How to find the church described in the Bible

I am Not a Protestant

It has troubled me greatly how church of Christ Christians have swallowed the Catholicized history of religion, how Christians are okay with being classified as “Protestant.”  I have a catholic friend who kept talking about my “Protestant” religion; one day, I decided to inform him I was not a Protestant.  He claimed that it is merely a label that means one is not Catholic.  You are either a Catholic or a Protestant.  What is often not understood is that you are either Catholic or Protestant only if the Catholic assertion that the Catholic church was the Church which Christ built is the truth.

I challenge every Christian to look into the history of Protestantism.  It began in the 16^th century by those who were protesting the Catholic church.  These protestors left Catholicism to begin their own religion in the way they saw Catholicism falling short of true Biblical principles.  To accept the Catholic and secular label that we are Protestant, simply because we are not Catholic, is to accept the idea that our religion—the church of Christ—began in the 16^th century as a split (a denomination) from the church which Christ built.  This is not the case.  The Church of Christ did not begin in the 16^th century with the Protestant movement. 

The Church of Christ did not begin in the 18^th century with Alexander Campbell and the Restoration movement either.  I applaud what Campbell did for the church of Christ in the United States; however, I do not accept, as my Catholic friend proposed, that he is the reason there is a Church of Christ because it is simply not true.

The Church that Christ built—the religion which I follow—was begun by Jesus, Himself, in the 1^st century.  I know this because the Bible tells me.  I do not care what supposed popes have written in the past.  I would remind naysayers that history is written by men—by the victors.  The Catholic religion held massive power in Europe, even into the political realm, for centuries.  Of course they are going to record into history that they are the first church, the one the Christ built.  That was the entire basis on which their power was supposedly legitimate.

Then, I would remind everyone that the Church which Christ built, the one the Bible describes, does not include a pope, or creeds, or sacraments, or infant baptism, or confirmation, or purgatory, or instrumental music, or any number of other things included in catholic and protestant worship.  If you are a member of the Church which Christ built in 33 AD, then you are not a Protestant.  You are a Christian.  Simple as that.  No other classification or label needed.

--Tricia Reno