Differences in Christian religious displays

Firstly, I haven’t read all the reponses, so someone might have already made this suggestion, however, something as simple a as a cross with Jesus on it versus an empty cross can speak he difference between Catholic and Protestant.

I think you want the dead husband to be Catholic, but it if you opted to do it the other way, you could have wedding photography taken in front of a parish that looks like a typical residential house, which is the way the majority of non Catholic churches look, and then have on the presently widowed woman’s door chalked, which, I think, is a typically Catholic tradition.

Or even more subtle; have two bibles somewhere on display in the house, where one will have a grey cover with a simple cross or just saying “bible”. Then, give the other a crimson cover, with a golden lineart of Christ suffering on the cross. Whichever one looks more worn down is the one that used to belong to the deceased person.

 

I'm not sure if I'm actually offending you at all or anything, but I think you have it a little bit wrong. Whatever the actual differences or whatever (I knew Christianity was an umbrella term, yet I thought it too was its own 'actual' religion), I don't really care that much and am no longer trying to make an actual statement on religions or their relationship to each other (outside the fact that even in the same religion, denominations will get angry at each other). Thanks for the clarification and everything, I'm just not articulating myself as well as I could/should.

 

Catholics are Christians.

(Ok, yes, I did apparently miss the sixteen people saying the same thing. Always refresh the thread.)

 

You are late the the party. Right, but... late.

 

I had thought that Christianity was in itself a religious denomination of Christianity, at least that's what I seem to recall growing up hearing. I know in my home town there was a Methodist and a Protestant church, but the church I went to was just a 'Christian church', of course I suppose that means it was probably for all denominations of Christian.

 

It may also mean that it tried to co-opt the word.

 

Is that a perfectly crafted piece of 'trollery' - or a young guy talking freely as he should?

 

Yeah, there's lots of "we are the true Christians" stuff out there. I mean, obviously every denomination thinks they've got it right, but some of them are more or less insistent on there being only one true way.

 

The whole "Catholics aren't (true) Christians" thing goes all the way back to the Reformation, and it's still common amongst some hardline Protestants. Considering the remarks about Harry Potter and all, I'd say you found one of those. Best to ignore them in the future.

I mean, there certainly are important differences in particular beliefs that a believer would consider important to the matter of salvation, but I think I'd generally consider the question of "is this 'true' Christianity?" to be outside the scope of human judgement.

Turning to the OP, jewelry is a good one. Wreybies mentioned cross necklaces, and while I agree they aren't always the best indicator, I have seen a number of Catholics scoff at the tendency of certain Protestant denominations to wear a plain cross. It wouldn't prove she'd drifted back to her old denomination on its own, but that could work well enough as a minor clue.

Some Protestant denominations are aniconic. Complete absence of religious art despite the widow being established as pretty religious could hint at that.

 

Even her leaving her Bible open to a book like Maccabees could show she was making a move back to Orthodox/Catholic from something more protestant.

 

Indeed. And if you wanted to go more obscure, being open to Jubilees or Enoch would tell you she was Ethiopian Orthodox, the only Christian denomination that considers those books canon.

 

That could be it. I suppose something that compounded my confusion was that I specifically remember this lady in question, when she gave me and the guy I was talking to this big long lecture about how it wasn't cool to date Catholics, she kept saying "We are Christians, Catholics believe blah blah blah and think this way, which is not what Christian teachings tell us, etc". Either she herself didn't know what she was talking about or her use of 'Christian' was supposed to mean 'the right kind of Christian'.

 

@Moose!

- ANglicanism, Anglicans, 10 000 churches, cathedrals, churches not chapels.

Sounds like you been in America too long, or Wales - though you are in Devon hence Baptists & Liberals.

 

This sounds like a British vs. American English thing, I was raised Presbyterian, friends were mostly Methodists or Northern Baptists, but no one ever said anything but "go to church."

It was a very religious town, we had to get the meanings from the way we inflected things.

 

Not Protestants. It was a Protestant state - Presbyterians & Non-conformists, Pilgrim Fathers. PURITANS

[Plans revenge for 'gun thread.']

 

Translation

The super-godly jumped in a ship to escape everyone taking the piss out of them. They sailed all that way, and they started another country, called it New England and all that sort of thing. Then loads of them and some Germans got in wagons and turned west. Indians on the way, but they stayed there nonetheless, being all religious and wearing hats, and now 7000 years later on, they're back, on the telly and stuff like that, spouting this crap from the 1640s, but they're quite nice, just the way it goes.

 

My initial thought was pieces of jewelry. The Presbyterian church that I went to as a kid had a hanging black cross with a sort of gold circle/halo thing around the intersection (looked like a classic rifle scope, but with a long bottom leg), one of my friends' churches had a sort of starburst at the center of the cross, and of course there's the crucifix, but when I went looking online about jewelry, I found, well, a whole lot of Christian Debate Rooms going at it hammer and tongs about whether or not Christians should wear crosses or crucifixes at all, which sort, whether or not they should be visible outside the clothing if worn (Matthew 6:5), etc. Surprise surprise, no more cut and dried answers in the religious world than in the writing world. Since the lady in question is definitely in her sixties or older, the clothing thing wouldn't be as much of an indicator as it would with someone younger, either, conservatism comes with age (although I had an older coworker who still had an enthusiasm for low-cut blouses and high-cut skirts, nothing that she had on display engaged any of my particular fetishes). Catholic will definitely be one half of the equation just because it's easy to identify, and literature, especially something fresh, like a church bulletin (vs. Bible on the shelf) will show the change clearly.

 

No, you’re mixing up ‘Anglican Catholic’ with Roman. Bloody Mary was Catholic and then the next time the Jacobites threatened restoration of Catholicism - James II - he was chased out in the Glorious Revolution, replaces by Protestant William of Orange.

Yea, Presbytarians were Protestants. To me, and to historians, Protestant & Anglican were synonymous. You’ve introduced a layer of complexity that didn’t/doesn’t exist.

 

I disagree and we’ll have to stop. England has been a ‘fiercely’ Protestant country for over 400 years.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestantism_in_the_United_Kingdom

 

And here I thought England was Anglican