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The other main branch of Orthodoxy is constituted by the six national churches of the Oriental Orthodox communion: the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East, the Malankara (Indian) Syrian Orthodox Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. With the exception of the Eritrean church, which was granted autocephaly in 1998, these churches were largely out of contact with the other main branches of Christianity from the time of the Council of Chalcedon (451), which resulted in their being branded monophysites—and hence heretics—by the Roman and Greek churches (see above Eastern controversies).

Beginning in the mid-20th century, when the Armenian and Coptic churches helped to form the World Council of Churches, the Oriental Orthodox communion—also called non-Chalcedonian churches because of their rejection of the Council of Chalcedon—engaged in ecumenical dialogue with the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches in hopes of resolving the ancient disputes. Increasingly frequent talks eventually resulted in historic joint declarations by the three branches of Christianity stating that the schism of 451 was largely based on a grave misunderstanding, that many of the points of dispute had been resolved, and that the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches now regarded the Oriental churches as confessing Christians in full standing. Meanwhile, the Coptic Orthodox Church expanded outside Egypt to form strong enclaves in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and South America.

Oriental Orthodox Christianity displays rich variation. Each national church is autocephalous (though the Coptic pope enjoys spiritual primacy in the Ethiopian and Eritrean churches). Each church also has its own structure, usually with a single head (though the Armenian church has two catholicoses), its own liturgy, and other distinctive practices. For example, the Ethiopian and Eritrean churches include indigenous practices in exorcism and spiritual healing. The Ethiopian and Eritrean churches also use a larger Bible, regarding as scriptural texts such as the First Book of Enoch, which most of mainstream Christianity considers pseudepigraphical. Like the Eastern Orthodox churches, the Oriental Orthodox churches uphold the Nicene Creed without the Filioque. Matt Stefon Protestantism

Formulating a definition of Protestantism that would include all its varieties has long been the despair of Protestant historians and theologians, for there is greater diversity within Protestantism than there is between some forms of Protestantism and some non-Protestant Christianity. For example, a High Church Anglican or Lutheran has more in common with an Orthodox theologian than with a Baptist theologian. Amid this diversity, however, it is possible to define Protestantism formally as non-Roman Western Christianity and to divide most of Protestantism into four major confessions or confessional families—Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, and Free Church. Lutheranism

The largest of these non-Roman Catholic denominations in the West is the Lutheran Church. The Lutheran churches in Germany, in Scandinavian countries, and in the Americas are distinct from one another in polity, but almost all of them are related through various national and international councils, of which the Lutheran World Federation is the most comprehensive. Doctrinally, Lutheranism sets forth its distinctive position in the Book of Concord, especially in the Augsburg Confession. A long tradition of theological scholarship has been responsible for the development of this position into many and varied doctrinal systems. Martin Luther moved conservatively in this reform of the Roman Catholic liturgy, and the Lutheran Church, though it has altered many of his liturgical forms, has remained a liturgically traditional church. Most of the Lutheran churches of the world have participated in the ecumenical movement and are members of the World Council of Churches, but Lutheranism has not moved very often across its denominational boundaries to establish full communion with other bodies. The prominence of Lutheran mission societies in the history of missions during the 18th and 19th centuries gave an international character to the Lutheran Church; so did the development of strong Lutheran churches in North America, where the traditionally German and Scandinavian membership of the church was gradually replaced by a more cosmopolitan constituency. Anglicanism

The Anglican Communion encompasses not only the established Church of England but also various national Anglican churches throughout the world. Like Lutheranism, Anglicanism has striven to retain the Roman Catholic tradition of liturgy and piety, and, after the middle of the 19th century, the Oxford movement argued the essential Catholic character of Anglicanism in the restoration of ancient liturgical usage and doctrinal belief. Although the Catholic revival also served to rehabilitate the authority of tradition in Anglican theology generally, great variety continued to characterize the theologians of the Anglican Communion. Anglicanism is set off from most other non-Roman Catholic churches in the West by its retention of and its insistence upon the apostolic succession of ordaining bishops. The Anglican claim to this apostolic succession, despite its repudiation by Pope Leo XIII in 1896, has largely determined the role of the Church of England in the discussions among the churches. Anglicanism has often taken the lead in inaugurating such discussions, but in such statements as the Lambeth Quadrilateral (1886) it has demanded the presence of the historic episcopate as a prerequisite to the establishment of full communion. During the 19th century and especially in the last third of the 20th century, many leaders of Anglican thought were engaged in finding new avenues of communication with industrial society and with the modern intellectual. Meanwhile, the strength of Anglicanism in the New World and in the younger churches of Asia and Africa confronted this communion with the problem of deciding its relation to new forms of Christian life in these new cultures.

Beginning in the late 20th century, a number of theologically liberal developments in Anglican churches in the United Kingdom and in North America aggravated fault lines not only between traditionalists and liberals but also between the more traditionally Anglican areas (the U.K., the U.S., and Canada) and the countries of the Global South—those of Africa, Asia, and Latin America—where the majority of the world’s Anglicans lived. The ordination of women as priests and bishops by the American, Canadian, and English churches faced stringent objections from African and Asian churches as well as from English, American, and Canadian theological conservatives. When the Rev. Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual man in a noncelibate relationship, was ordained a bishop in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA) in 2003, traditionalists around the globe dissented, and the ordination of other openly gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions by some congregations further incensed conservatives. In June 2008, having decided to skip the decennial Lambeth Conference taking place the following month, traditionalists held the Global Anglican Forum Convention (GAFCON) in Jerusalem, issuing a declaration of traditional Anglican values. Later that year, U.S. and Canadian traditionalists left their respective national provinces (churches), and in 2009 they launched the Anglican Church in North America, which immediately appealed for recognition by the Anglican Communion, whose leadership was compelled to retrench and seek a means of reconciling conflicting interpretations of Anglican tradition. Presbyterian and Reformed churches

Protestant bodies that owe their origins to the reformatory work of John Calvin and his associates in various parts of Europe are often termed Reformed, particularly in Germany, France, and Switzerland. In Britain and in the United States they have usually taken their name from their distinctive polity and have been called Presbyterian. They are distinguished from both Lutheranism and Anglicanism by the thoroughness of their separation from Roman Catholic patterns of liturgy, piety, and even doctrine. Reformed theology has tended to emphasize the sole authority of the Bible with more rigour than has characterized the practice of Anglican or Lutheran thought, and it has looked with deeper suspicion upon the symbolic and sacramental traditions of the Catholic centuries. Perhaps because of its stress upon biblical authority, Reformed Protestantism has sometimes tended to produce a separation of churches along the lines of divergent doctrine or polity, by contrast with the inclusive or even latitudinarian churchmanship of the more traditionalistic Protestant communions. This understanding of the authority of the Bible has also led Reformed Protestantism to its characteristic interpretation of the relation between church and state, sometimes labeled theocratic, according to which those charged with the proclamation of the revealed will of God in the Scriptures (i.e., the ministers) are to address this will also to civil magistrates; Puritanism in England and America gave classic expression to this view. As the church is “reformed according to the Word of God,” so the lives of the individuals in the church are to conform to the Word of God; hence the Reformed tradition has assigned great prominence to the cultivation of moral uprightness among its members. Beginning in the 20th century, most of the Reformed churches of the world took an active part in the ecumenical movement. Other Protestant churches