I appreciate Protestantism’s critique of indulgences and other abuses of The Church early on. These critiques made Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity better in response. Much like how the forks of Bitcoin have made Bitcoin better by seeing what would have happened had we gone down a slightly different path.
I also appreciate Protestantism’s point about reading the Bible yourself and not deferring to authority for your beliefs.
The main critique I have of it is that it lacks the mysticism that allows for a real spiritual experience. Being in a Protestant church feels like being in a court room, or city council meeting. Being in a Catholic Orthodox mass with the incense and chanting and all the traditions feels more viscerally spiritual.
I totally understand where you’re coming from. I can tell you from personal experience that I have had countless spiritual experiences in a wide variety of Protestant churches ranging from old school southern Baptist to more modern non-denominational churches. In the New Testament church, a lot of the mysticism from pre-Christ Judaism was stripped away so that all of it points to Jesus and Jesus alone as the source of salvation. The book of Acts talks about the gifting of the Holy Spirit, which I believe dwells in every believer and produces the spiritual experiences you’re referring to. My faith is far more than a feeling though. It’s a belief that God came to Earth in the flesh (Jesus), died for the sin debt that I could never repay as a perfect, sinless sacrifice (fulfilling the old covenant of the Old Testament), and rose again, forever defeating death. Humans and human emotion are inherently fallible (and I believe are used by Satan to distract us from the truth), but Jesus is not
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