Church of Emerstari

Church of Emerstari
Der Emerskekyrkas
Abbreviation	EK (COE)
Classification	Protestant
Orientation	Lutheranism
Scripture	Kuing Georgsbible
Theology	Lutheranism
Polity	Episcopal
Defender of the Faith	Erik XII Georg
Patriarch of Emerstari	Erik XII Georg
Bishop of the Synod	Håkon Georg Hanssen
Secretary of the Church	Karl Jakob Dalmann
Bishoprics	24
Region	Emerstarian Empire
Language	Emerstarian
Headquarters	Luthershjembyggning, Rensulier, Emerstari
Founder	Georg I Erik
Origin	1444
Separated from	Catholic Church
Separations	Church of Canara Church of New Retermi Church of Husseland Church of Soumeland
Members	83.21 million
Missionaries	Emerskeekumenik- liguppdraggruppett
Hospitals	St. Olafs Sykhussersgruppe
Aid organization	Emerskekyrkasnød- hjalpskegruppett

The Church of Emerstari is the established state church of Emerstari. The Bishop of the Synod is the most senior cleric, but the Emerstarian king is the Defender of the Faith and Patriarch. The Church of Emerstari is also the mother church of the larger Emerstarian Communion. Georg I Erik renounced papal authority in 1444; however, the Church views itself as a protestant catholic church:

• Catholic in the sense that it retains many pre-reformation liturgical practices and sacrement and views itself as a part of the universal church of Jesus Christ in unbroken continuity with the early apostolic church and the original Catholic Church in Emerstari, established in the first century by Gorm of Flodland and St. Sigebert. Additionally, it holds the catholic creeds, the Nicene Creed, Apostles' Creed and Athanasian Creed in its doctrine.
• Protestant in the sense that it is shaped by the doctrinal principles of Martin Luther outlined in Concordia.

Since the Reformation, the Church of Emerstari has used a liturgy in Emerstarian. The governing structure is based on bishorpics, with each bishopric headed by a bishop. Within, there are local parishes and individual churches and monastaries. The Alltmåndessynod is the governing body for the church and comprises of bishops and other clergymen; it is most known for electing the Bishop of the Synod. The Church is sometimes criticized by more liberal sects for its overall traditionalism and its views on the ordination of women, homosexutality, divorce, and abortion.

Organization

Structure

The twenty bishoprics of Emerstari proper.

A rural Emerstarian church in northern Flodland.

The Emerstarian king is constitutionally and, according to Emerstarian law, by divine right, the Defender of the Faith and the Patriarch of Emerstari. The foremost cleric who administers the Church for the King is the Bishop of the Synod, who is elected by the Alltskemåndeskessynod every ten years from among the presiding bishops. The Bishop of the Synod appoints several Secretaries of the Church as well. He is not so much viewed as a leader, like the Pope in the Catholic Church, but rather, the first among the bishops. There are twenty-seven bishops in Emerstari who each head a bishopric; within a bishopric, there are parishes led by a presbyters and then individual churches. Abbeys exist throughout the country, and while they may coordinate with the bishopric or parish they're in, they act independently, reporting to the Alltskemåndessynod. Cathedrals are often the seats of bishops, so they are under the jursidiction of the bishopric, but they are run on a day-to-day basis by Deans. Chapels, run by chaplains, are mostly independent from whatever bishopric or parish they're in, not even answering the Alltskemåndessynod, but they must be operated by an ordained minister.

In the terminology of the Church of Emerstari, a cleric (Emerstarian: klerk) is a person, ordained or not (this is so as to include nuns since women cannot be ordained), who has a position within the Church; an acolyte (Emerstarian: kyrkasfoljer) is someone within the Church training to enter an ordained position; a preacher (Emerstarian: prædikent) is a person within the Church ordained to preach the Gospel and preform religious functions such as funerals and weddings, whether they have a church of their own or not; a pastor (Emerstarian: prester) is an ordained person within the Church who preaches at a local church; a presbyter (Emerstarian: storskeprester) is the ordained person who preaches at a parish church and acts as the most senior pastor within a parish; a bishop (Emerstarian: biskope) is the ordained person who preaches at a cathedral and acts as the most senior pastor within a bishopric; a chaplain (Emerstarian: kaplan) is a person ordained to preach the Gospel and preform religious functions such as funerals and weddings at a military or private chapel; a dean (Emerstarian: dekan) is a person who is ordained but is appointed to manage the day-to-day operations of a cathedral; an abbot/abbess (Emerstarian: fratter/sorotter) is a person who is ordained and manages an abbey; a monk/nun (Emerstarian: munk/nunne) is someone who is ordained and is a member of an abbey. Monks and nuns are usually part of a specific order within the Church of Emerstari. While bishops are referred to as Your Reverend (Emerstarian: Dine Fromlig) to them or His Reverend (Emerstarian: Hans Fromlig) about them, many of the other positions use the styles Brother (Emerstarian: Broder) or Sister (Emerstarian: Soster). This differs from the styles in other sects, who may refer to their ordained persons as Father or Mother as a sign of respect; the Church of Emerstari figures that since we are all children of God, who is our Heavenly Father, ordained persons should be referred to as if they were siblings as opposed to parents.

Bishoprics

Jakob Ingevalde Karlssen, the Bishop of the Synod between 2010 and 2020.

The Church of Emerstari is organized into twenty-seven bishoprics, each led by a bishop, twenty in Emerstari proper. There are no archbishops; the most senior bishop is an elected Bishop of the Synod, currently Håkon Georg Hanssen.

Diocese	Founded	Cathedral	Incumbent
Biskopesland Rontseljere	78	Rensulier Cathedral	Mikael Ulf Bjornmann (2000– )
Biskopesland Uppsalle		Uppsalle Cathedral
Biskopesland Ekkesburg		Ekkesburg Cathedral
Biskopesland Vasterland		Hjorring Cathedral
Biskopesland Erke		Yoerk Cathedral
Biskopesland Marland
Biskopesland Fjellborg		Fjellborg Cathedral

History

Early Christianity

An anachronistic engraving of Saint Sigebert's arrival in Emerstari.

Christianity first arrived to Emerstari under St. Sigebert sometime in the first century, supposedly in 78 AD, when he entered the court of Njell of Flodland to prosyltize. Njell promptly converted and took the name Gorm, which in Emerstarian means he who worships God. Previously, many Emerstarians practiced Emerstrú, a pre-Judaic Abrahamic religion brought by Hemar, great-grandson of Noah through Japheth and Magog, when he settled Emerstari. Much of Emerstari had converted by the fourth century; though, various heathen traditions, deriving from Norstrú, a heresy of Emerstrú, persisted until the eleventh century. Some aspects of it remain in certain folkloric tales. In these early centuries of Christianity in Emerstari, Emerstarian monks were composing some religious hymns and poems in Proto-North Scanian.

Several Emerstarians were canonized in the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages, including one king, Jakob II, and several queens. Jakob II was said to be chaste; though, some theories claim he was infertile as well.

Reformation

A portrait of Georg I Erik.

In 1444, Georg I Erik ascended to the throne after victory in the War of the Emerstarian Succession. Having converted several years prior, like a portion of Emerstarians, one of his first actions was to deny papal authority and established the Church of Emerstari as a Lutheran church. At this time, Georg I Erik ordered for the Bible to be translated into Emerstarian; the first Emerstarian-translated Bible, known as the Bible of Georg I Erik sits in Rensulier Cathedral today and is used in royal coronation, marriage, and funeral ceremonies. The translation ordered by King Georg is still the translation officially used by the Church of Emerstari today in spite of more contemporary translations. Several Emerstarian neighbors had reformed as well, and throughout the sixteenth century and even into the seventeenth century, multiple holy wars were fought, mostly based on political grounds.

21st century

In the modern era, the Church has sometimes been criticized by more liberal sects of Christianity and non-Christian groups alike for its positions on the ordination of women, homosexuality and same-sex marriage, divorce, and abortion and contraception. Alternatively, the Emerstarian Crown has criticized some of the Church's clergymen in the past for possessing more liberal views, most notably when Erik X Gustaf requested Bishop Harald Leff Frederikssen to retract a statement on divorce and proceeded to dismiss legislature. There is also some debate about the fact that religion, according to the beliefs of the Church, is taught in Emerstarian public schools.

The twenty-first century has also seen a rise in mission and aid work outside of Emerstarian colonial territory. Besides the various monastical orders of the Church, two organizations managed by the Church exist for these matters, which any Emerstarian can join, even if they are not Lutheran: Emerskeekumenikliguppdraggruppett (The Emerstarian Ecunemical Mission Group) and Emerskekyrkasnødhjalpskegruppett (The Church of Emerstari's Aid Group). Since the Middle Ages, the Olafistordre (Olavian Order), has operated hospitals, which are today known as St. Olafs Sykhusser or St. Olaf's Hospitals.

Core doctrinal beliefs

Bible

"Even though I am a sinner and deserving of death and hell, this shall nonetheless be my consolation and my victory that my Lord Jesus lives and has risen so that He, in the end, might rescue me from sin, death, and hell." — Martin Luther

The Church of Emerstari holds the Lutheran belief that the Bible of the Old and New Testaments to be the only divinely inspired book, and thus, the only source of divinely revealed knowledge and the only norm for Christian teaching. Sola scriptura, or scripture alone, is one of the five solae and is the formal principle of faith in the Church of Emerstari and is the final authority for all matters of faith and morals as Luther taught that the Bible was the written Word of God. The Church of Emerstari holds the Bible as literal, so stories like creation in Genesis, which some more liberal sects interpret as metaphor, the Church of Emerstari holds as legitimate happenings. Rationalism was a highly opposed idea in Emerstari.

Sufficiency

The Church of Emerstari, as Luther believed, is confident that the Bible contains everything that one needs to know in order to obtain salvation and to live a Christian life, to avoid falling into degenerecy and wickedness. There are no deficiencies that need be filled with pronouncements of the Pope, new revelations, and/or present-day development of doctrine.

Justification

The Church of Emerstari holds the doctrine of justification, a core doctrine of Lutheranism. It believes that man is saved from its sins by three of the five solae: through God's grace alone (sola gratia), through faith alone (sola fide), and through scripture alone (sola scriptura). As in Lutheran beliefs, it holds that God made the world, including man, perfect, holy, and sinless. However, Adam and Eve chose to disobey God through free will, and consequently, people are fallen from paradise and born with original sin, unable of the avoidance of committing sinful acts. As a result of this, man is deservant of eternal damnation in hell, which is believed to be a real place along with heaven, but God in eternity has turned His Fatherly heart to Earth and planned for its redemption because he loves all people and does not want anyone to be eternally damned.

The Church of Emerstari rejects decision theology, determining that faith is a gift from God, created in the hearts of Christians by the work of the Holy Spirit on the Earth and baptism.

Trinity

The Church of Emerstari is trinitarian, rejecting the idea that God the Father and God the Son are faces of the same person, claiming that the Old and New Testaments show them to be distinct. The Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son in Lutheran theology. Per the Athanasian Creed, "We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one: the glory equal, the majesty coeternal."

Two natures of Christ

The Church of Emerstari believes Jesus is the Christ, the savior promised in the Old Testament. They believe that he is both by nature God and by nature man in one person. In Luther's Small Catechism, they believe he is "true God begotten of the Father from eternity and also true man born of the Virgin Mary".