I had an earlier discussion some time ago with some Protestants about creedal groups and non-creedal groups, and Trinitarian and non-Trinitarian groups, and it did help me to get a better understanding of the things under the "Protestant" umbrella. I really don't know where to begin on the interesting points your post raised, but one thing struck me as a commonality:
Restorationists believe they are returning believers to an authentic "first century church" experience, by attempting to take the church back to a time when no creed had been formed. In our own lifetime we're faced with the Emergent Church phenomenon, which also seeks to throw off historic traditions and orthodoxies that might color how the Bible is understood.
I didn't know these people were called Restorationists in the Protestant churches, but they are very similar to many of the people who were behind the truly horrible changes of Vatican II, which were aimed at "restoring" some supposedly purer form of the Church, and were products of the "higher Biblical criticism" movement and very much influenced by certain 19th century German Protestants. At some point, possibly because of French Orientalism, the "discovery" of the Middle East by the Germans and the British, and the 19th century obsession with archeology, collecting and museology, Biblical studies seem to have become infected with a strange belief that proto-Christianity (as they had reconstructed it) was the only true and authentic form, and everything else was not a development but a corruption.
I think this had a lot to do with non-theological and in fact non-church related currents in 19th century historical and literary thought. What we saw in Vatican II and probably in the Restorationists of the 20th and present centuries was perhaps actually the outcome of a nonreligous intellectual movement that began in the middle to late 19th century, in other words, nearly 150 years ago.
Well, we can all see how well "restoring" the mythical purity works...Thank you for a very, very informative post.
Funny that you should mention that timeframe. One of the odd discoveries that I made in my readings of history regards an area in upstate New York sometimes called the Burned Over District.
The "burned over district" is a geographical reference to the Hudson River Valley in upstate New York. Unitarianism, Mormonism, Restorationism, Seventh-Day Adventism, and a host of other anti-creedal "proto Christianity" movements (including Charles Finney's revivals) all sprang up or focused their efforts in this one geographic area, within a span of but a few decades. IIRC, Finney referred to it as "burned over" because it's inhabitants were resistant to his revivals, as if the area had been scorched clean of all flammable wood. It fascinates me because there's a shared geography and chronology, as well as the common rejection of the historic creeds, that's held by all of these groups.
This part of western New York became famous after the Erie Canal for its history of revivalism, radicalism, communitarian experiments. It was fertile ground for new ideas to take root and spread to other parts of the country. It became a "psychic highway" for New Englanders who left the East and headed West in search of new ways of life
- from The Burned Over District
I'll try to get back to this thread tomorrow when I have more time. This has been a very productive conversation with several people.