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Notes -
Which church is that again? The multitude of them disagree heavily, including very conservative ones considering other conservative denominations as hellbound. For example, a lot of the people in this thread arguing against these progressive churches being a type of Christian appear to be Catholics. The "trad" evangelical church I went to growing up taught that Roman Catholics are not Christians, they practice a form of Roman pagan polytheism and constantly demonstrate their break from monotheism by:
- Groveling before graven images and idols.
Use of magic talismans like rosary beads and "holy" water, belief in sacred relics and those having magical powers.
Belief in literal cannibalism in the form of transubstantiation.
Worshipping humans and pagan deities with the serial numbers filed off labeled "saints.
Treating Mary like a goddess and often absorbing Mesoamerican pagan deities renamed Mary through all the "Virgin of [location] stuff.
Belief in spells resolving sins in the form of confession and stuff like reciting Hail Mary's rather than faith alone, and the historic practice of indulgences.
The most powerful Catholic religious leader and most powerful Roman pagan religious leader both sharing the title Pontifex Maximus and being based in Rome.
Catholicism's historic hostility to making the Bible accessible to normal people was also interpretated as being a move by this pagan religion to keep people from reading the Bible and noticing discrepancies between Catholic teachings and "real" Christianity, the persecution of other denominations being persecution of many "real" Christians, use of priests for confession and praying to saints as a way to minimize people trying to directly contact god, and infant baptisms as invalid and a way of tricking people into not getting "real" baptisms as a conscious adult choice.
I'm sure the Catholics in turn have plenty of reasons arguing how these are compatible with Christianity and why that evangelical sect is wrong about them and damned. From an outside perspective this stuff is just like watching Sunnis and Shia arguing and insisting the other isn't a type of Muslim when both are clearly divergent branches of the same religious traditions.
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