Well...for the third time I took Quizfarm.com's theological quiz, and for the third time I scored as a Roman Catholic above all else. Not surprising.

I was more Calvinist and less Wesleyan this time, though, I wonder why.

Well. I've been thinking, and I have a theory. Short of Catholicism, the closest you can get to traditional teachings is Calvinism, despite Calvinism's tendency to be associated with a lack of traditional liturgy. But then, this isn't surprising, either. Think of the Irish church, and think of the Celtic church. The Celts were converted before the Germans (and Anglo-Saxons), and Christianity is more deeply rooted in their culture. Rome purposefully and for political reasons (it was a growing power) converted the Anglo-Saxons later on. This is the basis for the linkage of Anglicanism and the Church, and also why Anglicanism departed from the Church's teachings wherever and whenever it was expedient to do so. Germans have never cared too much for traditional teachings. They are barbarians, after all.

Following the disestablishment of the Roman church, it perhaps seems natural that the more Celtic elements of the population would turn to Calvinism, and, less so, Arminanism, in a hope of preserving their culture. Unitarianism in this scenario is the most Germanic, or liberal, of all teachings.

In the United States, many early Irishmen gave up their Catholic church because it simply wasn't established here; they fell rather naturally into the Baptist groups, for the most part.

Now, it isn't surprising that Baptists would tend to forget the more technical aspects of church ceremony, they are after all from the Celtic areas of the church. Isolated. But they do retain the solemnity and dignity of the true church, and also a love of richness that doesn't extend to the more liberal denominations.

My culture, Southern California, is a hybrid of Spanish-Roman Catholic, Celtic Baptist, and English Methodist. The latter in particular is my little world. I vow to stay in the United Methodist Church, but I also have an inherited fraternity with the other two churches. I also have an individual inclination towards Anglo-Catholicism within the Methodist church. I defend this theologically by saying that Catholicism is in fact more conservative than even the conservative Protestants, and I make a case for Arminianism < Calvinism < Catholicism accordingly. Make any sense?

Read the wikipedia article on Anglo-Catholicism. An excerpt: "Thus today there are two strands of Anglo-Catholicism. The classical type seeks to maintain tradition and to keep doctrine in line with that of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, and often allies with low-church evangelicals to defend traditional teachings on sexual morality."

I second that...And say that I find these people and institutions to be worth looking up to: Maryland/Mid-Atlantic Catholicism including New York's Anglo-Catholic Resurrection Church (well, excepting the liberal bent of a lot of East Coast Catholics, I should say most?); Anglo-Catholics on the Gulf Coast; and the traditional Anglo-Catholic parishes in England, such as in York or Shoreditch in London.