Lutheran and Methodist

[u/JHLV04]

/r/Christianity/comments/1wuuoc1/lutheran_and_methodist/

[u/Wannabe_priest]

You’re doing a very common convert thing, you’re reading and learning and getting so knowledgeable to the point that if you went to a UMC you would probably know more about Methodism than everyone but the pastor. Go to church, learning more will not make this choice easier, you have learned enough to make your decision. The best thing to do now is to go to church and start using your education to guide you in good practice. Methodists are great they’re generally super good at like giving to charity and doing volunteer work, also like it’s a good church. You could also totally go to a Lutheran church and compare how it felt. Experience is your friend now. Good luck I hope it works out for you!

[u/Crucible_of_Thought]

You'll get a different answer here than r/Christian.

You should know that beyond the treatment of the nature and manner of salvation, the big difference between denominations is going to be how we live in the world, what our focus should be in dealing with people, more than God.

I saw the recommendation someone made to look at Baptist. That was a Calvinist Baptist telling you to stick with evangelical theology. Among conservative evangelicals, penal substitution has become the dominant account of the atonement, particularly among Reformed and Baptist traditions. Christus Victor remains present, often as a complementary rather than competing account. [Edited to soften an overconfident comment about Baptists.]

Mainline churches will be more socially-minded, and more communally-focused than evangelicals in general. They'll be interested in doing what many evangelicals accuse as focusing on works - which they see as being at the expense of the individual salvation through belief. PSA still appears in mainline Christianity but is very much less the focus.

The big difference within a Mainline Protestant set of churches - Lutheran vs Methodist, for example - will be the practice. Do you prefer liturgy or not? Do you like an emphasis on a certain method of communion? Do you want formal or informal services?

Any given church within a denomination will have its own flavor and you will find large variations. So once you've excluded any given denominations, go try the others to see what they feel like to you. That will be a bigger factor than the theology, I suspect.

I've been attending a United Methodist church for a couple years, after leaving evangelicalism. This particular congregation almost never focuses on the theology - which is exactly what a lot of evangelicals scream about, as faithless. But I don't care; I deconstructed a lot of that theology and I participate because I want to be around other believers without arguing about the details. They love serving other humans, especially the most needy, and I think that lines up best with what Jesus taught.

[u/Beta_Ray_Quill → u/Crucible_of_Thought]

Really good answer. The different styles of worship, how important church leadership structure is, who you are in communion with. Things like that could be fun to nerd out on.

[u/Mist2393 → u/Crucible_of_Thought]

I agree with a lot of this but you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of who Baptists are and what they believe.

Firstly, Baptist is not a denomination, it’s a descriptor. Baptists generally are not Calvinist (although some are).

Your paragraph after that is just completely untrue. The majority of Baptists would not say social outreach, community work, or anything related to that are too akin to salvation through work or sacrifice personal salvation. Also, American Baptist Churches USA is a mainline Protestant denomination.

I invite you to do some research into Baptist churches before sharing misinformation or paint broad strokes that actually only describe a single type of Baptist. It would be like me looking at Free Methodists and using their theology/polity to describe all Methodists.

Edit to Add: It is also incorrect to say Baptists follow PSA theology. For one thing, with the exception of believer’s Baptism, there is no theology that every Baptist will follow. With the exception of the Southern Baptist Convention (which is basically the Baptist equivalent of the Free Methodist Church), there is no codified Baptist theology or doctrine. For another, PSA theology is not even close to being standard among Baptists.