Protestantism
PROTESTANTISM. [This article provides an overview of the Protestant branch of Christian religion. The historical origins of Protestantism are examined in Reformation. Particular manifestations of Protestantism are discussed in Denominationalism and in numerous articles on Protestant churches and biographies of Protestant leaders.]
Protestantism is a worldwide movement that derives from sixteenth-century reforms of Western Christianity. As a movement it is both a set of church bodies and a less well defined ethos, spirit, and cultural achievement. Thus, one speaks of Reformed or Methodist churches as being Protestant, just as one may speak of a "Protestant ethic" or a "Protestant nation."
Through the years different needs have occasioned a variety of attempts to determine the definitional boundaries of Protestantism. Sometimes there may be theological or liturgical motives for restricting these boundaries. Some Anglicans, or members of the Church of England, for example, who stress how closely they are identified with the ancient catholic tradition, often resent being classified as Protestant at all. So do Lutherans of similar outlook, even though the term Protestant was first applied in 1529 on Lutheran soil. At another extreme, many Protestants refuse to include movements like the Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons in their ranks, even though these new nineteenth-century religious traditions flourished on Protestant soil and kept something of the Protestant impulse in their church life.
