Unity and Disunity Today

Extract

Educated Catholics today are at least dimly aware that considerable changes are taking place among Protestants in regard to the problems set by Christian disunity. It is doubtful, however, whether the majority, even of educated Catholics, know just how considerable these changes are; still less do they envisage them as important. In this paper I propose to outline some of the facts concerning these changes and to attempt to interpret their significance for us.

From the Reformation in the sixteenth century, Constant fragmentation became a commonplace and accepted condition of Protestantism. On the continent, from the first, the two great movements initiated by Luther and Calvin were antagonistic, and in due course each produced its sub-divisions. Here in Britain Scottish Presbyterianism suffered, in the course of its history, at least a threefold fission, and the Elizabethan settlement of Anglicanism produced a number of non-conformist bodies, Baptists, Congregationalists and Methodists; and these in turn soon began to sub-divide.