, but are there any other comments or questions? So we talked today about Baptists, which wasn't in the study guide, where they fit in, but we also talked about the English Reformation, the Church of England, which again has had a profound impact on not only America, but the world, okay? And again, it all started with Henry VIII wanting a divorce. The rest is history. And the Pope's saying no, I guess. He said yes, you know, the world may look a lot different, okay, but he said no.