historicallyaccuratesteve:

[I’ve been sitting on this post for about three weeks, trying to decide if I wanted to make it or not. I’ve finally decided it’s time to put it out there, so.]

This essay was originally going to be added to this post about Steve’s dog-tags, but I apparently have a lot of feelings about this and it ended up being ridiculously long and sort of tangential to the original post, so I’m simply linking the two. I’ve divided the essay into three parts: church history, immigration history, and speculation.

Disclaimer: I was raised Protestant (in a non-denominational Stone-Campbell church), and I attended undergrad at a Protestant Christian liberal arts college (also Stone-Campbell). My undergraduate degree included church history, but I am definitely not an expert, so I’ve included lots of Wikipedia links to compensate. I am currently attending a Catholic university for my masters, but again, the focus has not been church history (although I have interviewed and transcribed interviews with Catholic priests from the Brooklyn Diocese as part of my classes). I know enough about church history to feel comfortable making this post, but not enough to go into further detail than what is laid out here. If I have made any egregious errors in regards to either branch’s history, please drop me a note so I can correct them.

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