User:Lapetitefrancaise07/Conservative Christianity (term clarification)

Conservative Christianity (term clarification) ...

Summary
Conservative Christianity is an ambiguous title that could refer to many branches or sub-branches of the Christian faith. Catholicism, for instance, if faithful to the teachings of the Magisterium (the teaching authority of the Catholic Church), can be considered conservative in certain respects (if conservative means "according to the central moral and theological teachings historically accepted by the majority of Christendom"). Many Protestant denominations, also holding to such traditional doctrine, could also be called "conservative" in this sense.

However, because of the large breadth of popular understandings of the term, "conservative" is often taken differently. For some, it is opposed to "mainstream" (i.e., Christianity as understood by the current majority of Christian denominations), so that it can be equated with fundamentalism (which takes a more stringent view than historical Christendom has). However, many Christian denominations that would classify themselves as conservative, would also strongly distinguish themselves from fundamentalism. At the same time, these Christians would also distinguish themselves from liberal Christianity, which can be said to reject traditional Christian teaching (as defined above).

Again "conservative" is an ambiguous term. Fundamentalists as well as Catholics fall under the title, but both would be in strong disagreement with one another. The following articles are only meant to be general summaries of the subject. They are neither exhaustive nor guaranteed to be without errors. External sources can provide more accurate and specific information (e.x., the Vatican website for Catholicism, etc.). The citations at the bottom of each article also provide helpful external sources.