Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
10 May 2011
Christianity Part Four
PROTESTANTISM
Protestants date the beginning of their movement to 1517. On 31 October of that year,
a German monk went to the door of the Castle of Wittenberg and posted a notice. The
monk’s name was Martin Luther (left) and the notice he posted had a profound impact
on the world.
Ten years earlier, Luther had been in Rome and he had been shocked by the corruption he saw there. He was particularly upset by the sale of indulgences.
The church allowed people who had sinned against God to pay a fine and thereby have any punishment cancelled. The fines had turned into an important source of revenue for the church and the system was being abused.
Many came to look on the indulgences as a sort of license fee that allowed them to sin and to carry on sinning. Martin Luther took aim at the widespread misuse of indulgences in the notice he posted on the door of the Castle of Wittenberg.
This notice contained his now-
Copies of the theses quickly circulated all over Europe. Rome condemned Luther and demanded his surrender, but he was given protection by Frederick III of Saxony. This was the start of the Reformation.
It might have stopped right there if the church had been ready to reform itself from within; but, it wasn’t ready and it paid the price.
By the time Martin Luther died in 1546, a large part of Northern Europe had separated from the Roman Catholic Church. The fact that this happened so fast can probably be attributed to the level of disgust felt by many deeply religious people. They saw priests who had taken vows of poverty and chastity, living like royalty and keeping mistresses.
Religious wars were fought all over Europe until the Peace of Westphalia settled matters in 1648. The peace treaty set out the principle that the rulers of a region should determine the religion of that province or state. They could choose Roman Catholicism or Protestantism.
Ian Britton
The Protestants felt it was important to go back to the Bible as the source of their faith. They rejected many of the traditions that had developed as part of the Roman Catholic faith.
Protestants also believe that all people, whether ordained clergy of ordinary members of the congregation, have the same access to God.
The other major departure from Catholicism is that salvation comes from faith in Christ, rather than from good deeds or through some special contact between God and priests. This was an issue of major dispute between Martin Luther and Rome.
Luther believed that individuals must find their own path to eternal life through faith, whereas the Catholic Church taught that God’s grace could be added to through good works. The Catholic view being that a kind of surplus of goodwill could be built up by the church (sort of like a bank account) to be drawn on in times of need.
In their worship Protestants, more than most other Christians, stress the preaching of the Word of God as a way of building faith. They also celebrate the Lord’s Supper (Communion) as a remembrance of Jesus Christ’s time on Earth rather than in the belief that he is actually present.
Most Protestants de-
Many Protestant sects dislike the ornamentation and icons of the Catholic and Orthodox churches. In recent years, Protestant denominations have begun ordaining women as priests.
On those points, but on little else, most Protestants agree. Protestantism embraces a bewildering array of different expressions of faith.
Image credit
Jim Forest
Sources used in this series
Religions in Canada, Directorate of Human Rights and Diversity, Government of Canada.
The Encyclopedia of World Religions, Robert S. Ellwood (ed.) Facts on File, 1998.
Religion for Dummies, Rabbi Marc Gellman and Monsignor Thomas Hartman, For Dummies Publishing, 2002.
Religious Tolerance, Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Religion, CBC Montreal
Return to Christianity Part Three
© Canada and the World, March 2011
All rights reserved
SEVEN
DEADLY SINS
Since its earliest days, the Christian Church has taught its followers to avoid the seven sins that guarantee a difficult afterlife if not avoided.
The sins are:
Pride
Greed
Lust
Envy
Gluttony
Anger
Sloth
With the Protestant Church split into so many denominations (some sources say as many as 38,000) there are few uniform beliefs that cover all interpretations.
However, the doctrines of sola scriptura and sola fide are accepted by most faith groups.
Sola scriptura maintains that the Bible is the source of all instruction and authority for Protestants.
Sola fide says that salvation is only possible through faith in Jesus Christ.
According to the Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Religions there are roughly 500 million Protestants in the world.
In Canada’s 2001 Census, 8,654,845 people identified themselves as Protestants, representing 29.2% of the population. That’s a decline of more than eight percent from the previous Census of 1991.
In July 1505, Martin Luther was almost killed in a thunderstorm; the narrow escape had a profound effect on him and he vowed to become a monk.