Protestantism

I

Introduction

Protestantism, one of the three major divisions of Christianity, the others being Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Protestantism began as a movement to reform the Western Christian Church in the 16th century, resulting in the Protestant Reformation, which severed the reformed Churches from the Roman Catholic Church. The declared aim of the original reformers was to restore the Christian faith as it had been at its beginning, while keeping what they thought valuable from the Roman Catholic tradition that had developed during the intervening centuries.

The four main Protestant traditions that emerged from the Reformation were the Lutheran (known in continental Europe as Evangelical), the Calvinist (Reformed), the Anabaptist, and the Anglican. Despite the considerable differences among them in doctrine and practice, they agreed in rejecting the authority of the pope and in emphasizing instead the authority of the Bible and the importance of individual faith.

The term Protestantism was given to the movement after the second Diet of Speyer (1529), an imperial assembly at which the Roman Catholic majority withdrew the tolerance granted to Lutherans at the first diet three years earlier. A protest was signed by six Lutheran princes and the leaders of 14 free cities of Germany, and Lutherans in general became known as Protestants. The term Protestant has gradually been attached to all Christian Churches that are not Roman Catholic or part of the Orthodox or other Eastern Christian traditions. As the 1990s began, the world had about 436 million Protestants (including some 73 million Anglicans), constituting at least one-fourth of all Christians.

II

History

The Protestant movement actually preceded the 16th-century Reformation. Several dissident movements in the late medieval Church anticipated the Reformation by protesting the pervasive corruption in the Church and by criticizing fundamental Catholic teachings.

A

Precursors

Beginning in the 12th century, the Waldensians, followers of the merchant Peter Waldo of Lyons, France, practised what they believed to be the simple, uncorrupted Christianity of the primitive Church. The movement, concentrated in France and Italy, survived violent official persecution, and during the Reformation many Waldensians adopted Calvinism.

In the 1380s the Lollards arose in England, inspired by the teachings of the theologian John Wycliffe. Wycliffe denied the authority of morally corrupted Church prelates, rejected transubstantiation and other traditional teachings, and advocated biblical faith. The Lollards suffered persecution but survived to play a role in the English Reformation.

Wycliffe's teachings strongly influenced the Bohemian reformer John Huss (Jan Hus), whose followers, called Hussites, reformed the Bohemian Church and achieved virtual independence after Huss's martyrdom in 1415. Many converted to Lutheranism in the 16th century.

B

The Reformation

A number of conditions in 16th-century Europe account for the success of Martin Luther and the other reformers as compared to their predecessors. Both the Holy Roman emperor and the pope were declining in power and were preoccupied with the threat posed by the Turks. The invention of printing in the 15th century made possible the rapid dissemination of vernacular religious tracts among both rulers and ordinary citizens, and made people, especially in northern Europe, more receptive to Protestant teachings.