Protestantism: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

Scripture alone. Faith alone. Every believer a priest.

The reforming branch: final authority returned to scripture, salvation received by faith rather than earned, and the priesthood opened to every believer. One protest, ten thousand denominations — forking is its nature.

DeitiesOne God in three persons

Founded1517 CE · Wittenberg, Germany

FounderMartin Luther and the Reformers

AfterlifeResurrection and judgment

TextsBible

The map

Protestantism’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 1457 CE The Moravian Church (Unitas Fratrum) 1517 CE Protestantism 1517 CE Lutheranism 1525 CE Anabaptism

Core Tenets

3 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

Scripture alone is the final authority. Sola scriptura: no tradition, council, or office stands above the text. Go deeper — context →

Justification is by faith alone. Received, not earned — the article on which the church stands or falls. Go deeper — context →

Every believer is a priest. Direct access to God, no mediating caste — and so, eventually, ten thousand denominations. Go deeper — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

The preaching service. Scripture read and preached at length — the sermon as the service's summit is the Reformation's liturgical signature. When weekly — SundayWho the congregation Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

The Moravian Church (Unitas Fratrum) — In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things love — and a hundred-year prayer meeting. Lutheranism — Law and gospel, rightly divided. Anabaptism — Baptism is for believers — and the sword is not for us. Anglicanism — Scripture, tradition, and reason — held together by common prayer. Calvinism (the Reformed tradition) — Grace chooses first — sovereignty all the way down. Congregationalism — The local church answers to Christ and to nobody in between. The Baptists — A believer's church, a free conscience, an immersed body. Quakerism (Religious Society of Friends) — Silence, until the Light speaks. The Shakers (United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing) — Celibate, communal, and convinced the Second Coming already arrived — in a woman. The New Church (Swedenborgianism) — The Last Judgment already happened, in 1757, in the spiritual world — and nobody down here noticed. The Restoration Movement (Churches of Christ) — No creed but Christ, no name but Christian — and no piano. The Plymouth Brethren — No clergy, no name, no denomination — and the rapture, which they invented. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — The heavens are open again — restoration, not reformation. The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) — The wing of the Restoration Movement that decided unity mattered more than the pattern. The Christadelphians — No Trinity, no immortal soul, no hell, no clergy — and a kingdom coming to Jerusalem, not to the sky. Seventh-day Adventism — The Sabbath kept, the Advent awaited. The Salvation Army — A church with ranks, a brass band and no sacraments at all. Jehovah's Witnesses — God's name known, God's kingdom preached. Christian Science (the Church of Christ, Scientist) — Matter is not what is real, so sickness is not what it appears to be. Pentecostalism — The Spirit did not retire in the first century. The Church of the Nazarene — Wesley's second blessing, kept when the Methodists let it go. The Christian Churches and Churches of Christ — The third stream: instruments yes, denomination no. Rastafari — Jah lives — and Africa is the promised land. Peoples Temple — An integrated church in Indiana that ended as a settlement in Guyana. Unitarian Universalism — No creed — seven principles, and the search itself is sacred. Christianity — 5 shared ideas, a different faith Hinduism — 4 shared ideas, a different faith Buddhism — 4 shared ideas, a different faith Jainism — 4 shared ideas, a different faith Branch Protestantism — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what Protestantism shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been