History & overview · every faith gets one
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.
The founding
A monk nailed ninety-five theses about indulgences to a church door — or at least mailed them — and the printing press did the rest.
Its founding is bound to Martin Luther and the Reformers — 1517 CE.
What it holds
The divine. One God in three persons.
Death and after. Resurrection and judgment.
The line
descent is public here — where it came from, what left itBranches:
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.