The History of Christian Beliefs
Currently this is just a few fragments. If and when it seems urgent enuf I will add more, and maybe it will begin to approach being a real history.
Authoritarianism
"Be not called guides, for you have one guide, the anointed one."
Matthew 23:10. (The root sense of kathegetes is guidance.)
Authoritarianism is the claim to be obeyed without consent.
Statism claims the right to enforce its rule.
Clericalism claims to be authorised by God.
Most Christians have endorsed Clericalism.
Most of those have endorsed Statery.
Some of them have endorsed a persuasive (i.e. non-coercive) authority, usually in tandem with Statery.
Clericalists generally invoke either tradition or charisma.
Some Christians approve voluntary obedience to traditional or charismatic leaders.
Tradition was invoked by Clement and his successors. Traditionalist Clericalism has usually been Sacramentalist. Sometimes it appeals to Apostolic Succession.
"[The synod, intending that] the purity itself of the Gospel be preserved in the Ecclesia; which ... Christ ... promulgated ... as the fountain of all, both saving truth, and moral discipline; and seeing clearly that this truth and discipline are contained in the written books, and the unwritten traditions which, received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the apostles themselves, the holy ghost dictating, have come down even unto us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand; [the Synod] receives and venerates, with an equal affection of piety and reverence, all the books both of the old and of the new covenant ... as also the said traditions, as well those appertaining to faith as to morals, as having been dictated, either by Christ's own word of mouth, or by the holy ghost, and preserved in the catholic ecclesia by a continuous succession."
Council of Trent, Session 4 (1546). This is the earliest extant documentation of the clergy-laity distinction among Christians. Clement assumes that the Authoritarianism of the law of Moses was a positive feature of friendship with God, to be maintained. In fact, like the rest of that law, it was a concession to "the hardness of their hearts", superseded by Christ.
Charisma was invoked, for instance, by the "Shepherding Movement".
"Let us watch and pray for apostles to be raised up -- they are the gifts of the ascended Christ. Let us recognise and submit to them as they appear, together with all those set apart by God to lead in his church."
John Noble, First Apostles Last Apostles (early 1970's CE).
Some Christians, seeking a more comprehensive Christian practice that would avoid Additionalism, have fallen into a Charismatic form of Clericalism, camouflaged by calling it "leadership" and emphasising its humble, supportive approach.
This was especially prominent in the "Shepherding Movement" in the 1980's, where it amounted to Cult Totalitarianism. Since then I gather it has receded, but as far as I know some groups still practice a high degree of Clericalism.
Any acquiescence in a despotic authority makes a man servile; in a communitarian one, effeminate; and in a paternalistic one, infantile. None of these styles of authority is compatible with the vocation to serve God, who in fact appoints no such agents and "has no grandchildren". In this respect priests are no better than gangsters.
Clericalism is not always explicit about "clergy" and "laity". The pretension to authority constitutes it, however conveyed. Sometimes it is conveyed by nods, winks and appeals to skafliknizophobia (fear of boat-rocking).
The Magisterial Protestants opposed papal Clericalism, chiefly because it underpinned Meritorialism.
"There is but one thing that we have to believe, namely, what Scripture teaches."
Martin Luther in the Leipzig Debate (1519). On this point at least (he was selective in the matter) Luther rejected Clericalism; his view on this was later expressed by others in the formula "from scripture alone" (sola scriptura), that became known as "the third sola", or "the formal principle of the Reformation" (sola fide i.e. "from trust alone" being "the material principle"). So sola scriptura need not imply scriptural inerrancy, only that we are to grasp the gospel for ourselves, aided by its earliest extant expressions, independently of any privileged experts.
The Radical Protestants went further, opposing Authoritarianism in general.
"Should a shepherd do something worthy of reprimand, nothing shall be done with him without the voice of two or three witnesses. If they sin they shall be publicly reprimanded, so that others might fear."
Michael Sattler and others, Schleitheim Confession, 1527.
The Protestant Reformation
Protestantism opposed several heresies, but no branch of it opposed them all, so in that sense "the Reformation" (big "R") was not entirely "reformational" (small "r").
The first heresy it dealt with was Meritorial Bonhominalism, and Protestants were united in rejecting this. But at that time Christianity was also pervaded by Synergist Bonhominalism, Magicalism and Authoritarianism, and here the Radical reformers divided from the Magisterials led by Luther and Calvin. (The Radical Reformation is less well-known than its Magisterial counterpart for the very good reason that the Radical leaders were murdered by Magisterials.)
The Magisterials rejected all Bonhominalism, but retained an attenuated Magicalism and a strong Authoritarianism.
The Radicals excluded all Magicalism and Authoritarianism but retained (Synergist) Bonhominalism (and maybe introduced some Psephogynism).
Calvin, more thorough than Luther in following up the consequences of Malhominalism, rightly envisioned a city or nation, in all its activities, carrying out man's Task in the harmony that only shared godliness can yield. But wrongly he sought to enforce participation in this vision. Superficially this was a simple failure to understand that the examples from the Tanakh to which he appealed were not applicable to Christian circumstances, but the deeper cause was the continuing influence of the Authoritarian Hellenistic idea of politics, in which the state governs the life of the nation. Even Calvin had failed to understand how pervasive was the influence of alien attitudes.
Pietism. (This paragraph needs revision, but I think that most of it is right.) Every idolatry begets a counter-idolatry. The idolising of Causality led to the idolising of Personality. Among Humanists, Rationalism begot Romanticism, and among Protestants, Scholasticism begot Pietism. Pietism was a social movement that began in (Lutheran) Germany in 1675 CE. Pietists suppose that a good relationship with God is manifested in, maintained by, or even consists of, intense feelings of the presence of God. Pietism was the reaction of Humanism's Personhood idol against its Causality idol, but among Christians this took the form of reaction against the Protestant synthesis. The Pietists ceased to defend the Reformed belief. While retaining most of the wording of Reformed belief, Humanism in its early-romantic form was now able to move right in and "liberate" Christian experience from "dead orthodoxy". Pietism saw feeling as the key to truth. Wesley wrote of his conversion, "I did feel my heart strangely warmed. I felt that I did trust Christ, Christ alone, for salvation". Note the repetition of felt. So arose the modern idea of "religious experience". The idea that reverence is primarily a matter of feeling seems commonplace to us, but at the time it was eccentric. Arminianism, stemming from the same root (the Humanist Personality-idol), was a natural ally of Pietism, retaining the words of Calvin's creed while rejecting Calvin's alleged "gloomy fatalism" in favour of free will. Pietism emphasises certain pious feelings, which they think of as experiences of God's presence.
English Protestantism
Scholastic Calvinism. In the 1640's Calvinists ("Puritans") seemed to dominate English Christianity, but then they became and remained peripheral. They have persisted, both in the C of E and in the "free churches", but while maintaining Calvin's Malhominalism they lapsed from his Developmentalism into Otherworldalism.
Low Churchmanship. By 1700 the C of E was controlled by people who, if not professing Bonhominalism (in its Synergist form), at least upheld the principle of Moderation, which in this context amounted to the same thing.
Latitudinarianism (i.e. Christian Humanism). This, developing along with the Humanism on which it depends, manifested itself as Broad Churchmanship, Theological Modernism and the Social Gospel.
Pentecostalism, arising around 1910, with its distinctive spirit-baptism doctrine, is a form of Pietism. From the 1970's the Pietism within the traditional denominations was increasingly influenced by Pentecostalism. This influence is known as Neo-Pentecostalism, or more popularly as the Charismatic Movement. The "House-Church" Movement, arising in the 1980's, was part of this.
Anglo-Catholicism, a resurgence of Magicalism (in its Sacramentalist form) in the Church of England starting with the Oxford Movement around 1840, was a deliberate return to pre-Reformation beliefs.