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I read the history of the crusades recently which has an interesting take on the catholic/protestant split. Basically, the pope created the system of indulgences to try and fund crusades to retake Jerusalem from the Muslim powers. The indulgence system later went out of control and made the catholic church look really corrupt.
My own historical observation was that as the Ottoman Turks and the Mamluks grew extremely powerful, the Christians who became Protestants happened to be in the northern and western regions of Europe, those places that happened to be further away from the Muslims. I suspect part of the split was motivated out of fear, by severing their connection with the Catholic church they would not need to defend other Christians from Muslim attack. This never became a major issue though since the discovery of the new world and the colonial era made western Europe so powerful that the Ottomans became almost irrelevant. This was after a few providential storms, lucky victories and convenient deaths slowed down the invading Muslims prior to western Europe becoming more powerful. Byzantium was still conquered and turned into Turkey though of course.
The fall of Byzantium has basically created a black hole in western history, presumably out of shame that no one mounted an adequate defense against the Turks. For centuries Constantinople was the seat of European and Christian civilization and now it's basically never mentioned.
Personally, I was raised an Episcopalian but was put off by the extreme liberalism within the church. I don't feel as if Christianity makes sense without the OT. Groups like liberal Episcopalians have rejected pretty much all of it and replaced it with crude pacifism. I've been thinking about being baptized as a catholic and being in their conservative camp.
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