As the title says, how would you make a religion based on the New Testament mainly? By that, I mean by one that's mainly based around Loving thy Neighbor, and treating all people equally. Any pod after the birth of Jesus works. My best guess is like a group breaks off during the reformation, and they're mostly pacifists?
AHC: Religion based (mainly) on the New Testament
- Thread starter KolyenuKS
- Start date
I feel like modern Christianity has really de-emphasized the Old Testament as it is. Other than the Ten Commandments of course.
Have Marcionism survive long enough to work out the kinks in some way.
Sometimes "pocket" editions of the New Testament + Psalms + Proverbs are published without the rest of the Old Testament.
twovultures
Donor
So...the Amish? They and the other Mennonites broke off from mainline Protestantism during the reformation and focus on pacifism. As other posters have pointed out, the various gnostic and gnostic-related movements may also suit your criteria.
Parsing your original post, I think what you're looking for is not really a New Testament religion, but a 'good' religion based on the two values you list as central to the New Testament. This is, I think, highly unlikely to happen with any religion for the simple reason that we humans are flawed and will twist any creed to justify violent, hierarchical ends.
A scenario such as this could possibly develop in a more isolated part of the world where territorial pressures (for instance over-population) weren't too great. For example Great Britain, being an island and relatively hard to conquer, could develop a more live and let live mentality without the Norman conquest.
Among Italian Catholics, a pocket edition of Gospels and Acts alone is also commonplace (not the entire New Testament then, though you can find editions of that too). Modern Catholicism actually tends to emphasise the New Testament, and the Gospels specifically, a lot; the Old Testament, in my experience, is frequently largely considered as a sort of a "prequel" and fairly poorly known by common believers. There are prominent exceptions however, and of course it is still Scripture anyway.