Splits

[Forum Admin]

From what denomination did your church split? Why?

What denominations have split from yours? Why?

[disciple]

The one split that I saw happen first hand, was in a non denominational church,there was a group in the church that started to privately teach and practice that christians could be possessed by demons,much against the desire of the Pastor,the group that was practicing this broke away and started their own group,many of which were my closest friends,which i could no longer walk with because they were wrong.

The group that got started didnt last in the end,because they got caught up in some weird practices, non denominational churches try and avoid splits that denominational churches go through,but human nature stays the same.

[Darth_Bill]

My church has experienced many splits. Many happened in the 1800's. In fact most.

1st major split occurred after the death of Joseph Smith. The majority of the church stayed with the apostles and moved to Utah. There were 2 apostles, I believe, that were removed from their position and started their own followings, which I don't think lasted all that long. One group in Wisconsin decided to go off on their own. Several members that were once in lower leadership positions started the Reorganized CoJCoLDS about 10-16 years after the main church left for Utah. Their main issues were with polygamy and some other succession items.

The other major factions left after polygamy was not practiced anymore. You still hear from them from time to time. They shouldn't be associated with the CoJCoLDS.

Human nature being what it is, you can't and shouldn't stop people from leaving.

[Don]

When I was a child I went to a Presbyterian church. At the time of the US Civil War, the Presbyterian church in the USA split over slavery.

Don

[disciple]

Hey Don if you attended the presbyterian church, during the time of the civil war, how old are you?

[Jodie]

The SDA church didn't break off from any one denominations, but our founders had came from a variety of denominations. The main ones are Baptist, Methodist, Congregational and Presbyterian.


I know we have had churches split off from ours, but I only know of two of them. One is the Good News Unlimited, which is an evengelical non-denominational ministry. Their beliefs are somewhat simular to ours and we have good relations with them. It was founded by an estranged SDA minister named Dr Desmond Ford in Australia, and now also has branches in the US and Canada.


We also have another split that is quite notorious. It is the Branch Davidians Seventh-day Adventist or just Branch Davidians. It was founded by a man named Victor Houteff who was member of the SDA church, but started teaching doctrines contrary to the church's doctrines, and even printed a book called "The Shepherd's Rod" which he circulated among the members. After trying to reason with him and not succeeding, the SDA church finally dropped his membership in 1930. He then started his own branch, and called it The Shepherd's Rod, and later changing the name to Davidians Seventh-day Adventist Church. Many of their doctrines are quite different than ours, and they require that the leader of their church has to be a prophet, and Victor Houteff himself claimed to be a prophet. Their church has been very unstable and many other branches have broken off of it. The main branch however was a settlement outside of Waco, Texas, which they called Mt. Carmel Center, and it came under the leadership of a man named Vernon Howell in 1984, who later changed his name to David Koresh. Koresh not only claimed to be a prophet, but claimed to be the Son of God reincarnate. In 1993 Koresh and his members had been stockpiling weapons at their settlement and drew the attention of the authorities, which turned into a holdout with the FBI that lasted nearly 2 months, and ended with the Dividian compound being consumed by fire, killing eighty men, women, and children, including David Koresh himself.

[Bill]

It's difficult to say just when, or why, "The People called Methodists" in Great Britain split from the Church of England but Methodist Societies had their own organisation and places of worship for half-a-century before the formal break took place. Methodists were encouraged to attend their local Anglican Parish church for morning worship on Sundays and to go to the Methodist chapel on Sunday evenings and for mid-week meetings.

The founders of Methodism, John and Charles Wesley, were very conservative Anglican clergymen who wanted Methodism to remain a movement within the Church of England. John Wesley once said that "If the Methodists leave the Church of England, I fear that God will leave the Methodists."

The final break with the Church of England didn't come until a few years after John Wesley's death in 1791, when the annual Methodist Conference decided that the time had come for Methodists to ordain their own Ministers instead of relying on recruiting Anglican priests. The split wasn't over doctrinal issues (those came later) but just a simple recognition that Methodism had been gradually growing into a separate organisation for many years.

The new Church soon split into three main groups and a few smaller ones. The main groups were The Wesleyan Methodist Church, the Methodist New Connexion and the Primitive Methodist Church. The greatest difference between these groups was church governance. In the Wesleyan Church, Ministers formed a majority at Annual Conference, the Prims had a majority of laymen and the New Connexion had a balance between the two.

Towards the end of the 19th century, most of the smaller groups of Methodists joined with the Methodist New Connexion to form the United Methodist Church and in 1932, the Wesleyans, the Primatives and the United Methodists joined together to form The Methodist Church of Great Britain that we have today.

The Methodist Church and the Church of England are currently examining ways in which the two Churches can work together with an ever-increasing degree of unity, looking forward to full union in the futre, perhaps the far distant future, given the differences that have grow between the two since John Wesley's day.

[lomo]

This is so interesting!

I'm not a member of my original church anymore (as it was not really ever 'mine' in the sense that I chose it)

When I was a kid my folks chose to attend a Methodist Church (although my Dad had been baptised or christened in the Church of Christ and my Mum's family had irregularly attended Presbyterian) and my brother and I went to Sunday school there.

When I was too old for Sunday school my brother was still in it so I became a Sunday school teacher until two years had passed.

Then my folks asked us kids (we were approx 13 and 11 then) if we wanted to still go to church - of course we said "No!" so we all stopped. I think my parents had wanted to do the right thing by us and make sure we had sunday school but I don't think they really have beliefs of their own.

Anyway, what happened was that the Methodist and Presbyterian churches joined and became the Uniting church - I can't remember when - sometime in the late '70's early '80's?

Funnily, I was sent to a Methodist Girls' School for high school and my bro to a Chruch of England Boys' because at the time they accepted non-denominationals and were cheap private schools - weird huh?

Now I am a born again baptised baptist/charismatic/pentecostal/evangelical/apostolic!!! Somewhere in all of that God knows what He's doing

[Dan Bittleston]

I was raised Immanuel Missionary Society.
I attended my last two years of high school with Emmanuel Association.
From my understanding, the Immanuel Missionary Society was a split of the Pilgrim Holiness which was a split off the Wesleyan Methodist (US). The Emmanuel Association was a split off the Immanuel Missionary Society. In each of these splits, the "split off" claimed to retain the Wesleyan Doctrine.

In 1956, the Emmanuel Association split, with the "split off" not claiming to retain the Wesleyan Doctrine. That "split off" has since split. I have not followed what has been going on with them during the past 40 years, so I am not at liberty to say what has happened since about 1960.

When I do occassionally attend church now, I attend the Nazarene, since there are no organizations that I went to school with or was raised with in the section of the US that I live in, Florida.

I only attend occassionally because around 1983, the Nazarene headquarters in Kansas City informed their churches that they were to do "whatever is deemed appropriate and necessary" to attract the young people into their membership. Their doctrine is very much "watered down" from what it used to be. I guess the "almighty dollar" seems to be more importance to them than the Gospel, as taught to us in the New Testament, to feed the sheep. This is not something that I can accept with a clear conscience. Therefore today, I claim to be non-denominational, although I base the doctrine that I believe back to the Wesleyan Doctrine that I was raised with and went to school with.

YBIC
Dan Bittleston

[Templedweller]

Jodie,
Its interesting You posted as just the other day I received a book about cult leaders and Vernon Howell/David Koresh was in there.....Just inetersting to me so I thought I would post!!!

Sincerely,
Templedweller