Even in the United States, today, the major Protestant dominations and traditions are remnants of British, Dutch, or German settlers who transported their faith across the Atlantic Ocean and settled in on the coasts, plains, and mountains of the New World.
The other reason for the proliferation of sub-groups within the larger Protestant movement has to do with the Protestant doctrinal, if not cultural, instinct. The doctrine that emphasized a personal relationship with God through Christ, without the necessity of a church hierarchy, was often used to promote a continued reformation within a Reformation. A central concept of the Reformation had been and remains ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda the church reformed, always reforming.
However, some, then and now, use this individualized tenet of Protestantism to divide from existing communities. Often, the division is consenting and even healthy, giving even more expressions of faith to a community. Other times, the splintering reveals a possible germ of revolt that was embedded within the sons and daughters of Luther. It is interesting that as Dr. Evangelical is an English word derived from the Greek, Evangel.
This good biblical word is one employed to describe the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ: that what God has required, God has supplied, in Christ Jesus. This is what Luther vowed to defend, even before his own personal reformation.
Protestantism is essentially evangelical in its theology and practice. Protestant thought is concerned with the fulfilling of the Great Commission in the world according to the Scriptures. So, the evangel of God is the living legacy of Protestantism.
The phrase became more particularly associated with enthusiastic movements like Methodism during the eighteenth-century Wesleyan evangelical revivals and the First Great Awakening in America with Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield.
I recall Dr. James Kennedy saying that the Lord gave us denominations so that diverse people can access the Gospel at various stages in life.
For example, one person is wounded and is drawn to the healing liturgy of the Anglican church. Another person has been burned by an autocratic and authoritarian religious background and is drawn to the representative community life of a Presbyterian church.
Yet, another, destitute and out of place in many suburban churches however faithful they may be in trying to welcome him finds the message of Christ in a Pentecostal street mission. I believe that both biblical truth and our own experience validate Dr. I think of the Church, the Bride of Christ, like a beautiful mosaic. There are thousands of embedded pieces of divinely wrought glass, every color in the broad spectrum, embedded within the clay of the earth where we now reside.
The cuts are as varied as the colors. To be sure: there is one Light. But as the Light is dispersed through the prism of our cultures, our communities, and our very lives, a vibrant profusion of faith erupts in celestial celebration. This is the Church of our Lord across the globe and throughout the ages. There is unity in the diversity, commonality in the differences, and a singular faith within the countless saints. This structure and that shape, this shade and that tint, are together—carefully, artfully, providentially—placed into the mosaic.
When you stand back you gain perspective. You step away further. The odd assortment of colored glass and stone has intention and purpose. For, now, you can see. The mosaic is a picture of Jesus. Some might call me Pollyanna for viewing the Body of Christ this way. But to examine the idea of Protestantism which may exist in every branch of Christianity , noting its adaptability, consistent growth, and universal appeal is to acknowledge the vitality of Jesus Christ alive in the world today.
Michael A. And when a prince converted, his entire principality was seen to have converted too. It originally referred to a number of German princes who formally protested an imperial ban on Martin Luther, before becoming a more general term for reformers who founded movements outside the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, Luther was able to spread his ideas more quickly than ever before due to one vital new piece of technology: the printing press. For the first time in human history, vast amounts of information could be transmitted and shared easily with a great number of people.
The relationship between Luther and the printing press was actually a symbiotic one : The more popular Luther became, the more print shops spread up across Europe to meet demand. While earlier would-be reformers, such as John Hus, had been burned at the stake for heresy, getting rid of someone as widely known as Luther was far more politically risky.
Something that began as a relatively narrow and academic debate over the church selling indulgences significantly changed Western culture. Luther opened the floodgates for other reformers.
Although Luther can be said to have started the Reformation, he was one of many reformers whose legacy lives on in different Protestant traditions. Switzerland saw the rise of John Calvin whose own Protestant denomination, Calvinism, bears his name. John Knox founded the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Each denomination of Protestantism had its own specific theology and approach.
But not all Protestant reformations were entirely idealistic in nature: King Henry VIII famously established the Church of England, still the state church in that country today, in order to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. The most important of these is the idea that salvation happens through faith alone. For Protestants, salvation happens through divine grace received through faith in Jesus Christ. This is in stark contrast with the Catholic Church, in which a wider body of church teaching and church authority play a major role.
Other differences between Catholic and Protestant theology and practice involve the clergy and church. Protestant priests, likewise, are not bound by priestly celibacy, and can marry. That said, for many Christians today, differences are cultural, not theological. Earlier this fall, a study carried out by the Pew Research Center found that average Protestants more often than not assert traditionally Catholic teachings about, among other things, the nature of salvation or the role of church teaching.
Today, about million people — 40 percent of Christians — identify as Protestant around the world. Of these, 72 million people — just 8 percent — are Lutherans. But Lutheranism has still come to define much of the Protestant ethos. Over the centuries, more forms of Protestantism have taken shape.
Several of them have had cataclysmic effects on world history. Puritanism, another reform movement within the Church of England, inspired its members to seek a new life in the New World and helped shape America as we know it today. Of these reform and revivalist movements, perhaps none is so visible today in America as the loose umbrella known as evangelical Christianity. Many of the historic Protestant churches — Lutheranism, Calvinism, Presbyterianism, the Church of England — are now classified as mainline Protestant churches, which tend to be more socially and politically liberal.
His theses challenged the authority of the Catholic Church, and sparked the historic split in It remains one of the longest and most brutal wars in human history, with more than 8 million casualties resulting from military battles as well as from the famine and disease caused The Puritans were members of a religious reform movement known as Puritanism that arose within the Church of England in the late 16th century.
They believed the Church of England was too similar to the Roman Catholic Church and should eliminate ceremonies and practices not The Bible is the holy scripture of the Christian religion, purporting to tell the history of the Earth from its earliest creation to the spread of Christianity in the first century A. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament have undergone changes over the centuries, Live TV.
This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland. The English Reformation. Mario Savio on the Fight for Educational Reform. Jimmy Hoffa on Prison Reform.
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