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Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes justification of sinners Sola fide, the teaching that salvation comes by unmerited divine grace, the priesthood of all believers, and the Bible as the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice. The five solae summarize the basic theological beliefs of mainstream Protestantism.
Protestants follow the theological tenets of the Reformation, a movement that began in the 16th century with the goal of reforming the Catholic Church from perceived errors, abuses, and discrepancies.Löffler, K. (1910), Pope Leo X , The Catholic Encyclopedia, New York: Robert Appleton Company, "The immediate cause was bound up with the odious greed for money displayed by the Roman Curia, and shows how far short all efforts at reform had hitherto fallen...Abuses occurred during the preaching of the Indulgence. The money contributions, a mere accessory, were frequently the chief object, and the "Indulgences for the Dead" became a vehicle of inadmissible teachings...(The pope) gave himself up unrestrainedly to his pleasures and failed to grasp fully the duties of his high office." The Reformation began in the Holy Roman Empire in 1517, when Martin Luther published his Ninety-five Theses as a reaction against abuses in the sale of by the Catholic Church, which purported to offer the remission of the Purgatory of sins to their purchasers. Luther's statements questioned the Catholic Church's role as negotiator between people and God, especially when it came to the indulgence arrangement, which in part granted people the power to purchase a certificate of pardon for the penalization of their sins. Luther argued against the practice of buying or earning forgiveness, claiming instead that salvation is a gift God gives to those who have faith.
Lutheranism spread from Germany into Denmark–Norway, Sweden, Finland, Terra Mariana, and Iceland. Calvinist churches spread in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland, France, Poland and Lithuania, led by Protestant Reformers such as John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli and John Knox. The political separation of the Church of England from the Catholic Church under Henry VIII began Anglicanism, bringing England and Wales into this broad Reformation movement, under the leadership of reformer Thomas Cranmer, whose work forged Anglican doctrine and identity.
Protestantism is divided into various denominations on the basis of theology and ecclesiology. Protestants adhere to the concept of an Church invisible, in contrast to the Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Ancient Church of the East, which all understand themselves as the only original church—the "one true church"—founded by Jesus Christ (though certain Protestant denominations, including historic Lutheranism, hold to this position).Heussi, Karl (1956). Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte, 11., Tübingen (Germany), pp. 317–319, 325–326 A majority of Protestants are members of a handful of Protestant denominational families; Adventism, Anabaptism, Anglicanism, Baptists, Calvinist/Reformed, Lutheranism, Methodism, Moravian Church, Pentecostals, Plymouth Brethren, Presbyterianism, Quakerism and Waldensians. Nondenominational, charismatic and independent churches are also on the rise, having recently expanded rapidly throughout much of the world, and constitute a significant part of Protestantism. World Council of Churches: Evangelical churches : "Evangelical churches have grown exponentially in the second half of the 20th century and continue to show great vitality, especially in the global South. This resurgence may in part be explained by the phenomenal growth of Pentecostalism and the emergence of the charismatic movement, which are closely associated with evangelicalism. However, there can be no doubt that the evangelical tradition "per se" has become one of the major components of world Christianity. Evangelicals also constitute sizable minorities in the traditional Protestant and Anglican churches. In regions like Africa and Latin America, the boundaries between "evangelical" and "mainline" are rapidly changing and giving way to new ecclesial realities." These various movements, collectively labeled "popular Protestantism" by scholars such as Peter L. Berger, have been called one of the contemporary world's most dynamic religious movements.
Independent churches and unaffiliated Christians are also considered Protestants. Christian Traditions, Pew Research Center, 2011, "The third group broadly defined as Protestants in this report is independent Christians. Independent Christians have developed ecclesial structures, beliefs and practices that are claimed to be independent of historic, organized Christianity.10 Independent Christians include denominations in sub-Saharan Africa that identify as independent from historically Protestant denominations, churches in China that are not affiliated with official religious associations and nondenominational churches in the United States."Anckar, Carsten (2022), Religion and Democracy: A Worldwide Comparison, p103, "Wide definition of Protestantism...includes Protestants, Marginal Christians, Anglicans, Christian Independents, and unaffiliated Christians"Johnstone, Patrick, The Future of the Global Church: History，Trends and Possibilities, p115 As of 2025, there are nearly 1.2 billion Protestants worldwide, including over 628 million traditional Protestants, 409 million Christian independents, and around 151 million unaffiliated Christians.
During the Reformation, the term protestant was hardly used outside of German politics. People who were involved in the religious movement used the word evangelical (). Gradually, protestant became a general term, meaning any adherent of the Reformation in the German-speaking area. It was ultimately somewhat taken up by Lutherans, even though Martin Luther himself insisted on Christian or evangelical as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed faith in Christ. Huguenots and Swiss Protestants instead preferred the word reformed, which became a popular, neutral, and alternative name for Calvinists.
The word evangelical, which refers to the gospel, was widely used for those involved in the religious movement in the German-speaking area beginning in 1517. Evangelical is still preferred among some of the historical Protestant denominations in the Lutheran, Calvinist, and United (Lutheran and Reformed) Protestant traditions in Europe, and those with strong ties to them. Above all the term is used by Protestant bodies in the German-speaking area, such as the Protestant Church in Germany. Thus, the German language word evangelisch means Protestant, while the German evangelikal, refers to churches shaped by Evangelicalism. The English word evangelical usually refers to evangelical Protestant churches, and therefore to a certain part of Protestantism rather than to Protestantism as a whole. The English word traces its roots back to the Puritans in England, where Evangelicalism originated, and then was brought to the United States.
Martin Luther always disliked the term Lutheran, preferring the term evangelical, which was derived from euangelion, a Greek word meaning "good news", i.e. "The Gospel".Espín, Orlando O. and Nickoloff, James B. An introductory dictionary of theology and religious studies. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, p. 796. The followers of John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other theologians linked to the Reformed tradition also began to use that term. To distinguish the two evangelical groups, others began to refer to the two groups as Evangelical Lutheran and Evangelical Reformed. Lutherans themselves began to use the term Lutheran in the middle of the 16th century, in order to distinguish themselves from other groups such as the Philippists and Calvinists.
The German language word reformatorisch, which roughly translates to English as "reformational" or "reforming", is used as an alternative for evangelisch in German, and is different from English reformed (), which refers to churches shaped by ideas of John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other Reformed theologians. Derived from the word "Reformation", the term emerged around the same time as Evangelical (1517) and Protestant (1529).
Quakers and (inclusive of the holiness movement), as well as Radical Pietism, and Spiritual Christians emphasize the Holy Spirit and personal closeness to God.Woodhead, Linda. Christianity: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2014). pp. 57–70.
There was also a time where scripture became the new religious imagery. Reformed (Calvinist) theology drew out iconoclastic events when John Calvin arrived in Geneva in 1536. Calvin inherited a city where the old medieval Christian world, with its rituals, images, and pilgrims were taken apart. After the events of the iconoclast in 1566, scripture began to take place of the religious images that were previously removed. These new text images turned scripture into a visual tool. The absence of traditional images created room for the joint idea of scripture with visual objects, generating a new imagery culture that focused on reading, understanding, and reflecting over observations. (2025). 9780198728818, Oxford university press. ISBN 9780198728818
Movements that emerged around the time of the Protestant Reformation, but are not a part of Protestantism (e.g. Unitarianism), reject the Trinity. This often serves as a reason for exclusion of the Unitarian Universalism, Oneness Pentecostalism, and other movements from Protestantism by various observers. Unitarianism continues to have a presence mainly in Transylvania, England, and the United States.
The use of the phrases as summaries of teaching emerged over time during the Reformation, based on the overarching Lutheran and Reformed principle of sola scriptura (by scripture alone). This idea contains the four main doctrines on the Bible: that its teaching is needed for salvation (necessity); that all the doctrine necessary for salvation comes from the Bible alone (sufficiency); that everything taught in the Bible is correct (inerrancy); and that, by the Holy Spirit overcoming sin, believers may read and understand truth from the Bible itself, though understanding is difficult, so the means used to guide individual believers to the true teaching is often mutual discussion within the church (clarity). The necessity and inerrancy were well-established ideas, garnering little criticism, though they later came under debate from outside during the Enlightenment. The most contentious idea at the time though was the notion that anyone could simply pick up the Bible and learn enough to gain salvation.
The second main principle, sola fide (by faith alone), states that faith in Christ is sufficient alone for eternal salvation and justification. Though argued from scripture, and hence logically consequent to sola scriptura, this is the guiding principle of the work of Luther and the later reformers. Because sola scriptura placed the Bible as the only source of teaching, sola fide epitomizes the main thrust of the teaching the reformers wanted to get back to, namely the direct, close, personal connection between Christ and the believer, hence the reformers' contention that their work was Christocentric.
The other solas, as statements, emerged later, but the thinking they represent was also part of the early Reformation.
One of the earliest persons to be praised as a Protestant forerunner is Jovinian, who lived in the fourth century AD. He attacked monasticism, Asceticism and believed that a saved believer can never be overcome by Satan.
In the 9th century, the theologian Gottschalk of Orbais was condemned for heresy by the Catholic Church. Gottschalk believed that the salvation of Jesus was limited and that his redemption was only for the elect. The theology of Gottschalk anticipated the Protestant reformation. Ratramnus also defended the theology of Gottschalk and denied the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; his writings also influenced the later Protestant reformation. Claudius of Turin in the 9th century also held Protestant ideas, such as Sola fide and rejection of the supremacy of Peter.
In the late 1130s, Arnold of Brescia, an Italian canon regular became one of the first theologians to attempt to reform the Catholic Church. After his death, his teachings on apostolic poverty gained currency among Arnoldists, and later more widely among Waldensians and the Spiritual Franciscans, though no written word of his has survived the official condemnation. In the early 1170s, Peter Waldo founded the Waldensians. He advocated an interpretation of the Gospel that led to conflicts with the Catholic Church. By 1215, the Waldensians were declared heretical and subject to persecution. Despite that, the movement continues to exist to this day in Italy, as a part of the wider Reformed tradition.
In the 1370s, Oxford theologian and priest John Wycliffe—later dubbed the "Morning Star of Reformation"—started his activity as an English reformer. He rejected papal authority over secular power (in that any person in mortal sin lost their authority and should be resisted: a priest with possessions, such as a pope, was in such grave sin), may have translated the Bible into vernacular English, and preached anticlerical and biblically centred reforms. His rejection of a real divine presence in the elements of the Eucharist foreshadowed Huldrych Zwingli's similar ideas in the 16th century. Wycliffe's admirers came to be known as "Lollardy".
Beginning in the first decade of the 15th century, Jan Hus—a Catholic priest, Czech reformist and professor—influenced by John Wycliffe's writings, founded the Hussite movement. He strongly advocated his reformist religious denomination. He was excommunication and burned at the stake in Konstanz, Bishopric of Constance, in 1415 by secular authorities for unrepentant and persistent heresy. After his execution, a revolt erupted. Hussites defeated five continuous crusades proclaimed against them by the Pope.
Later theological disputes caused a split within the Hussite movement. Utraquism maintained that both the bread and the wine should be administered to the people during the Eucharist. Another major faction were the Taborites, who opposed the Utraquists in the Battle of Lipany during the Hussite Wars. There were two separate parties among the Hussites: moderate and radical movements. Other smaller regional Hussite branches in Bohemia included Adamites, Orebites, Sirotci, and Praguers.
The Hussite Wars concluded with the victory of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, his Catholic allies and moderate Hussites and the defeat of the radical Hussites. Tensions arose as the Thirty Years' War reached Bohemia in 1620. Both moderate and radical Hussitism was increasingly persecuted by Catholics and Holy Roman Emperor's armies.
In the 14th century, a German mysticist group called the Gottesfreunde criticized the Catholic church and its corruption. Many of their leaders were executed for attacking the Catholic church and they believed that God's judgement would soon come upon the church. The Gottesfreunde were a democratic lay movement and forerunner of the Reformation and put heavy stress of holiness and piety,
Starting in 1475, an Italian Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola was calling for a Christian renewal. Later on, Martin Luther himself read some of the friar's writings and praised him as a martyr and forerunner whose ideas on faith and grace anticipated Luther's own doctrine of justification by faith alone.
Some of Hus' followers founded the Unitas Fratrum—"Unity of the Brethren"—which was renewed under the leadership of Zinzendorf in Herrnhut, Saxony, in 1722 after its almost total destruction in the Thirty Years' War and the Counterreformation ("Catholic Reformation"). Today, it is usually referred to in English as the Moravian Church and in German as the Moravian Church.
In the 15th century, three German theologians anticipated the reformation: Wessel Gansfort, Johann Ruchat von Wesel, and Johannes von Goch. They held ideas such as predestination, sola scriptura, and the church invisible, and denied the Catholic view on justification and the authority of the Pope, also questioning monasticism. Many protestant reformers also identified the pope as AntiChrist Some reasons as to why, include that in the canon law Decretum Gratiani Distinctio 96 Chapter "satis evideter", protestants considered the pope claiming illegitimate divine authority including the name "god" which rightly belonged to God. Some also took issue with the interpretation of canon law by some catholics such as the canonist Zelensinus De Cassanus who wrote the phrase "Dominum Deum Nostrum Papam" or others such as "Deus in Terra" (God on earth) to refer to the pope.
Wessel Gansfort also denied transubstantiation and anticipated the Lutheran view of justification by faith alone.
On 31 October 1517, Martin Luther allegedly nailed his Ninety-five Theses, also known as the Disputation on the Power of Indulgences, on the door of the All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, Germany, detailing doctrinal and practical abuses of the Catholic Church, especially the selling of . The theses debated and criticized many aspects of the Church and the papacy, including the practice of purgatory, particular judgment, and the authority of the pope. Luther would later write works against the Catholic devotion to Virgin Mary, the intercession of and devotion to the saints, mandatory clerical celibacy, monasticism, the authority of the pope, the ecclesiastical law, censure and excommunication, the role of secular rulers in religious matters, the relationship between Christianity and the law, good works, and the sacraments.Schofield Martin Luther p. 122
The Reformation was a triumph of literacy and the new printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg.Cameron European Reformation Luther's translation of the Bible into German was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy, and stimulated as well the printing and distribution of religious books and pamphlets. From 1517 onward, religious pamphlets flooded much of Europe.Edwards Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther During the Reformation, the Bible was translated into the native tongues of various European peoples, granting the common man access to sacred scripture, rather than relying solely on the Church's Latin version and interpretation. These translations, once forbidden, stirred a profound shift in religious thought, literacy, education, and the spread of Protestant ideas across parts of Holy Roman Empire and independent kingdoms. Reformers such as Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, making it accessible to ordinary German speakers. William Tyndale produced an English translation, although his efforts were met with resistance and he was captured in Antwerp before it was completed. Condemned for heresy, he was executed by strangulation and then burned at the stake at Vilvoorde in 1536. Similar translations into other native tongues took place across Europe.
Following the excommunication of Luther and condemnation of the Reformation by the Pope, the work and writings of John Calvin were influential in establishing a loose consensus among various groups in Switzerland, Scotland, Hungary, Germany and elsewhere. After the expulsion of its Bishop in 1526, and the unsuccessful attempts of the Bern reformer William Farel, Calvin was asked to discipline the city of Geneva. His Ordinances of 1541 involved a collaboration of Church affairs with the city council and consistory to bring morality to all areas of life. After the establishment of the Geneva academy in 1559, Geneva became the unofficial capital of the Protestant movement, providing refuge for Protestant exiles from all over Europe and educating them as Calvinist missionaries. The faith continued to spread after Calvin's death in 1563.
Protestantism also spread from the German lands into France, where the Protestants were nicknamed Huguenots. Despite heavy persecution, the Reformed tradition made steady progress across large sections of the nation, appealing to people alienated by the obduracy and the complacency of the Catholic establishment. French Protestantism came to acquire a distinctly political character, made all the more obvious by the conversions of nobles during the 1550s. This established the preconditions for a series of conflicts, known as the French Wars of Religion. The civil wars gained impetus with the sudden death of Henry II of France in 1559. Atrocity and outrage became the defining characteristics of the time, illustrated at their most intense in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of August 1572, when the Catholic party annihilated between 30,000 and 100,000 Huguenots across France. The wars only concluded when Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes, promising official toleration of the Protestant minority, but under highly restricted conditions. Catholicism remained the official state religion, and the fortunes of French Protestants gradually declined over the next century, culminating in Louis XIV's Edict of Fontainebleau which revoked the Edict of Nantes and made Catholicism the sole legal religion. In response to the Edict of Fontainebleau, Frederick William I, Elector of Brandenburg declared the Edict of Potsdam, giving free passage to Huguenot refugees. In the late 17th century, many Huguenots fled. A significant community in France remained in the Cévennes region.
Parallel to events in Germany, a movement began in Switzerland under the leadership of Huldrych Zwingli. Although the two movements agreed on many issues of theology, some unresolved differences kept them separate. A long-standing resentment between the German states and the Swiss Confederation led to heated debate over how much Zwingli owed his ideas to Lutheranism. The German Prince Philip of Hesse saw potential in creating an alliance between Zwingli and Luther. A meeting was held in his castle in 1529, now known as the Colloquy of Marburg, which has become infamous for its failure. The two men could not come to any agreement due to their disputation over one key doctrine.
In 1534, King Henry VIII put an end to all papal jurisdiction in England, after the Pope failed to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (due to political considerations involving the Holy Roman Emperor); this opened the door to reformational ideas. Later on, King Henry rejected the Pope's authority, instead of creating and accepting authority over the Church of England, a type of hybrid church that clashed together some Catholic doctrine and some Protestant ethics. Within the next 20 years, there was religious disturbance in England as Queen Mary (1553–1558) restored Catholicism in England while persecuting and exiling Protestants, only to have Queen Elizabeth I and her Parliament try to lead the country back toward Protestantism during her reign (1558–1603). Reformers in the Church of England alternated between sympathies for ancient Catholic tradition and more Reformed principles, gradually developing into a tradition considered a middle way ( via media) between the Catholic and Protestant traditions. The English Reformation followed a particular course. The different character of the English Reformation came primarily from the fact that it was driven initially by the political necessities of Henry VIII. King Henry decided to remove the Church of England from the authority of Rome. In 1534, the Act of Supremacy recognized Henry as "the only Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England". Between 1535 and 1540, under Thomas Cromwell, the policy known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries was put into effect. Following a brief Catholic restoration during the reign of Mary I, a loose consensus developed during the reign of Elizabeth I. The Elizabethan Religious Settlement largely formed Anglicanism into a distinctive church tradition. The compromise was uneasy and was capable of veering between extreme Calvinism on the one hand and Catholicism on the other. It was relatively successful until the Puritan Revolution or English Civil War in the 17th century.
The success of the Counterreformation ("Catholic Reformation") on the Continent and the growth of a Puritans dedicated to further Protestant reform polarized the Elizabethan Age. The early Puritan movement was a movement for reform in the Church of England whose proponents desired for the Church of England to resemble more closely the Protestant churches of Europe, especially that of Geneva. The later Puritan movement, often referred to as dissenters and nonconformists, eventually led to the formation of various Reformed denominations.
The Scottish Reformation of 1560 decisively shaped the Church of Scotland.Article 1, of the Articles Declaratory of the Constitution of the Church of Scotland 1921 states 'The Church of Scotland adheres to the Scottish Reformation'. The Reformation in Scotland culminated ecclesiastically in the establishment of a church along Reformed lines, and politically in the triumph of English influence over that of France. John Knox is regarded as the leader of the Scottish Reformation. The Scottish Reformation Parliament of 1560 repudiated the pope's authority by the Papal Jurisdiction Act 1560, forbade the celebration of the Mass and approved a Protestant Confession of Faith. It was made possible by a revolution against French hegemony under the regime of the regent Mary of Guise, who had governed Scotland in the name of her absent daughter.
Some of the most important activists of the Protestant Reformation included Jacobus Arminius, Theodore Beza, Martin Bucer, Andreas von Carlstadt, Heinrich Bullinger, Balthasar Hubmaier, Thomas Cranmer, William Farel, Thomas Müntzer, Laurentius Petri, Olaus Petri, Philipp Melanchthon, Menno Simons, Louis de Berquin, Primož Trubar and John Smyth.
In the course of this religious upheaval, the German Peasants' War of 1524–25 swept through the , and principalities. After the Eighty Years' War in the Low Countries and the French Wars of Religion, the confessional division of the states of the Holy Roman Empire eventually erupted in the Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648. It devastated much of Germany, killing between 25% and 40% of its population. The main tenets of the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War, were:
The First Great Awakening was an evangelical and revitalization movement that swept through Protestant Europe and British America, especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American Protestantism. It resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of deep personal revelation of their need of salvation by Jesus Christ. Pulling away from ritual, ceremony, sacramentalism and hierarchy, it made Christianity intensely personal to the average person by fostering a deep sense of spiritual conviction and redemption, and by encouraging introspection and a commitment to a new standard of personal morality.Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (2009)
The Second Great Awakening began around 1790. It gained momentum by 1800. After 1820, membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodism congregations, whose preachers led the movement. It was past its peak by the late 1840s. It has been described as a reaction against skepticism, deism, and rationalism, although why those forces became pressing enough at the time to spark revivals is not fully understood.Nancy Cott, "Young Women in the Great Awakening in New England", Feminist Studies 3, no. 1/2 (Autumn 1975): 15. It enrolled millions of new members in existing evangelical denominations and led to the formation of new denominations.
The Third Great Awakening refers to a hypothetical historical period that was marked by religious activism in American history and spans the late 1850s to the early 20th century.William G. McLoughlin, Revivals Awakenings and Reform (1980) It affected pietistic Protestant denominations and had a strong element of social activism.Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (1992) pp. 286–310 It gathered strength from the postmillennial belief that the Second Coming of Christ would occur after mankind had reformed the entire earth. It was affiliated with the Social Gospel Movement, which applied Christianity to social issues and gained its force from the Awakening, as did the worldwide missionary movement. New groupings emerged, such as the Holiness, Nazarene, and Christian Science movements.Robert William Fogel, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism (2000)
The Fourth Great Awakening was a Christian religious awakening that some scholars—most notably, Robert Fogel—say took place in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while others look at the era following World War II. The terminology is controversial. Thus, the idea of a Fourth Great Awakening itself has not been generally accepted.Robert William Fogel (2000), The Fourth Great Awakening & the Future of Egalitarianism; see the review by Randall Balmer, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2002 33(2): 322–325
In 1814, Le Réveil swept through Calvinist regions in Switzerland and France.
In 1904, a Protestant revival in Wales had a tremendous impact on the local population. A part of British modernization, it drew many people to churches, especially Methodist and Baptist ones.
A noteworthy development in 20th-century Protestant Christianity was the rise of the modern Pentecostalism. Sprung from Methodist and John Wesley roots, it arose out of meetings at an urban mission on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. From there it spread around the world, carried by those who experienced what they believed to be miraculous moves of God there. These Pentecost-like manifestations have steadily been in evidence throughout history, such as seen in the two Great Awakenings. Pentecostalism, which in turn birthed the Charismatic movement within already established denominations, continues to be an important force in Western Christianity.
In the United States and elsewhere in the world, there has been a marked rise in the Evangelicalism of Protestant denominations, especially those that are more exclusively evangelical, and a corresponding decline in the mainstream liberal churches. In the post–World War I era, Liberal Christianity was on the rise, and a considerable number of seminaries held and taught from a liberal perspective as well. In the post–World War II era, the trend began to swing back towards the conservative camp in America's seminaries and church structures.
In Europe, there has been a general move away from religious observance and belief in Christian teachings and a move towards secularism. The Enlightenment is largely responsible for the spread of secularism. Some scholars debate the link between Protestantism and the rise of secularism, and take as argument the wide-ranging freedom in Protestant-majority countries. However, the sole example of France demonstrates that even in Catholic-majority countries, the overwhelming impact of the Enlightenment has brought even stronger secularism and freedom of thought five centuries later. It is more reliable to consider that the Reformation influenced the critical thinkers of the subsequent centuries. Initial philosophers of the Enlightenment were defending a Christian conception of the world, but it was developed together with a fierce and decisive criticism of the Church, its politics, its ethics, its worldview, its scientific and cultural assumptions, leading to the devaluation of all forms of institutionalized Christianity, which extended over the centuries.
The early Anabaptists believed that their reformation must purify not only theology but also the actual lives of Christians, especially their political and social relationships.Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, 88. Therefore, the church should not be supported by the state, neither by tithes and taxes, nor by the use of the sword; Christianity was a matter of individual conviction, which could not be forced on anyone, but rather required a personal decision for it. Protestant ecclesial leaders such as Hubmaier and Melchior Hoffman preached the invalidity of infant baptism, advocating baptism as following conversion ("believer's baptism") instead. This was not a doctrine new to the reformers, but was taught by earlier groups, such as the Catharism in 1147. Though most of the Radical Reformers were Anabaptist, some did not identify themselves with the mainstream Anabaptist tradition. Thomas Müntzer was involved in the German Peasants' War. Andreas Karlstadt disagreed theologically with Huldrych Zwingli and Martin Luther, teaching nonviolence and refusing to baptize infants while not rebaptizing adult believers. Kaspar Schwenkfeld and Sebastian Franck were influenced by German mysticism and spiritualism.
In the view of many associated with the Radical Reformation, the Magisterial Reformation had not gone far enough. Radical Reformer, Andreas von Bodenstein Karlstadt, for example, referred to the Lutheran theologians at Wittenberg as the "new papists". Since the term "magister" also means "teacher", the Magisterial Reformation is also characterized by an emphasis on the authority of a teacher. This is made evident in the prominence of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli as leaders of the reform movements in their respective areas of ministry. Because of their authority, they were often criticized by Radical Reformers as being too much like the Roman Popes. A more political side of the Radical Reformation can be seen in the thought and practice of Hans Hut, although typically Anabaptism has been associated with pacifism.
Anabaptism in shape of its various diversification such as the Amish, Mennonites and Hutterites came out of the Radical Reformation. Later in history, Schwarzenau Brethren, and the Apostolic Christian Church would emerge in Anabaptist circles.
Protestants reject the Catholic Church's doctrine that it is the one true church, with some teaching belief in the invisible church, which consists of all who profess faith in Jesus Christ. The Lutheranism traditionally sees itself as the "main trunk of the historical Christian Tree" founded by Christ and the Apostles, holding that during the Reformation, the Holy See fell away. Individual denominations also have formed over very subtle theological differences. Other denominations are simply regional or ethnic expressions of the same beliefs. Because the five solas are the main tenets of the Protestant faith, non-denominational groups and organizations are also considered Protestant.
Various ecumenical movements have attempted cooperation or reorganization of the various divided Protestant denominations, according to various models of union, but divisions continue to outpace unions, as there is no overarching authority to which any of the churches owe allegiance, which can authoritatively define the faith. Most denominations share common beliefs in the major aspects of the Christian faith while differing in many secondary doctrines, although what is major and what is secondary is a matter of idiosyncratic belief.
Several countries have state religion their , linking the ecclesiastical structure with the state. Jurisdictions where a Protestant denomination has been established as a state religion include several Nordic countries; Denmark (including Greenland), the Faroe Islands (its church being independent since 2007), Iceland Constitution of the Republic of Iceland : Article 62, Government of Iceland . and Norway Løsere bånd, men fortsatt statskirke , ABC Nyheter Staten skal ikke lenger ansette biskoper , NRK have established Lutheranism churches. Tuvalu has the only established church in Reformed tradition in the world, while Tonga—in the Methodist tradition.
The Church of England is the officially established religious institution in England, and also the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
In 1869, Finland was the first Nordic country to disestablishment its Evangelical Lutheran church by introducing the Church Act. In 2000, Sweden was the second Nordic country to do so.
Historically, unions of Protestant churches were enforced by the state, usually in order to have a stricter control over the religious sphere of its people, but also for other organizational reasons. As modern Christian ecumenism progresses, unions between various Protestant traditions are becoming more and more common, resulting in a growing number of united and uniting churches. Some of the recent major examples are the Church of North India (1970), United Protestant Church of France (2013), and the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (2004). As mainline Protestantism shrinks in Europe and North America due to the rise of secularism or in areas where Christianity is a minority religion as with the Indian subcontinent, Reformed church, Anglican, and Lutheran denominations merge, often creating large nationwide denominations.
What is perhaps the oldest official united church is found in Germany, where the Protestant Church in Germany is a federation of Lutheranism, United (Prussian Union), and Reformed churches, dating back to 1817.
Around the world, each united or uniting church comprises a different mix of predecessor Protestant denominations. Trends are visible, however, as most united and uniting churches have one or more predecessors with heritage in the Calvinism and many are members of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.
The chart below shows the mutual relations and historical origins of the main Protestant denominational families, or their parts. Due to factors such as Counterreformation ("Catholic Reformation") and the legal principle of Cuius regio, eius religio, many people lived as , where their professed religious affiliations were more or less at odds with the movement they sympathized with. As a result, the boundaries between the denominations do not separate as cleanly as this chart indicates. When a population was suppressed or persecuted into feigning an adherence to the dominant faith, over the generations they continued to influence the church they outwardly adhered to.
Because Calvinism was not specifically recognized in the Holy Roman Empire until the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, many Calvinists lived as Crypto-Calvinists. Due to Counterreformation ("Catholic Reformation") related suppressions in Catholic lands during the 16th through 19th centuries, many Protestants lived as Crypto-Protestants. Meanwhile, in Protestant areas, Catholics sometimes lived as , although in continental Europe emigration was more feasible so this was less common.
Unlike the Reformed tradition, Lutherans retain many of the liturgical practices and sacramental teachings of the pre-Reformation Church with an emphasis on the Eucharist, or Lord's Supper. Lutheran theology differs from Reformed theology in Christology, the purpose of God's Law, divine grace, the concept of perseverance of the saints, and predestination.
Today, Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism. With approximately 80 million adherents, it constitutes the third most common Protestant confession after historically Pentecostal denominations and Anglicanism. The Lutheran World Federation, the largest global communion of Lutheran churches represents over 72 million people. Both of these figures miscount Lutherans worldwide as many members of more generically Protestant LWF member church bodies do not self-identify as Lutheran or attend congregations that self-identify as Lutheran. Additionally, there are other international organizations such as the Global Confessional and Missional Lutheran Forum, International Lutheran Council and the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference, as well as Lutheran denominations that are not necessarily a member of an international organization.
The Church of England declared its independence from the Catholic Church at the time of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement. Many of the new Anglican formularies of the mid-16th century corresponded closely to those of contemporary Reformed tradition. These reforms were understood by one of those most responsible for them, the then archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, as navigating a middle way between two of the emerging Protestant traditions, namely Lutheranism and Calvinism.Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life, Yale University Press, p. 617 (1996).
Unique to Anglicanism is the Book of Common Prayer, the collection of services that worshippers in most Anglican churches used for centuries. While it has since undergone many revisions and Anglican churches in different countries have developed other service books, the Book of Common Prayer is still acknowledged as one of the ties that bind the Anglican Communion together. The Thirty-Nine Articles and the Books of Homilies explicate historic Anglican doctrine and along with the Book of Common Prayer, were developed under the reformer Thomas Cranmer. (2020). 9781543757842, Partridge Publishing. ISBN 9781543757842
This term also refers to the doctrines and practices of the Reformed churches of which Calvin was an early leader. Less commonly, it can refer to the individual teaching of Calvin himself. The particulars of Calvinist theology may be stated in a number of ways. Perhaps the best known summary is contained in the five points of Calvinism, though these points identify the Calvinist view on soteriology rather than summarizing the system as a whole. Broadly speaking, Calvinism stresses the sovereignty or rule of God in all things—in salvation but also in all of life. This concept is seen clearly in the doctrines of predestination and total depravity.
The biggest Reformed association is the World Communion of Reformed Churches with more than 80 million members in 211 member denominations around the world. There are more conservative Reformed federations like the World Reformed Fellowship and the International Conference of Reformed Churches, as well as independent churches.
Soteriology, most Methodists are Arminian, emphasizing that Christ accomplished salvation for every human being, and that humans must exercise an act of the will to receive it (as opposed to the traditional Calvinist doctrine of monergism). Methodism is traditionally low church in liturgy, although this varies greatly between individual congregations; the Wesleys themselves greatly valued the Anglican liturgy and tradition. Methodism is known for its rich musical tradition; John Wesley's brother, Charles Wesley, was instrumental in writing much of the hymnody of the Methodist Church, and many other eminent hymn writers come from the Methodist tradition.
The Holiness movement refers to a set of practices surrounding the doctrine of Christian perfection that emerged within 19th-century Methodism, along with a number of evangelical denominations and parachurch organizations (such as ). (2025). 9781630878320, Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 9781630878320 There are an estimated 12 million adherents in denominations aligned with the Wesleyan-holiness movement. The Free Methodist Church, the Salvation Army and the Wesleyan Church are notable examples, while other adherents of the Holiness Movement remained within mainline Methodism, e.g. the United Methodist Church.
Although the Adventist churches hold much in common, their theologies differ on whether the intermediate state is Soul sleep or consciousness, whether the ultimate punishment of the wicked is annihilationism or eternal torment, the nature of immortality, whether or not the wicked are resurrected after the millennium, and whether the sanctuary of Daniel 8 refers to the one in heaven or one on earth. The movement has encouraged the examination of the whole Bible, leading Seventh-day Adventists and some smaller Adventist groups to observe the Sabbath. The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists has compiled that church's core beliefs in the 28 Fundamental Beliefs (1980 and 2005), which use Biblical references as justification.
In 2010, Adventism claimed some 22 million believers scattered in various independent churches. The largest church within the movement—the Seventh-day Adventist Church—has more than 18 million members.
This branch of Protestantism is distinguished by belief in the baptism with the Holy Spirit as an experience separate from conversion that enables a Christian to live a life empowered by and filled with the Holy Spirit. This empowerment includes the use of such as speaking in tongues and divine healing—two other defining characteristics of Pentecostalism. Because of their commitment to biblical authority, spiritual gifts, and the miraculous, Pentecostals tend to see their movement as reflecting the same kind of spiritual power and teachings that were found in the Apostolic Age of the early church. For this reason, some Pentecostals also use the term Apostolic or Full Gospel to describe their movement.
Pentecostalism eventually spawned hundreds of new denominations, including large groups such as the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ, both in the United States and elsewhere. There are over 279 million Pentecostals worldwide, and the movement is growing in many parts of the world, especially the global South. Since the 1960s, Pentecostalism has increasingly gained acceptance from other Christian traditions, and Pentecostal beliefs concerning Spirit baptism and spiritual gifts have been embraced by non-Pentecostal Christians in Protestant and Catholic Church churches through the Charismatic Movement. Together, Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity numbers over 500 million adherents.
Diverse from their beginning, those identifying as Baptists today differ widely from one another in what they believe, how they worship, their attitudes toward other Christians, and their understanding of what is important in Christian discipleship. The separation of Church and state is also a huge belief of Anabaptists. They have strongly supported this because they believe its a Biblical concept to follow, and they were persecuted by Protestant and Catholic authorities. Arguing that Christ did not give magistrates the power to form churches or constrain citizens in matters of religion. There is some disagreement regarding the precise origins of the Anabaptists, but majority of scholars claim that the Anabaptist religion began around 1525 in Zurich, Switzerland.
Historians trace the earliest church labeled Baptist back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with English Separatist John Smyth as its pastor.Gourley, Bruce. "A Very Brief Introduction to Baptist History, Then and Now." The Baptist Observer. Baptist practice spread to England, where the General Baptists considered Christ's atonement to extend to all people, while the Particular Baptists believed that it extended only to the elect. In 1638, Roger Williams established the first Baptist congregation in the North American colonies. In the mid-18th century, the First Great Awakening increased Baptist growth in both New England and the South. The Second Great Awakening in the South in the early 19th century increased church membership, as did the preachers' lessening of support for abolition and manumission of slavery, which had been part of the 18th-century teachings. Baptist missionaries have spread their church to every continent.
The Baptist World Alliance reports more than 41 million members in more than 150,000 congregations. In 2002, there were over 100 million Baptists and Baptistic group members worldwide and over 33 million in North America. The largest Baptist association is the Southern Baptist Convention, with the membership of associated churches totaling more than 14 million.
The name Anabaptist, meaning "one who baptizes again", was given to them by their persecutors in reference to the practice of re-baptizing converts who already had been baptized as infants. Anabaptists required that baptismal candidates be able to make their own confessions of faith and so rejected infant baptism. The early members of this movement did not accept the name Anabaptist, claiming that since infant baptism was unscriptural and null and void, the baptizing of believers was not a re-baptism but in fact their first real baptism. As a result of their views on the nature of baptism and other issues, Anabaptists were heavily persecuted during the 16th century and into the 17th by both Magisterial Protestants and Catholics. While most Anabaptists adhered to a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, which precluded taking oaths, participating in military actions, and participating in civil government, some who practiced re-baptism felt otherwise.For example, the followers of Thomas Müntzer and Balthasar Hubmaier. They were thus technically Anabaptists, even though conservative Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterites and some historians tend to consider them as outside of true Anabaptism. Anabaptist reformers of the Radical Reformation are divided into Radical and the so-called Second Front. Some important Radical Reformation theologians were John of Leiden, Thomas Müntzer, Kaspar Schwenkfeld, Sebastian Franck, Menno Simons. Second Front Reformers included Hans Denck, Conrad Grebel, Balthasar Hubmaier and Felix Manz. Many Anabaptists today still use the Ausbund, which is the oldest hymnal still in continuous use.
Although Unitarianism developed from the Protestant Reformation, it is excluded from Protestantism due to its Nontrinitarian theological nature. Unitarianism has been popular in the Transylvania within today's Romania, England, and the United States. It originated almost simultaneously in Transylvania and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Spiritual Christianity is the group of Russian movements (Doukhobors and others), so-called folk Protestants. Their origins are varied: some were influenced by western Protestants, others from disgust of the behavior of official Orthodox priests. (2025). 9781896031125, Legas. ISBN 9781896031125
Messianic Judaism is a movement of the Jews and non-Jews, which arose in the 1960s within Evangelical Protestantism and absorbed elements of the Jewish Christian traditions in Judaism.
are usually influenced by interdenominational movements. Globally, these large congregations are a significant development in Protestant Christianity. In the United States, the phenomenon has more than quadrupled in the past two decades. It has since spread worldwide.
The chart below shows the mutual relations and historical origins of the main interdenominational movements and other developments within Protestantism.
Evangelicals are Christians who believe in the centrality of the conversion or "born again" experience in receiving salvation, believe in the authority of the Bible as God's revelation to humanity and have a strong commitment to evangelism or sharing the Christian message.
It gained great momentum in the 18th and 19th centuries with the emergence of Methodism and the Great Awakenings in Britain and North America. The origins of Evangelicalism are usually traced back to the English Methodist movement, Nicolaus Zinzendorf, the Moravian Church, Lutheran Pietism, Presbyterianism and Puritanism. Among leaders and major figures of the Evangelical Protestant movement were John Wesley, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Billy Graham, Harold John Ockenga, John Stott and Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
There are an estimated 285,480,000 Evangelicals, corresponding to 13% of the Christian population and 4% of the World population. The Americas, Africa and Asia are home to the majority of Evangelicals. The United States has the largest concentration of Evangelicals. Evangelicalism is gaining popularity, especially in Latin America and the developing world.
In the United States, Episcopalian Dennis Bennett is sometimes cited as one of the charismatic movement's seminal influence. In the United Kingdom, Colin Urquhart, Michael Harper, David Watson and others were in the vanguard of similar developments. The Massey conference in New Zealand, 1964 was attended by several Anglicans, including the Rev. Ray Muller, who went on to invite Bennett to New Zealand in 1966, and played a leading role in developing and promoting the Life in the Spirit seminars. Other Charismatic movement leaders in New Zealand include Bill Subritzky.
Larry Christenson, a Lutheran theologian based in San Pedro, California, did much in the 1960s and 1970s to interpret the charismatic movement for Lutherans. A very large annual conference regarding that matter was held in Minneapolis. Charismatic Lutheran congregations in Minnesota became especially large and influential; especially "Hosanna!" in Lakeville, and North Heights in St. Paul. The next generation of Lutheran charismatics cluster around the Alliance of Renewal Churches. There is considerable charismatic activity among young Lutheran leaders in California centered around an annual gathering at Robinwood Church in Huntington Beach. Richard A. Jensen's Touched by the Spirit published in 1974, played a major role of the Lutheran understanding to the charismatic movement.
In Congregational and Presbyterian churches which profess a traditionally Calvinist or Reformed theology there are differing views regarding present-day continuationism or cessationism of the gifts ( charismata) of the Spirit. (1988). 9781870855006, Wakeman Trust. ISBN 9781870855006 Generally, however, Reformed charismatics distance themselves from renewal movements with tendencies which could be perceived as overemotional, such as Word of Faith, Toronto Blessing, Brownsville Revival and Lakeland Revival. Prominent Reformed charismatic denominations are the Sovereign Grace Churches and the Every Nation Churches in the US, in Great Britain there is the Newfrontiers churches and movement, which leading figure is Terry Virgo.
A minority of Seventh-day Adventists today are charismatic. They are strongly associated with those holding more "progressive" Adventist beliefs. In the early decades of the church charismatic or ecstatic phenomena were commonplace.
Neo-charismatics believe in and stress the post-Biblical availability of gifts of the Holy Spirit, including glossolalia, healing, and prophecy. They practice laying on of hands and seek the "infilling" of the Holy Spirit. However, a specific experience of baptism with the Holy Spirit may not be requisite for experiencing such gifts. No single form, governmental structure, or style of church service characterizes all neo-charismatic services and churches.
Some nineteen thousand denominations, with approximately 295 million individual adherents, are identified as neo-charismatic.
The original beliefs of Jacobus Arminius himself are commonly defined as Arminianism, but more broadly, the term may embrace the teachings of Hugo Grotius, John Wesley, and others as well. Classical Arminianism and Wesleyan Arminianism are the two main schools of thought. Wesleyan Arminianism is often identical with Methodism. The two systems of Calvinism and Arminianism share both history and many doctrines, and the history of Christian theology. However, because of their differences over the doctrines of divine predestination and election, many people view these schools of thought as opposed to each other. In short, the difference can be seen ultimately by whether God allows His desire to save all to be resisted by an individual's will (in the Arminian doctrine) or if God's grace is irresistible and limited to only some (in Calvinism). Some Calvinists assert that the Arminian perspective presents a synergistic system of Salvation and therefore is not only by grace, while Arminians firmly reject this conclusion. Many consider the theological differences to be crucial differences in doctrine, while others find them to be relatively minor.Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity, Vol. Two: The Reformation to the Present Day (New York: Harpercollins Publishers, 1985; reprint – Peabody: Prince Press, 2008) 180
It began in the late 17th century, reached its zenith in the mid-18th century, and declined through the 19th century, and had almost vanished in America by the end of the 20th century. Pietistic Lutheranism influenced Lutheranism as a whole and resulted in the formation of certain Pietistic Lutheran denominations (such as the Church of the Lutheran Brethren and Laestadian Lutheran Church); additionally some of its theological tenets influenced Protestantism generally, inspiring the Anglicanism priest John Wesley to begin the Methodism movement and Alexander Mack to begin the Schwarzenau Brethren denomination in the Anabaptist tradition.Meier, Marcus (2008). The Origin of the Schwarzenau Brethren. Philadelphia: Brethren Encyclopedia. p. 144.
Though Pietism shares an emphasis on personal behavior with the Puritan movement, and the two are often confused, there are important differences, particularly in the concept of the role of religion in government.Calvinist Puritans believed that government was ordained by God to enforce Christian behavior upon the world; pietists see the government as a part of the world, and believers were called to voluntarily live faithful lives independent of government.
Puritans were blocked from changing the established church from within, and were severely restricted in England by laws controlling the practice of religion. Their beliefs, however, were transported by the emigration of congregations to the Netherlands (and later to New England), and by evangelical clergy to Ireland (and later into Wales), and were spread into lay society and parts of the educational system, particularly certain colleges of the University of Cambridge. The first Protestant sermon delivered in England was in Cambridge, with the pulpit that this sermon was delivered from surviving to today. They took on distinctive beliefs about clerical dress and in opposition to the Episcopal polity system, particularly after the 1619 conclusions of the Synod of Dort they were resisted by the English bishops. They largely adopted Sabbatarianism in the 17th century, and were influenced by millennialism.
They formed, and identified with various religious groups advocating greater purity of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and group pietism. Puritans adopted a Reformed theology, but they also took note of radical criticisms of Zwingli in Zurich and Calvin in Geneva. In church polity, some advocated for separation from all other Christians, in favor of autonomous . These separatist and independent strands of Puritanism became prominent in the 1640s. Although the English Civil War (which expanded into the Wars of the Three Kingdoms) began over a contest for political power between the King of England and the House of Commons, it divided the country along religious lines as Episcopalianism within the Church of England sided with the Crown and Presbyterians and Independents supported Parliament (after the defeat of the Royalists, the House of Lords as well as the Monarch were removed from the political structure of the state to create the Commonwealth). The supporters of a Presbyterian polity in the Westminster Assembly were unable to forge a new English national church, and the Parliamentary New Model Army, which was made up primarily of Independents, under Oliver Cromwell first purged Parliament, then abolished it and established The Protectorate.
England's trans-Atlantic colonies in the war followed varying paths depending on their internal demographics. In the older colonies, which included Virginia (1607) and its offshoot Bermuda (1612), as well as Barbados and Antigua in the West Indies (collectively the targets in 1650 of An Act for prohibiting Trade with the Barbadoes, Virginia, Bermuda and Antego), Episcopalians remained the dominant church faction and the colonies remained Royalist 'til conquered or compelled to accept the new political order. In Bermuda, with control of the local government and the army (nine infantry companies of Militia plus coastal artillery), the Royalists forced Parliament-backing religious Independents into exile to settle the Bahamas as the Eleutheran Adventurers.
Episcopalian was re-established following the Restoration. A century later, non-conforming Protestants, along with the Protestant refugees from continental Europe, were to be among the primary instigators of the war of secession that led to the founding of the United States of America.
Paleo-orthodoxy is a movement similar in some respects to neo-evangelicalism but emphasizing the ancient Christian consensus of the undivided church of the first millennium AD, including in particular the early creeds and church councils as a means of properly understanding the scriptures. This movement is cross-denominational. A prominent theologian in this group is Thomas Oden, a Methodist.
Toward the end of the 20th century, some have tended to confuse evangelicalism and fundamentalism; however, the labels represent very distinct differences of approach that both groups are diligent to maintain, although because of fundamentalism's dramatically smaller size it often gets classified simply as an ultra-conservative branch of evangelicalism.
Protestantism has promoted economic growth and entrepreneurship, especially in the period after the Scientific and the Industrial Revolution. Scholars have identified a positive correlation between the rise of Protestantism and human capital formation, work ethic, economic development, the rise of early experimental science, Google Print, pp. 320–321 Google Print, p.125 and the development of the Government.
As the Reformers wanted all members of the church to be able to read the Bible, education on all levels was strongly encouraged. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the literacy rate in England was about 60 percent, in Scotland 65 percent, and in Sweden 80 percent.Heinrich August Winkler (2012), Geschichte des Westens. Von den Anfängen in der Antike bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, Third, Revised Edition, Munich (Germany), p. 233 Colleges and universities were founded. For example, the Puritans who established Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1628 founded Harvard College only eight years later. About a dozen other colleges followed in the 18th century, including Yale (1701). Pennsylvania also became a center of learning.Clifton E. Olmstead (1960), History of Religion in the United States, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, pp. 69–80, 88–89, 114–117, 186–188M. Schmidt, Kongregationalismus, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band III (1959), Tübingen (Germany), col. 1770
Members of mainline Protestant denominations have played leadership roles in many aspects of American life, including politics, business, science, the arts, and education. They founded most of the country's leading institutes of higher education.McKinney, William. "Mainline Protestantism 2000." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 558, Americans and Religions in the Twenty-First Century (July 1998), pp. 57–66.
However, eminent historian Fernand Braudel (d. 1985), a leader of the important Annales School wrote, "all historians have opposed this tenuous theory the, although they have not managed to be rid of it once and for all. Yet it is clearly false. The northern countries took over the place that earlier had been so long and brilliantly been occupied by the old capitalist centers of the Mediterranean. They invented nothing, either in technology or business management."Braudel, Fernand. 1977. Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism. Baltimore: Johns Hopskins University Press. Social scientist Rodney Stark moreover comments that "during their critical period of economic development, these northern centers of capitalism were Catholic, not Protestant—the Reformation still lay well into the future", while British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (d. 2003) said, "The idea that large-scale industrial capitalism was ideologically impossible before the Reformation is exploded by the simple fact that it existed."Trevor-Roper. 2001. The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century. Liberty Fund
In a factor analysis of the latest wave of World Values Survey data, Arno Tausch (Corvinus University of Budapest) found that Protestantism emerges to be very close to combining religion and the traditions of liberalism. The Global Value Development Index, calculated by Tausch, relies on the World Values Survey dimensions such as trust in the state of law, no support for shadow economy, postmaterial activism, support for democracy, a non-acceptance of violence, xenophobia and racism, trust in transnational capital and Universities, confidence in the market economy, supporting gender justice, and engaging in environmental activism, etc.
Episcopalians and Presbyterians, as well as other WASPs, tend to be considerably wealthier and better educated (having Academic degree and post-graduate degrees per capita) than most other religious groups in United States,Irving Lewis Allen, "WASP – From Sociological Concept to Epithet", Ethnicity, 1975 154+ and are disproportionately represented in the upper reaches of American business, law and politics, especially the Republican Party. Numbers of the most Old money as the Vanderbilts, the Astor family, Rockefellers, Du Ponts, Roosevelt family, Forbes family, Ford family, Whitney family, Mellon family, the Morgan family and Harrimans are Mainline Protestant families.
According to Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States by Harriet Zuckerman, a review of American awarded between 1901 and 1972, 72% of American Nobel Prizes laureates identified a Protestant background.Harriet Zuckerman, Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States New York, The Free Press, 1977, p. 68: Protestants turn up among the American-reared laureates in slightly greater proportion to their numbers in the general population. Thus 72 percent of the seventy-one laureates but about two-thirds of the American population were reared in one or another Protestant denomination-) Overall, 84% of all the Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans in Chemistry, 60% in Medicine, and 59% in Physics between 1901 and 1972 were won by Protestants.
According to 100 Years of Nobel Prize (2005), a review of Nobel Prizes awarded between 1901 and 2000, 65% of Nobel Prizes Laureates, have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference (423 prizes).Baruch A. Shalev, 100 Years of Nobel Prizes (2003), Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, p. 57: between 1901 and 2000 reveals that 654 Laureates belong to 28 different religion Most 65% have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference.
While separating Catholics from Protestants among Christians proved difficult in some cases, available information suggests that more Protestants were involved in the scientific categories and more Catholics were involved in the Literature and Peace categories.
Atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers constitute 11% of total Nobel Prize winners; but in the category of Literature, these preferences rise sharply to about 35%. A striking fact involving religion is the high number of Laureates of the Jewish faith—over 20% of total Nobel Prizes (138); including: 17% in Chemistry, 26% in Medicine and Physics, 40% in Economics and 11% in Peace and Literature each. The numbers are especially startling in light of the fact that only some 14 million people (0.02% of the world's population) are Jewish. By contrast, only 5 Nobel Laureates have been of the Muslim faith—1% of total number of Nobel prizes awarded—from a population base of about 1.2 billion (20% of the world's population)
Politically, Calvin favored a mixture of aristocracy and democracy. He appreciated the advantages of democracy: "It is an invaluable gift, if God allows a people to freely elect its own authorities and overlords."Quoted in Jan Weerda, Calvin, in Evangelisches Soziallexikon, 3. Auflage (1958), Stuttgart (Germany), col. 210 Calvin also thought that earthly rulers lose their divine right and must be put down when they rise up against God. To further protect the rights of ordinary people, Calvin suggested separating political powers in a system of checks and balances (separation of powers). Thus he and his followers resisted political absolutism and paved the way for the rise of modern democracy.Clifton E. Olmstead, History of Religion in the United States, p. 10 Besides England, the Netherlands were, under Calvinist leadership, the freest country in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It granted asylum to philosophers like Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle. Hugo Grotius was able to teach his natural-law theory and a relatively liberal interpretation of the Bible.Karl Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte, pp. 396–397
Consistent with Calvin's political ideas, Protestants created both the English and the American democracies. In seventeenth-century England, the most important persons and events in this process were the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, John Locke, the Glorious Revolution, the English Bill of Rights, and the Act of Settlement.Cf. M. Schmidt, England. Kirchengeschichte, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band II (1959), Tübingen (Germany), col. 476–478 Later, the British took their democratic ideals to their colonies, e.g. Australia, New Zealand, and India. In North America, Plymouth Colony (Pilgrim Fathers; 1620) and Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628) practised democratic self-rule and separation of powers.Nathaniel Philbrick (2006), , Penguin Group, New York, Clifton E. Olmstead, History of Religion in the United States, pp. 65–76 These Congregationalists were convinced that the democratic form of government was the will of God.M. Schmidt, Pilgerväter, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band V (1961), col. 384 The Mayflower Compact was a social contract.Christopher Fennell, Plymouth Colony Legal StructureAllen Weinstein and David Rubel (2002), The Story of America: Freedom and Crisis from Settlement to Superpower, DK Publishing, Inc., New York, , p. 61
The United States Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, and the American Bill of Rights with its fundamental human rights made this tradition permanent by giving it a legal and political framework.Robert Middlekauff (2005), The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789, Revised and Expanded Edition, Oxford University Press, New York, , pp. 4–6, 49–52, 622–685 The great majority of American Protestants, both clergy and laity, strongly supported the independence movement. All major Protestant churches were represented in the First and Second Continental Congresses.Clifton E. Olmstead, History of Religion in the United States, pp. 192–209 In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the American democracy became a model for numerous other countries and regions throughout the world (e.g., Latin America, Japan, and Germany). The strongest link between the American and French Revolutions was Marquis de Lafayette, an ardent supporter of the American constitutional principles. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was mainly based on Lafayette's draft of this document.Cf. R. Voeltzel, Frankreich. Kirchengeschichte, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band II (1958), col. 1039 The Declaration by United Nations and Universal Declaration of Human Rights also echo the American constitutional tradition.Douglas K. Stevenson (1987), American Life and Institutions, Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart (Germany), p. 34G. Jasper, Vereinte Nationen, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band VI, col. 1328–1329Cf. G. Schwarzenberger, Völkerrecht, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band VI, col. 1420–1422
Democracy, social-contract theory, separation of powers, religious freedom, separation of church and state—these achievements of the Reformation and early Protestantism were elaborated on and popularized by Age of Enlightenment thinkers. Some of the philosophers of the English, Scottish, German, and Swiss Enlightenment—Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Toland, David Hume, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Christian Wolff, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau—had Protestant backgrounds.Karl Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte, 11. Auflage, pp. 396–399, 401–403, 417–419 For example, John Locke, whose political thought was based on "a set of Protestant Christian assumptions",Jeremy Waldron (2002), God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political Thought, Cambridge University Press, New York, , p. 13 derived the equality of all humans, including the equality of the genders ("Adam and Eve"), from Genesis 1, 26–28. As all persons were created equally free, all governments needed "the consent of the governed".Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, pp. 21–43, 120
Also, other human rights were advocated for by some Protestants. For example, torture was abolished in Prussia in 1740, slavery in Britain in 1834 and in the United States in 1865 (William Wilberforce, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln—against Southern Protestants).Allen Weinstein and David Rubel, The Story of America, pp. 189–309Karl Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte, 11. Auflage, pp. 403, 425 Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf were among the first thinkers who made significant contributions to international law.M. Elze, Grotius, Hugo, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band II, col. 1885–1886H. Hohlwein, Pufendorf, Samuel, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band V, col. 721 The Geneva Convention, an important part of humanitarian international law, was largely the work of Henry Dunant, a reformed pietist. He also founded the Red Cross.R. Pfister, Schweiz. Seit der Reformation, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Auflage, Band V (1961), col. 1614–1615
Martin Luther, Paul Gerhardt, George Wither, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, William Cowper, and other authors and composers created well-known church hymns.
Musicians like Heinrich Schütz, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Henry Purcell, Johannes Brahms, Philipp Nicolai and Felix Mendelssohn composed great works of music.
Prominent painters with Protestant background were, for example, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger, Rembrandt, and Vincent van Gogh.
World literature was enriched by the works of Edmund Spenser, John Milton, John Bunyan, John Donne, John Dryden, Daniel Defoe, William Wordsworth, Jonathan Swift, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, Matthew Arnold, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Theodor Fontane, Washington Irving, Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Stearns Eliot, John Galsworthy, Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, John Updike, and many others.
Contrary to how the Protestant Reformers were often characterized, the concept of a catholic or universal Church was not brushed aside during the Protestant Reformation. On the contrary, the visible unity of the catholic or universal church was seen by the Protestant reformers as an important and essential doctrine of the Reformation. The Magisterial reformers, such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Huldrych Zwingli, believed that they were reforming the Catholic Church, which they viewed as having become corrupted. Each of them took very seriously the charges of schism and innovation, denying these charges and maintaining that it was the Catholic Church that had left them. The Protestant Reformers formed a new and radically different theological opinion on ecclesiology, that the visible Church is "catholic" (lower-case "c") rather than "Catholic" (upper-case "C"). Accordingly, there is not an indefinite number of parochial, congregational or national churches, constituting, as it were, so many ecclesiastical individualities, but one great spiritual republic of which these various organizations form a part, although they each have very different opinions. This was markedly far-removed from the traditional and historic Catholic understanding that the Catholic Church was the one true Church of Christ.
Yet, in the Protestant understanding, the visible church is not a genus, so to speak, with so many species under it. In order to justify their departure from the Catholic Church, Protestants often posited a new argument, saying that there was no real visible Church with divine authority, only a spiritual, invisible, and hidden church—this notion began in the early days of the Protestant Reformation.
Wherever the Magisterial Reformation, which received support from the ruling authorities, took place, the result was a reformed national Protestant church envisioned to be a part of the whole invisible church, but disagreeing, in certain important points of doctrine and doctrine-linked practice, with what had until then been considered the normative reference point on such matters, namely the Papacy and central authority of the Catholic Church. The Reformed churches thus believed in some form of Catholicity, founded on their doctrines of the five solas and a visible ecclesiastical organization based on the 14th- and 15th-century Conciliarism, rejecting the papacy and papal infallibility in favor of ecumenical councils, but rejecting the latest ecumenical council, the Council of Trent. Religious unity therefore became not one of doctrine and identity but one of invisible character, wherein the unity was one of faith in Jesus Christ, not common identity, doctrine, belief, and collaborative action.
There are Protestants, especially of the Reformed tradition, that either reject or downplay the designation Protestant because of the negative idea that the word invokes in addition to its primary meaning, preferring the designation Reformed, Evangelical or even Reformed Catholic expressive of what they call a Reformed Catholicity and defending their arguments from the traditional Protestant confessions.
A Protestant baptism is held to be valid by the Catholic Church if given with the trinitarian formula and with the intent to baptize. However, as the ordination of Protestant ministers is not recognized due to the lack of apostolic succession and the disunity from Catholic Church, all other sacraments (except marriage) performed by Protestant denominations and ministers are not recognized as valid. Therefore, Protestants desiring full communion with the Catholic Church are not re-baptized (although they are confirmed) and Protestant ministers who become Catholics may be ordained to the priesthood after a period of study.
In 1999, the representatives of Lutheran World Federation and Catholic Church signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, apparently resolving the conflict over the nature of justification which was at the root of the Protestant Reformation, although Confessional Lutherans reject this statement. This is understandable, since there is no compelling authority within them. On 18 July 2006, delegates to the World Methodist Conference voted unanimously to adopt the Joint Declaration.
In European countries which were most profoundly influenced by the Reformation, Protestantism remains the most practiced religion. These include the Nordic countries and the United Kingdom. In other historical Protestant strongholds such as Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Latvia, and Estonia, it remains one of the most popular religions. Although the Czech Republic was the site of Hussites, there is only a small Protestant population today; mainly due to historical reasons like persecution of Protestants by the Catholic Habsburgs, restrictions during the Communism, and also the ongoing secularization. Over the last several decades, religious practice has been declining as secularization has increased. According to a 2019 study about Religiosity in the European Union in 2019 by Eurobarometer, Protestants made up 9% of the EU population. According to Pew Research Center, Protestants constituted nearly one fifth (or 18%) of the continent's Christian population in 2010. Clarke and Beyer estimate that Protestants constituted 15% of all Europeans in 2009, while Noll claims that less than 12% of them lived in Europe in 2010.
Changes in worldwide Protestantism over the last century have been significant. Since 1900, Protestantism has spread rapidly in Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America. That caused Protestantism to be called a primarily non-Western religion. Much of the growth has occurred after World War II, when decolonization of Africa and abolition of various restrictions against Protestants in countries occurred. According to one source, Protestants constituted respectively 2.5%, 2%, 0.5% of Latin Americans, Africans and Asians. In 2000, percentage of Protestants on mentioned continents was 17%, more than 27% and 6%, respectively. According to Mark A. Noll, 79% of Anglicans lived in the United Kingdom in 1910, while most of the remainder was found in the United States and across the British Commonwealth. By 2010, 59% of Anglicans were found in Africa. In 2010, more Protestants lived in India than in the UK or Germany, while Protestants in Brazil were as numerous as those in the UK and Germany combined. Almost as many lived in each of Nigeria and China as in all of Europe. China is home to world's largest Protestant minority.
Protestantism is growing in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania, while declining in Anglo America America's Changing Religious Landscape , by Pew Research Center, 12 May 2015 and Europe, with some exceptions such as France, where it was driven underground from the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes until shortly before the French Revolution, but its adherents are now claimed to be stable in number or even growing slightly. According to some, Russia is another country to see a Protestant revival.
In 2010, the largest Protestant denominational families were historically Pentecostal denominations (11%), Anglican (11%), Lutheran (10%), Baptist (9%), United and uniting churches (unions of different denominations) (7%), Presbyterian or Reformed (7%), Methodist (3%), Adventist (3%), Congregationalist (1%), Brethren (1%), The Salvation Army (<1%) and Moravian Church (<1%). Other denominations accounted for 38% of Protestants.
The United States is home to approximately 20% of the world's Protestants. According to a 2012 study, the Protestant share of U.S. population was 48%, marking the first time in which it was not the religion of the majority of the country. "Nones" on the Rise: One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation , Pew Research Center (The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life), 9 October 2012 The decline is attributed mainly to the dropping membership of the Mainline Protestant churches, while Evangelical Protestant and are stable or continue to grow.
Protestants have been projected to form a slim majority of the world's total Christian population by 2050 if existing trends continue.Johnstone, Patrick, "The Future of the Global Church: History, Trends and Possibilities" , p. 100, fig 4.10 & 4.11 According to other experts such as Hans J. Hillerbrand, Protestants will be as numerous as Catholics.
According to Peter L. Berger, popular Protestantism is the most dynamic religious movement in the contemporary world, alongside Islamic revival.
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