a bible church is one that tries its best to teach the message provided in the Bible without putting man's spin on it, and without requiring others to constantly bend to a single man's interpretation of the bible.
The purists tend to defend the faith but also make it unnecessarily restrictive when they are in fact making guesses about what the Bible really says with regard to minor matters.
I love how the debate always goes something like [tiny matter is worth arguing for and teaching on and on and on, but when confronted by opposition, the debate turns to "Jesus saves, and that's all that really matters"].
Right.
Actually, the Bible church movement grew out of the denominational kerfluffles of the 1930s-50s. Some of the brethren tired of denominational politics and opted out of the "Baptist" label.
LOL......sorry TCassidy.
I am not taking a shot at Baptists or anyone in particular.
What I mean is, there are a lot of churches and denominations these days who go so far into very small matters in the Bible and make huge arguments about them.
It is partially why there are so many denominations today and freestanding nondenominational churches.
Some of these churches teach that the Bible is God's word and is right and non-conflicting with respect to all matters (I don't have a problem with that).
But they disagree on what the Bible actually says, sometimes in major ways and sometimes in very minor respects.
It is with respect to these very minor respects that my comment was directed.
Right now, there are several churches that exist that have the same joke about them:
in heaven there is a room where everyone is told to be quiet because it is for the members of the [fill in the blank] church because they think they are the only ones in heaven.
Several church bodies have this same joke about them and members of each tend to be oblivious to each other, because they consider their church the most pure church (i.e., they say Jesus is enough but no other church is really good enough).
In my experience, when people of these types of churches are confronted by argument on very minor issues in the Bible, about which they have distinguished themselves from other churches, they retreat to more general assertions on major matters (Jesus saves) instead of wanting to argue about the minor matters, even though their church formally distinguishes itself from others based on those minor issues (I'm not talking about whether the bible permits homosexuality or whether baptism of infants should be performed or whether women should be ordained--I'm talking about really trivial stuff that nobody really knows as a matter of fact and about which reasonable people could arrive at disagreement based on reading the Bible).
That's what I meant.
That some churches make mountains out of molehills about trivial matters when it comes to distinguishing their church from others.
It's part of their total package of beliefs.
LOL! 10,000 bible churches in the US and you find 4 that did not originate from Baptists and you think that negates his statement that "most" were started by or descended from Baptists? 9996 out of 10000 is not "most?"
The word "denomination" is a unit of measure. Used broadly in relation to Christianity, it applies to any group(s) that establishes rules of order and doctrines that govern worship. So, if you think about it, an individual Bible Church is a denomination all to itself. Those churches that claim to be non-denominational are a denomination of one. It's kind of amusing if you think about it.