Second Reformation

I've been wondering recently. Is it possible for a sort of 'second reformation' movement to happen? I was thinking something along the lines of a Protestant preacher who is sick of all the many groups going off and forming and wants to united believers under one flock again but distrusts the Catholic Church as well. Maybe start some kind of 'New United Church' or something.

I'm thinking of this as either an American preacher or a Russian Christian Socialist who start the movement.

Plausible or something only capable by the intervention of the Church of Alien Space Bats?
 
I think this xkcd Strip sums it up

standards.png
 
I think this xkcd Strip sums it up
Pretty much, yes.

While there have been various church unions in protestantism (United Church of Canada and the Uniting Church in Australia, for example), they tend to a) be highly institutional in process (i.e. 2 major churches joining together), and b) they suffer some serious problems. The two churches above merged Calvinist Presbyterians and Arminian Methodists and had to throw out (almost) all their theology except Jesus is Lord... (and since most members churches don't believe all the fine points of official doctrine, that leaves... nothing much left).

If you want a "Third Way", well Anglicanism counts (well, to Anglicans it does:)). Mom had a TimeLife book (set?) on world religions and the Christianity volume talked about the 4 great streams of Christianity, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism and Anglicanism. No, seriously. But I didn't have to look any further than the Table of Contents to tell what denomination the author was!
 

Hnau

Banned
There were lots of attempts to unify Christianity under a new institution, especially, if I'm not mistaken, in the mid-1900s. Pretty much just served to divide the religion even further...
 
"The Second Reformation" has happened - the term is a more or less common description of Calvinism.

Anglicanism doesn't really qualify as a fourth way of Christianity - it's basically a Protestant kernel with a Catholic GUI. The synthesis is only slightly more subtle as with the Rome-associated oriental churches ("United Churches"), which are Catholic with Orthodox look and feel.
But right, if you wanted to build a taxonomy of Christianity, it would be hard to decide whether the Anglican and Episcopal Churches would fall into the Protestant or Catholic family. I would also classify them as intermediate.

And as for the project of collecting many different groups together under a roof still to be constructed, I agree Alex pointed out the right reference.
 
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