This is part of a series on the history of Christianity. Previous articles can be found here.
Having discussed the roots of the Reformation and Martin Luther, I am now going to look at the development of Protestantism in the 16th century. It is better to think of the movement as a group of many smaller movements or, perhaps, many protestantisms. In upcoming posts I’ll examine John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, the Anabaptists, the English Reformation, and the Catholic or counter-Reformation. But first, it is important to define what Protestantism means.
Inherent in the Reformation was a negative understanding of what it meant to be Protestant. Within the term itself is the word protest, and in many ways that is an accurate description of the reformers. They were protesting the right of the Roman Church and the Magisterium to interpret the Bible for the masses. They were protesting the right of Rome to control ecclesiastical affairs in Europe. They were protesting doctrines of the Medieval church they found contrary to the instructions and tenets of Scripture. Indeed, the legacy of Protestantism as a movement in opposition continues to this day. In the West we have traded Catholicism for Secularism as our primary enemy. In the global South many churches define themselves in opposition to Islam, while others continue to fight Catholicism, or in Pentecostal churches, traditional Protestant churches.
There are positive components to the definition of Protestantism as well. Alister McGrath points out that “In one sense, ‘Protestantism’ designates a way of doing theology rather than any given set of possible or specific outcomes.”[1] Central to this way of doing theology was the emphasis on the priesthood of all believers—the idea the Bible is the foundation of Christianity and should be accessible to all believers and authoritative in all manners of doctrine, faith, and practice. Protestantism then becomes the outworking of various groups of people studying the Bible and applying its teaching to their lives and realities. This is really the power of Protestantism. In its purest form, it is a movement unbound by structures of authority that limit its ability to adapt to social change and new challenges.
Luther represented the first generation of Protestantism, and after him came several key leaders and movements that shaped the history of Protestantism as we know it today. We’ll talk about these key leaders as this series continues.
[1] Alister E. McGrath. Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution—A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-first. (New York: Harper One, 2007), 244.
