Mark Noll: Protestantism Today

Anniversaries have the potential to renew a sense of the past in the present, to spark a fresh awareness of important but neglected milestones, and to prompt the best kind of intellectual debate over the deeper significance of by-gone persons and events. They can, as is well known, also be put to evil purposes. One of the truly black days in recent history was June 28, 1989, when the Serb firebrand, Slobodan Milosevic, used the 600th anniversary of the Battle of the Blackbirds in 1389 (when a small force of Slavs defeated a much larger army of Saracen Turks) to set off the disastrous ethnic cleansing that ravaged the former Yugoslavia.

Yet positive benefit from anniversary celebrations certainly accrued for all who in 2009 marked the 200th anniversary of the births of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln (born, as it happens, on exactly the same day). In 2011 commemorations of the 400th anniversary of the King James translation of the Bible and the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War have been producing a remarkable range of thoughtful retrospections.

So, one can hope, it will be as the clock ticks down to October 31, 2017, the quincentennial of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. On that day 500 years ago a little-known German monk, Martin Luther, posted 95 theses (in Latin) on the door of the Castle Church in Saxon Wittenberg in order to prompt a debate on the Catholic church's promotion of indulgences. The dispute on indulgences (certificates purchased to reduce time in purgatory for relatives or oneself) soon got out of hand. Within four years, this once obscure monk stood before the most exalted ruler of the western world and told the Holy Roman Emperor, the Habsburg Charles V, that he was "bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience."

Eight years later in 1529, those who followed Luther in being willing to exit the Catholic church if their reforming goals could not be met were given the name "Protestants." The occasion was another high-level conclave convened by Charles V where he heard an assemblage of German princes declare, "We are determined by God's grace and aid to abide by God's Word alone, the holy gospel contained in the biblical books of the Old and New Testaments." Within only a few more years, this German "protest" against the emperor's attempt to restore the religious unity of Europe had spread to England, Scotland, the Netherlands, France, parts of eastern Europe and even outposts in Spain, Italy, and other centers of continuing Catholic strength. Within less than a century, Protestants had established European beachheads in the New World.

And today? Nearly 500 years after Luther's initial provocation in Wittenberg, Protestants and Protestant-like movements are all over the map, both literally and figuratively. The recently published "Atlas of World Christianity" enumerates about 500,000,000 adherents to churches and denominations that trace their descent directly or indirectly from 16th century Protestant beginnings and several hundred millions more in "independent" churches with Protestant origins or strongly Protestant characteristics. To read more, click here.