Why Be A Protestant?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

On Hallowe’en 508 years ago, Catholic monk and university professor Martin Luther issued “95 Theses” against church policies, the first of many dramatic eruptions that eventually split Europe and created Protestantism as a major new branch of the Christian religion.

Today, Protestants number 629 million, according to De Gruyter Brill’s  World Christian Database, along with 1.72 billion Catholics, 292 million Orthodox, and 409 million “Independents” in Africa, Asia, and Latin America whose modern-day indigenous churches are separate from those founded by Protestant missionaries from overseas.

American culture from Jamestown and Plymouth onward was dominated by the Protestant faith, so much so that only two Catholics have been elected president of the United States. But the Pew Research Center announced in its 2014 Religious Landscape Study that self-identified Protestants were less than half the U.S. population for the first time, at 46.5%. Pew’s latest Landscape from 2023-24 puts them at only 40%, with 19% Catholics, 3% in other Christian groups, 7% in other religions, and 29% religiously unaffiliated. Meanwhile, U.S. Protestants have also suffered their share of recent scandals and splits.

“Separated Brethren”

At Catholicism’s Second Vatican Council, the 1964 Decree on Ecumenism restored charitable relations toward Protestants and acknowledged “the truly Christian endowments from our common heritage which are to be found among our separated brethren.” However, the council also reaffirmed the dogma that Jesus Christ established the church headed by the Roman popes, which uniquely  provides “the fulness of the means of salvation.”

Past Protestant polemics like “The Two Babylons or The Papal Worship” (1853) and “Secrets of Romanism” (1949) can still be purchased online, but such writings have largely disappeared. These days, it’s even unusual that a new book on sale next week has a title like “Why I Am Protestant” (InterVarsity Press), even with a respectful tone. The author of this succinct and readable case is Beth Felker Jones, a professor of theology at Northern Seminary and formerly Wheaton College, both in Illinois. She slides past many doctrines and practices that  continue to divide these two huge Christian branches, for instance the Catholic celibacy requirement for priests in most countries.

Jones writes that the Protestant Reformation rejected a widespread assumption in medieval Catholicism and instead insisted that our salvation “does not depend on the church, priests, and sacraments, nor does it depend on human action or meritorious work. Salvation is sheer gift. It comes to us by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone.”

On that question, an historic 1999 accord between the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation, later endorsed by other international Protestant bodies, echoes New Testament language with this summary affirmation: “Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works.”

Ending “Corruption”

Luther’s original fury was roused especially by Catholic priests’ selling of “indulgences” to lessen penalties due for sins after death in the state of Purgatory. Catholicism’s Council of Trent denounced the “corruption” of such sales in 1563. However, the church still exercises the power to grant indulgences (minus money) and this is a central aspect of Rome’s 2025 Holy Year observance, as “Religion Q & A” explained in January: www.patheos.com/blogs/religionqanda/2025/01/explainer-what-is-romes-holy-year-what-are-indulgences/.

Another classic dividing line is the locus of authority The classic Protestant slogan sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”) uplifts the Bible as the one unique source of truth against which all church teachings and practices are to be judged. Protestants combined this with Bible translations and worship in common languages instead of Latin. As Jones frames matters, “Scripture is not God” but “is our primary mode of revelation about him,” and it is “different from and prior to any other authority for Christian faith and life.” The Vatican Council stated that the Holy Spirit inspired everything the Bible’s writers teach, “without error,” but believers are to give the church’s “sacred tradition” equal devotion.

Otherwise, Jones asserts that the Catholic Church is simply not “catholic” enough (!) because that word means “universal” and legitimate Christians of vast variety exist outside the Papal communion – according to the above Database some 1.3 billion of them in 50,000 distinct denominations. She insists that “the church cannot be identified with any one institution, such as that of the papacy,” which is “good news” because the faith “takes diverse forms in particular times, places, and communities.” She does not address the related fact that the pope personally appoints Catholic bishops across the world after a secretive process while Protestants’ national or regional bodies choose their own leaders through comparatively open elections or consultations.

Jones makes for an interesting exponent of Protestantism in that her own parents are converts to Catholicism, and likewise friends and colleagues, while she remains a member of the United Methodist Church of her childhood. Also notable is her candid depiction of the three chief Protestant “difficulties,” namely an oft-confusing basis of “authority,” rampant “individualism,” and “fragmentation.” On the last point, her own UMC recently experienced a traditionalist walkout by 7,658 local congregations, a fourth of the total, in America’s largest church schism since the Civil War.

The 21 Million

Individualism is seen in a massive change in the makeup of U.S. Protestantism with the increase of local congregations wholly independent of traditional denominations that ruled American Protestantism for well over three centuries. This newswriter contended that the “Story of the Year” in religion for 2022 was the U.S. Religion Census report that these “non-denominational” independents number 21 million in 44,319 congregations, the largest U.S. Protestant grouping by far, constituting more than 13% of the nation’s churchgoers.

As for authority, the Protestant sola Scriptura governs. But emphasis on personal Bible reading and the “priesthood of all believers” created what Catholics see as an unstable absence of well-defined and agreed teaching. Protestant pluralism reached a crisis point with the modern advent of skeptical Bible scholarship. Jones wants Christians to unite behind the teachings in the shared creeds from the church’s early centuries and  bypasses the doctrines as defined in the classic confessions issued by the founders of Protestantism, which can be researched here: https://apostles-creed.org/documents-creeds-catechisms-confessions/.

After pondering all these problems, Jones concludes that they are not the result of the Protestant Reformation but of the inevitable rise of modernity with its personal conscience, liberties, and democracy, which Protestantism both created and reflected. Properly understood, this leaves behind “patriarchy, misogyny, racism, nationalism, and the politics of power.”  Protestantism’s built-in “egalitarian impulse” means “the church of grace is not one of hierarchy and authoritarian rule but one in which each and all are called to God’s holy priesthood.”

[Full disclosure: The Religion Guy is a lifelong Protestant who has participated over the years in several “evangelical” and “mainline” denominations.]