PROTESTANTISM

one of the three major branches of Christianity, originating in the 16th-century Reformation. Its original basic doctrines, in addition to those of the creeds, were: justification by grace alone through faith alone; the priesthood of all believers; the supremacy of Holy Scripture in matters of faith and order. There has been variation in sacramental doctrine among Protestants, but the limitation of the number to the two sacraments of the Gospel, baptism and Holy Communion, has been almost universal. In theory Protestantism has stood throughout its history for a principle of protest that calls under judgment not only the beliefs and institutions of others but also one's own movements and causes. On those grounds, however, most students of Protestantism would recognize that the Protestant tradition has not been substantially more successful than have other faiths at remaining self-critical or at rising above institutional self-defensiveness. Within the spectrum of non-Roman Catholic Western Christianity a great variety of doctrinal views and polities have been expressed. Not all Western non-Roman Catholic Christians have been ready to be included in Protestantism. Some Anglicans and Lutherans, for instance, have been so eager to stress their continuity with the historic Roman Catholic Church and their distance from extreme Protestantism that they have asked for separate designations. Courtesy suggests that such appeals be taken seriously; however, ultimately habits of speech and sociological usage tend to predominate and, despite their protestations, these groups are usually included in the Protestant cluster. one of the three major branches of Christianity, originating in the 16th-century Reformation, characterized by its doctrines of justification by grace through faith, the priesthood of all believers, and the authority of the Holy Scriptures. The historical origin of the word Protestant is in the second imperial Diet of Speyer (1529), which reversed by a majority vote the decision of the first Diet of Speyer (1526) to allow each prince of the Holy Roman Empire to determine the religion of his territory. The minority, consisting of 6 princes and 14 cities, issued a formal Protestation, the primary purpose of which was to protest that in matters which concern God's honour and salvation and the eternal life of our souls, everyone must stand and give account before God for himself. A secondary purpose was to protest against the ban on the expansion of evangelical religion. The supporters of the Reformation doctrines gradually came to be called Protestants both by their opponents and by themselves, since it was a convenient name to cover the many varieties of Reformed Christianity. It spread from the continent of Europe to England, where, since 1689, the coronation service has contained an oath to defend the Protestant Reformed Religion by law established. The non-Anglican Reformed churches in Great Britain have accepted the name as a true description of themselves since the 17th century, and this is also the case in the United States and the other English-speaking countries. No communion incorporated the word Protestant into its title, however, until this was done by the Protestant Episcopal Church of America. The 19th-century Oxford Movement persuaded an increasingly large number of clergy and laity of the Church of England to repudiate the word Protestant as a description of their church. The term is officially used on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean by a number of societies propagating the view that the principles of the Reformation are being neglected. The basic doctrines of Protestantism at the Reformation, in addition to those of the creeds, were the supremacy of Holy Scripture in matters of faith and order, the justification by grace alone through faith alone, and the priesthood of all believers. There has been variation in sacramental doctrine among Protestants, but the limitation of the number to the two sacraments of the Gospel, baptism and Holy Communion, has been almost universal. In the 18th century the Enlightenment produced liberal Protestantism, which cast doubt on some doctrines in the creeds and stressed reason, religious experience, and the principle of private judgment in a way that would have been repugnant to the original Reformers. But this form of Protestantism was a spent force by the end of World War I. Through the efforts of such thinkers as Sren Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, Protestant theology and devotion have regained their objectivity with, at the same time, a deeper appreciation of the values of pre-Reformation Christianity. Though the doctrine of the verbal inerrancy of Scripture is maintained by several Protestant groups, the supremacy of the biblical revelation usually has been reasserted without it. See also Reformation. Additional reading Broad studies of Protestantism include Einar Molland, Christendom: The Christian Churches, Their Doctrines, Constitutional Forms, and Ways of Worship (1959, originally published in Swedish, 1953); John Dillenberger and Claude Welch, Protestant Christianity Interpreted Through Its Development, 2nd ed. (1988); John S. Whale, The Protestant Tradition (1955, reprinted 1962), a summary of the creedal positions of Protestant bodies; Wilhelm Pauck, The Heritage of the Reformation, rev. and enl. ed. (1961, reissued 1968), essays on the theological and practical impact of Protestantism; B.A. Gerrish, The Old Reformation and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (1982), a study connecting the theology of the early years of Protestantism with recent developments; Robert McAfee Brown, The Spirit of Protestantism (1961, reissued 1974), a summary of the main themes of Protestant life; Martin E. Marty, Protestantism (1972, reissued 1974), with extensive bibliographic essays; James Hastings Nichols, Primer for Protestants (1947, reissued 1971), a brief survey of Protestant history and theology for the layperson; John B. Cobb, Jr., Varieties of Protestantism (1960), a theological analysis of alternatives in Protestantism, and Living Options in Protestant Theology: A Survey of Methods (1962, reissued 1986); Roger Mehl, The Sociology of Protestantism (1970; originally published in French, 1965), an excellent survey of Protestant sociology; Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 4, Reformation of Church and Dogma (13001700) (1984), a magisterial approach; George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (1962), a comprehensive and authoritative work in English on this subject; Franklin Hamlin Littell, The Origins of Sectarian Protestantism: A Study of the Anabaptist View of the Church (1964, reprinted 1968), a historical analysis of the main themes in the radical Reformation; Louis Bouyer, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism (1955, reprinted 1968; originally published in French, 1954); J. Leslie Dunstan (ed.), Protestantism (1961, reissued 1969), a study combining sources with narrative and interpretation; Paul Tillich, The Protestant Era, trans. from German (1948, reissued 1951), a collection of essays, one of which discusses the end of the Protestant era; Charles W. Kegley, Protestantism in Transition (1965), a theologian's survey of Protestant tendencies after the mid-20th century; Ernst Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress: The Significance of Protestantism for the Rise of the Modern World (1986; originally published in German, 2nd ed., 1911), a classic interpretation of Protestant contributions to modernity; Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930, reissued 1985; originally published in German, 1904), a much debated study of the link between Protestantism and the rise of capitalism; John A. Hardon, The Protestant Churches of America, rev. ed. (1969), a summary by a Roman Catholic of Protestant doctrinal positions; Frederick E. Mayer, The Religious Bodies of America, 4th ed. rev. by Arthur Carl Piepkorn (1961), denomination-by-denomination study of doctrinal positions in American religious groups; Arthur Carl Piepkorn, Profiles in Belief: The Religious Bodies of the United States and Canada, vol. 2, Protestant Denominations (1978), vol. 3, Holiness and Pentecostal (1979), and vol. 4, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, and Other Christian Bodies (1979), an extensive review of American Protestant bodies; Winthrop S. Hudson, American Protestantism (1961, reprinted 1972), a brief survey of Protestant history in America; Jerald C. Brauer, Protestantism in America: A Narrative History, rev. ed. (1965, reprinted 1974), a presentation of the main themes of American Protestant history; Andrew L. Drummond, Story of American Protestantism (1949, reissued 1951), a British view of Protestant history in the United States; and Martin E. Marty, Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (1970, reprinted 1977), written for the nation's bicentennial. Newsworthy developments in the Protestant Church are chronicled in Christian Century (weekly). W. Owen Chadwick Roland H. Bainton James C. Spalding E. Clifford Nelson Martin E. Marty