Religion into the Future

[Michael]

On schism, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford, makes the argument that continual schism is part of Protestantism's reason for success - it allows very rapid adaptation and regeneration of the Church. It allowed, for example, George Whitefield and John Wesley to take the Church to a people that weren't coming to the Church (in days when the Church of England would not allow preaching outside of the Church pulpit). So Methodism itself started out from dissent from the established Church. Perhaps there is a parallel to Darwinian mutation and selection :-)