Lesson 2: Other Reform Movements: A.D. 1525-1648

By the end of this lesson, the student should:

(1) Understand the convictions of the Radical Reformers.

(2) Trace the development of Protestant theology in England.

(3) Understand the Counter-Reformation movement.

(4) Recognize the roots of denominationalism in the Thirty Years War.

While the Magisterial Reformers are the best known leaders of the Reformation movement, they are not the only Reformers active in the sixteen and seventeenth centuries. In this lesson, we will study some lesser known movements from this time period.

We will study the Radical Reformers who felt that the Magisterial Reformers did not go far enough in their rejection of Roman Catholic practices. We will see the beginnings of the English Reformation, a movement that took a much different route than the continental Reformation. We will also see the Roman Catholic response to the Reformation. While many of us are familiar with the Inquisition and Catholic persecution of Protestants, there was also an active reform movement within the church. Finally, we will see the rise of denominations within the Protestant movement.

In Lesson 1, we studied the Magisterial Reformers - Luther, Zwingli and Calvin. Zwingli went much further than Luther in his attempts to allow only worship practices that were commanded in Scripture. By rejecting any practices that are not prescribed in Scripture, Zwingli sought to restore New Testament Christianity in Zurich. However, two of Zwingli’s closest followers, Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz, believed that the Swiss church was still far removed from New Testament Christianity. They became known as “Radical Reformers.”

There were many branches of Radical Reformers. Some put great emphasis on mysticism and rejected all church tradition. Some abandoned orthodox doctrine in their search for mystical revelations. However, in this lesson, we will study the Radical Reformers that developed from the Swiss church. They are the predecessors of the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition.

Although they are called Reformers, many in these groups felt that the Reformation did not go far enough. In fact, some of the Radical Reformers said that even the Lutheran church was just a new form of Roman Catholicism. Instead of reforming the church, these Reformers tried to restore the church of the first century. They saw themselves as “restorationists” rather than “reformers.”

Principles that marked the Radical Reformers of the Swiss church include:

Separation of Church and State

One of the great differences between the Magisterial and Radical Reformers was the relationship between the church and state. The Magisterial Reformers believed in a Christian magistrate and close cooperation between the church and the state. They approved the concept of a state church (Lutheran in Germany; Zwinglian in Zurich; Calvinist in Geneva).

In Zurich, this issue arose when Felix Manz argued that the Lord’s Supper should be conducted in the language of the people rather than in Latin. Zwingli took this question to the city government. Manz and his followers insisted that this was not a question for government; it was a question for Scripture.

Since the New Testament did not teach an alliance between the church and state, the Radical Reformers rejected the concept of a state church in which civil government enforced theological truths. Following this logic, the Radical Reformers opposed forced tithes and sought to establish self-governing churches. According to the Radical Reformers, the state’s only responsibility in relation to the church was to allow freedom of conscience to each citizen. This opposition to a strong central authority continues in the “Free Church” tradition in Europe.

Believer’s Baptism

As Grebel and Manz began to look to Scripture for answers, they discovered that the New Testament never commands infant baptism. Biblically, the Radical Reformers could find no basis for infant baptism. Practically, they believed that infant baptism encouraged false confidence in people who had no personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Because of this, the Radical Reformers rejected infant baptism and insisted on “believer’s baptism” after profession of faith. Because of this, they became known as Anabaptists (“rebaptizers”) because they baptized adult believers even if they had already been baptized as infants. 

This issue became the primary point of contention between the Radical Reformers and Zwingli. In the sixteen century, baptism was more than a testimony of faith or a condition for church membership. Since the church and state were linked so closely, baptism was the way in which a new baby became part of the civil society. With believer’s baptism, the Anabaptists separated membership in a church from membership in the community.

► Supporters of infant baptism argued that Acts 16:30-33 implied baptism for children apart from their personal profession of faith. Supporters of believers’ baptism pointed to Acts 2:38 and similar scriptures to argue that baptism is meaningful only as an outward expression of inner faith. Read these scriptures and give your reasons for either believers’ baptism or infant baptism.

Discipleship

The Radical Reformers insisted that Christianity is more than doctrine, membership in a state church, or even personal inward experience. They insisted that true discipleship affects all areas of life. Because of this, the Radical Reformers were known for their commitment to applying the Christian faith in areas of social need.

The local church was important to the Radical Reformers because this was the community in which disciples were formed. Through mutual support, the local church helped each believer grow in the image of Christ.

Congregationalism

This principle is related to the importance of the local church for discipleship. While Luther and Zwingli at first emphasized congregational authority, they later abandoned this principle. The Radical Reformers held firmly to congregationalism. Decisions were made by the entire church membership. For the Magisterial Reformers, an entire community might be considered Lutheran or Calvinist, regardless of the private beliefs of individuals. By contrast, the Radical Reformers insisted that the visible church consists of members who have voluntarily joined themselves to the church. For them, the church is not the entire community but a group of individual believers who are committed to a local congregation.

Pacifism

Anabaptists, like many of their descendants today, taught that Christian love prohibits Christians from any warfare. As part of their commitment to complete obedience to Jesus’ commands, they determined to “resist not evil.”[1] When attacked, Anabaptists refused to defend themselves. While both Roman Catholics and Magisterial Protestants resorted to the sword to defend the church, the Reformed Reformers were committed to nonviolence.

Sadly, the story of the Radical Reformers shows the divisions that arose between the Reformers. In 1525, Zwingli was still pastor in Zurich. The city was Protestant and every infant was baptized into the church.

When Felix Manz refused to have his new baby baptized, the City Council ordered him and his followers banished from the city. In January 1525, the first Anabaptist congregation was formed in the village of Zollikon, near Zurich. In March 1526, the Zurich council ruled that anyone found rebaptizing would be killed by drowning.

Manz was drowned as a martyr in January 1527. By 1600, nearly 10,000 Anabaptists had been martyred, mostly by Protestants. Eventually the Anabaptists migrated to Moravia, where they found princes who tolerated their convictions.

[1] Matthew 5:39

Menno Simons[1] (1496-1561) became an Anabaptist leader at a critical time in the history of the Radical Reformation. Between 1525 when the Anabaptists were driven out of Zurich and 1535, several Anabaptist leaders had begun to teach heresy. Because they rejected church authority beyond the local congregation, it was easy for a false teacher to gain followers. Some leaders had even begun to preach a message of violent overthrow of the government. By 1535, the Radical Reformation was in danger of losing the truth. Menno Simons rescued the Anabaptists from heresy.

[2]

Menno Simons was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest at the age of 28. Although he was a priest, he knew nothing of Scripture. He later said, “I feared that if I read them (the Scriptures), they would mislead me!” He served as a priest while spending his evenings drinking and gambling.

After two years as a priest, Simons began to study the Bible. After several years of study, he came to understand that his Catholic doctrine was wrong. After a true conversion, he began to preach Protestant doctrine from his Catholic pulpit. A year later, he left the Catholic church and associated with the Radical Reformers.

Simons knew that the Anabaptists were rejected by both Catholics and Protestants. He also knew that many Anabaptists were following heretical teachers. Simons began to teach orthodoxy to the Anabaptists. For twenty-five years, he published Anabaptist literature, preached throughout Germany and the Netherlands, and helped to organize the Anabaptist movement.

He spent much of his life in hiding. The Emperor offered a reward for his capture. One man was executed for allowing Simons to stay in his home. Simons accepted this as the natural result of following Christ. “If the Head had to suffer such torture, anguish, misery, and pain, how shall his servants, children, and members expect peace and freedom as to their flesh?”

Simons moved the Radical Reformation from dangerous heresies back to an orthodox Christian faith. His influence was so strong that the Anabaptists became known as Mennonites.

[1] Mark Galli and Ted Olsen, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 166–168

[2]Image: "Meno simonis", retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meno_simonis.jpg, public domain.

The Political Beginnings of the English Reformation

Unlike the Lutheran, Anabaptist, or Calvinist movements, the English Reformation was sparked initially by a political issue, not a doctrinal question. Rather than justification by faith, believer’s baptism, or a particular view of divine sovereignty, Henry VIII separated from Rome over the issue of succession to the throne.

After eighteen years of attempting to father a male successor, Henry wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. When, for political reasons, the pope refused to grant the annulment, Henry convinced an English church court to declare his marriage to Catherine void. He then married Anne, who soon gave birth – to a daughter.

After the pope excommunicated Henry, the king convinced Parliament to pass the 1534 Act of Supremacy, declaring the king to be the head of the Church of England. Henry gave religious authority (the power to consecrate bishops, determine doctrine, and organize the liturgy) to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. Under Henry VIII, the split with Rome was primarily political.

In Church History 1, we reviewed the life of John Wycliffe, who inspired the first translation of the Bible into English. His translation was copied by hand but never printed. William Tyndale (1494-1536) printed the first English Bible.[1]

William Tyndale attended Oxford and later Cambridge. He was gifted with languages, speaking seven languages and reading ancient Hebrew and Greek. Like Luther, Zwingli and countless others, Tyndale was greatly influenced by Erasmus’ Greek edition of the New Testament. As he read the New Testament, Tyndale discovered the doctrine of justification by faith.

[2]

Although Tyndale was highly educated, he knew that most Englishmen had no access to God’s Word in their own language. He devoted his life to bringing the Bible to ordinary people.

After studying at Oxford and Cambridge, Tyndale requested permission to translate the New Testament into English. His bishop denied the request. Tyndale decided that there was no safe place for him in England; “Not only was there no room in my lord of London’s palace to translate the New Testament, but there was no place to do it in all England.”

Tyndale traveled to Europe to find a safe place in which he could work on the translation. He would never return to England. After traveling to several cities, Tyndale settled in Worms and completed the first English translation of the New Testament in 1525.

When this New Testament was smuggled into England, the archbishop of Canterbury ordered authorities to buy copies and destroy them.  Tyndale used the money from selling these copies to print another edition of the New Testament in which he was able to correct some printing errors from the first edition!

Tyndale knew that he might be killed for translating the Bible without church approval. This mattered less to him than his calling to make Scripture available in the language of his people. He wrote, “…if God be on our side, what matter is it who be against us, be they bishops, cardinals, popes.” From Germany, Tyndale moved to Antwerp where he spent nine years, improving the New Testament translation and beginning a translation of the Old Testament.

Tyndale’s translation was important both because it was the first translation and because it was so carefully translated. When the King James Version of the Bible was translated 100 years later, about 90% of the translation used the words of William Tyndale. Even the English Standard Version in 2001 continued to use a majority of Tyndale’s words. His influence continues almost 500 years after his translation.

In 1535, Tyndale was betrayed to the authorities and arrested for “heresy.” In October 1536, he was brought to the town square where a cross stood. When he refused to recant from his teaching, he was bound to the cross, strangled, and then burned.

Tyndale’s last words were a prayer, “Lord, open the eyes of the King of England.” His prayer was answered within a few years. In 1539, Henry VIII ordered that every church make a copy of the English Bible available to its members. The approved translation was published by Miles Coverdale, the first complete printed edition of the English Bible. Because of the king’s objections, Tyndale was not listed as a translator, but much of the translation was based on Tyndale’s work. Just as Luther’s translation of the Bible sparked the German Reformation, Tyndale’s translation was crucial for the English Reformation.

[1] Sources:
+ Mark Galli and Ted Olsen, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 349–350
+ John Woodbridge, Great Leaders of the Christian Church (Chicago: Moody Press, 1988), 201-205

[2]Image: "Gulielmus Tyndall", Rijksmuseum, retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portret_van_Engelse_priester_en_theoloog_William_Tyndale_Gulielmus_Tyndall_Martyr_tibi_causa_necis_(titel_op_object),_RP-P-OB-26.648.jpg, public domain.

The Spread of the English Reformation

Because his motivation was primarily political, Henry VIII approved only two significant changes in the Church of England: monasteries were banned and, after his early opposition to Tyndale’s Bible, the English Bible was approved for use in the churches.

Following Henry’s death in 1547, his ten-year-old son Edward VI took the throne.[1] During Edward’s six-year reign, a group of advisers moved the English church in the direction of Protestantism. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, led in this reform. He replaced the Latin services with the Book of Common Prayer in English. He wrote a summary of doctrinal beliefs for the Church of England that was based on Protestant principles.

Edward died in 1553 and Mary, the daughter of Catherine, Henry’s first wife, took the throne. A devoted Roman Catholic, Mary was nicknamed “Bloody Mary” after she burned nearly 300 Protestants, including Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and Bishops Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, at the stake.[3]

After Queen Mary’s death in 1557, Elizabeth I (daughter of Anne Boleyn) came to the throne. During her forty-five year reign, the Anglican Church moved towards Protestantism and the Bible was recognized as the final authority. The “Thirty-Nine Articles” defined the church’s doctrine in a Protestant manner.[2] The Church of England retained many Catholic worship practices while maintaining Protestant doctrine. This became known as the Via Media, the “Middle Way.”

[1] After Anne Boleyn did not have a son, Henry VIII had her executed on charges of adultery and married Jane Seymour. Henry finally had a son with Seymour.

[2] The Thirty-Nine Articles were a revision of Thomas Cranmer’s earlier Forty-Two Articles.

[3]“Be of good comfort, Mr. Ridley, and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace, in England, as I trust never shall be put out.”
- Bishop Latimer to Bishop Ridley as they were burned at the stake

The story of Thomas Cranmer is a fascinating story of God’s grace and of faithfulness in difficult times. Bishop Cranmer was a leader in the English Reformation. However, when the Roman Catholic Mary took the throne, she threatened to kill Cranmer if he refused to recant his Protestant positions.

Cranmer was arrested and held in prison with the threat of being burned at the stake. Fearing for his life, Cranmer signed a statement recanting his earlier teaching. He was then required to read a statement at Oxford’s University Church denying his evangelical beliefs. On March 21, 1556 Cranmer stood in front of a packed audience that was waiting for his statement. His enemies waited for him to deny his faith.

Cranmer began to read the speech that the officials had approved. Suddenly, to their shock, he stopped and said, “Now I come to the great thing which so much troubles my conscience, more than any thing that ever I did or said in my whole life….” Cranmer then renounced his earlier statement and affirmed his faith in the gospel.  

Cranmer was seized by the officials and taken to the stake to be burned. Priests begged him to reaffirm his recantation, but he refused. Facing death, Cranmer said that since his right hand signed the false recantation, “my hand shall first be punished; for when I come to the fire it shall first be burned. And as for the pope, I refuse him as Christ’s enemy, and Antichrist, with all his false doctrine.” Cranmer died after praying the words of Stephen from Acts 7, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. I see the heavens open and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”

In a moment of weakness, Thomas Cranmer’s faith failed. Like Simon Peter at the trial of Jesus, Cranmer denied his master. However, like Simon Peter, God was faithful and brought Cranmer back to faith. Finally, like Peter, Cranmer died as a martyr providing lasting testimony to the power of the gospel.

The English Puritans

Between 1567 and 1660, the Puritans sought to transform society with a second English Reformation. The Puritans did not oppose the unity of state and church, nor did they seek to withdraw from the Church of England. Instead, they sought to purify the church from within. The Puritans believed that the Anglican Church retained too many practices from the Roman Catholic Church: formal liturgy, vestments for the minister, saints’ days, the sign of the cross, and other Catholic practices. 

The Puritan movement had three periods of influence.

Period 1

Under Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603), Puritans tried to purify the church from within. Elizabeth listened to Puritan complaints, but made no changes in the church structure. By 1593, the Puritans had gained enough influence that Elizabeth convinced Parliament to pass a law against the Puritans in order to weaken their power.

Period 2

Under James I and Charles I (1603-1642), the Puritans were opposed by the monarchs. After the death of Elizabeth in 1603, James I came to power. Because he was influenced by the Calvinists, the Puritans hoped that James would reform the Church of England to a presbyterian church government in which people selected their own ministers. The “Millenary Petition,” signed by 1,000 ministers, asked James to “purify” the church. Instead, he rejected congregational control and the Puritans. He was committed to the “divine right” of the king to govern the church. He dissolved Parliament and ruled as an absolute monarch. James’ successor, Charles I, was even less friendly to the Puritans.

While some Puritans continued to seek reform during the reigns of James and Charles, others left the Church of England and became known as the Separatists. Some of the Separatists settled in Amsterdam, became committed to adult baptism, and established the English Baptist church. Another group of Separatists settled for ten years in Leyden before traveling on a ship called the Mayflower to establish a colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Approximately 20,000 Puritans immigrated to America between 1630 and 1640.

Period 3

In 1637, Charles I appointed William Laud as the archbishop of Canterbury. Laud tried to impose the English Book of Common Prayer on the Church of Scotland, sparking a rebellion by the Scots. Ultimately, the conflict grew into a Civil War between the Royalists (who wanted to retain the English episcopacy) and the Puritans (who wanted presbyterian control). The armies of the Puritans were led by Oliver Cromwell. The Puritans saw this war as a crusade for purity. They prayed before battles and sang hymns while fighting. Charles I surrendered to Cromwell in 1646 and was executed in 1649.

The Puritans controlled England until 1660. This was their period of greatest political power. They tried to set up England according to the model of Geneva under Calvin. However, divisions between the Puritans weakened their influence, and after Cromwell’s death the English welcomed the return of the monarchy and an episcopal form of church government. Puritanism survived only as a dissenting movement.

From this point, English Christianity included three groups:

1. The Church of England
2. Dissenters, who agreed that the church and state should be linked, but who wanted to reform the church (Puritans and Catholic)
3. Nonconformists, who opposed the link between church and state (Independents, Separatists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Quakers, and Baptists)

The Puritans who immigrated to America established the Massachusetts Bay Colony and had a powerful influence in the early days of the American colonies. Although they have often been mocked as extremists, the early Puritans sought to live in faithful obedience to God’s Word.

The Roman Catholic Church responded to the Reformation both with condemnation of Protestants and with internal reforms. The Catholic response included three aspects:

Condemnation of Protestant Books

Pope Paul III attacked Protestant ideas by unleashing the Roman Inquisition to seek out and kill Protestants. In addition, he published an “Index” of prohibited books that no Catholic was allowed to read. This Index, which was maintained until 1959, included books by the Reformers as well as Protestant Bibles.

The “Society of Jesus”

Like Martin Luther, the Spanish soldier Ignatius of Loyola had a dramatic conversion experience. While recovering from a battle wound, he began to read about the life of Christ. At the age of thirty, Ignatius abandoned his career as a soldier, traveled to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage, and began to study for the priesthood. Ignatius made two contributions to reform in the Roman Catholic Church.[2]

First, Ignatius developed a series of Spiritual Exercises for spiritual formation. Disciples spent four weeks in prayer and meditation. Each week focused on a different topic:

1. Man’s sinfulness
2. The kingship of Christ
3. The passion of Christ
4. The risen life of Christ

Second, Ignatius formed the “Society of Jesus” (Jesuits) as “soldiers of Christ.” The Jesuits restored the Roman Church’s vision for missionary outreach. Francis Xavier, the first Jesuit missionary, preached in India, Southeast Asia, and Japan.

The Council of Trent

Along with attacks on Protestantism, the church began to consider the need for reform from within. Pope Paul III called a council to meet at Trent, in northern Italy, to discuss problems in the church. The Council of Trent met in three sessions between 1545 and 1563.

The Council instituted reforms within the church. Because many priests were so poorly educated that they could not read the mass properly, the council provided seminaries to train priests. Since few worshipers knew Latin, the council called for priests to explain the mass in the language of the people. The council also reprimanded priests and musicians who did not treat the service with reverence.

The Council of Trent rejected the doctrines of the Reformers. The council reaffirmed the doctrine of transubstantiation. It rejected justification by faith alone as “a poison that destroys freedom.”[1] It reaffirmed the Catholic teaching that the Roman church is the only interpreter of Scripture. It reaffirmed the medieval sacraments, the mass as a sacrifice, prayer through the saints, and confession to a priest.

[1] Quoted in Bruce L. Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, 3rd edition (USA: Thomas Nelson, 2008), 277.

[2]“Teach us Lord, to serve as you deserve;
To give and not count the cost;
To fight and not heed the wounds;
To toil and not to seek for rest;
To labor and ask only the reward of knowing that we do your will.”
- Ignatius of Loyola

Francis Xavier (1506-1552) was the first western missionary to many parts of India and Japan.  Writing to his superiors in Europe, he called for others to follow him: “Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and go east to preach the gospel.”

After preaching in India, he moved to Indonesia and Japan. Xavier was the first to bring the gospel to Japan. Although he died within three years of his arrival, his mission continued to prosper. By 1577, one missionary predicted, “In ten years all Japan will be Christian if we have enough missionaries.” By the end of the century, there were hundreds of Christian churches, two Christian colleges, and 300,000 Christians in Japan.

Then in 1596, the Japanese government set out to destroy this “foreign religion.” In 1597, they crucified twenty-six Japanese Christians. During a fifty year period, at least 4,000 Christians were martyred. By the mid-seventeenth century, only a small group of Christians remained. In the 400 years since, Christians have struggled to reestablish a strong church. However, the success of Francis Xavier gives hope to those who once again seek to reach this nation with the gospel.

Xavier demonstrated a principle that became important in later Protestant missions. As long as a local custom did not violate biblical principles, he did not require converts to abandon their traditions. He understood that a Japanese Christian was Japanese, not Italian. He made a clear distinction between European culture and Christian faith.[1]

Although many missionaries failed to contextualize the gospel in this way, Hudson Taylor used this approach for Chinese evangelism in the nineteenth century. This became the model for twentieth century Protestant missions. Christianity does not require converts to abandon their culture.

[1]“Within a lodge of broken bark
The tender Babe was found,
A ragged robe of rabbit skin
Enwrapped his beauty round.”
- A Jesuit carol that contextualizes the Christmas story for the Huron tribe

Who is a Christian? Most Christians today agree that the universal church is made up of all true believers. The body of Christ is larger than one denomination. However, this understanding is relatively new.

In the Middle Ages, Christians saw themselves as united into one catholic apostolic church, regardless of differences of doctrine and practice. During the Reformation, the identity of the church became confusing because many separate church denominations were formed. Some Christians did not know what to think about Christians in other denominations.

In some situations, the local government tried to control the church. In the Lutheran areas of Germany, everyone was required to become Lutheran. The government would not allow any other Protestant churches to worship and they took the property of Catholic bishops. Lutheranism became a state religion. 

During the 1540s and 1550s, Lutheran princes fought Catholic armies in Germany. With the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, both sides agreed to the “territorial principle.” The ruler of each region decided the faith of everyone in his territory. As the map below shows, Europe was divided based on the religion of the leader of each territory.

During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, religious wars were fought between Catholics and Calvinists (Huguenots) in France, and between Dutch Calvinists and their Spanish Catholic rulers in the Netherlands. Like the medieval popes, the early Reformers attempted to use the power of the state to settle doctrinal disputes.

The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was the most prolonged religious war of the period. This began as a religious conflict in Germany and ended as a political war. In 1618, the new Catholic king of Bohemia, Ferdinand II, attempted to impose Catholicism on his Protestant subjects. The Bohemians revolted and offered the crown to Frederick V, the Calvinist ruler of a portion of Germany. This ignited a war between Catholics and Calvinists.[1]

Within two years, the Bohemians were defeated by the Catholics. The Lutheran king of Denmark, Christian IV, then attacked Ferdinand and the Catholic armies. He too was defeated.

King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, a Lutheran, then entered Germany to lead the Protestant forces. He won many victories before being killed in battle in 1632. For the last fifteen years, the conflict was political more than religious. It became a battle for territorial control, not religion. During these years, French and Spanish Catholics fought against each other to gain further territory.

In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia ended the war. Instead of the territorial principle of the Peace of Augsburg, this treaty allowed princes to tolerate both Protestants and Catholics within their territories. The pope was forbidden from interfering in German affairs. The church and state was now treated separately in Germany.

Prior to 1648, most Christians insisted that only one group of believers (their church) represented the Christian faith. However, by 1648, the religious wars in Europe had exhausted people on either side. From this point, most Christians accepted the idea of denominations ‒ separate faith communities within the universal church.

Between 1642 and 1649, the Westminster Assembly met to write the Westminster Confession of Faith. Some members of this Assembly (the Congregationalists) stated four principles that summarize the basis for denominations within the universal church:

1. Since man cannot always see truth clearly, there will always be differences of opinion about outward forms of the church.
2. These differences may not involve fundamentals of the faith, but they are important. They are important because every Christian should practice what he believes the Bible teaches.
3. Since no church has a complete understanding of divine truth, the universal church cannot be represented by any single church structure.
4. Separation does not require schism. It is possible to maintain differences as denominations while remaining united in Christ.

These principles became the basis for modern denominationalism. Rigid and extreme denominational loyalty can lead to division. However, properly understood, denominations allow individual Christians to worship according to their convictions while respecting the faith of fellow believers who hold different convictions.

► Conflicts between followers of Luther, Zwingli, the Radical Reformers, and Calvin show how quickly spiritual revival falls to personal, doctrinal, and political conflict. What areas of doctrine or practice bring division in the church today? How can we be faithful to our convictions while refusing to allow conflict to bring shame on the name of Christ?

[1] The Peace of Augsburg did not include Calvinists in the treaty, only Lutherans and Catholics.

While working on this lesson, I thought, “Writing about church history is discouraging! Catholics burning Protestants. Lutherans fighting wars against Catholics. Calvinists drowning Anabaptists. The history of the church doesn’t look very impressive.”

Then I remembered a motto that arose from the Reformation: “The church – reformed and always being reformed by the Word of God.” As long as the earthly church is composed of fallible people, we must return to the Word of God to be reformed.

This should inspire both humility and joy. The study of church history should inspire humility; no one has a complete grasp of truth. Previous generations had blind spots; so do we. What are our blind spots? I don’t know, but we should be humble enough to allow God to reform us through an ever-deepening knowledge of his Word.

The study of church history should inspire joy; just as God has worked through fallible Christians in the past, he will work through us today ‒ in spite of our limitations. As we are faithful to God, he will accomplish his purposes in and through us.

Cranmer, Thomas (1489-1556). Archbishop of Canterbury, he attempted to promote Reformation principles in England. Led development of the Book of Common Prayer. Burned as a martyr under Queen Mary.

Ignatius of Loyola (c. 1491-1556). Monk who founded the Jesuits (Society of Jesus) and led a “Counter-Reformation” in the Roman Catholic Church.

Latimer, Hugh (c. 1485-1555). English Protestant reformer and Bishop of Worcester. Burned at the stake under Queen Mary in 1555.

Ridley, Nicholas (c. 1500-1555). English Protestant reformer and Bishop of London. Burned at the stake under Queen Mary in 1555.

Simons, Menno (1496-1561). Anabaptist and Mennonite leader. Roman Catholic priest who became convinced of Reformation doctrine but differed from the magisterial reformers on believer’s baptism, pacificism, and the nature of the church.

Tyndale, William (1494-1536). Published the first complete English Bible. Martyred by King Henry VIII.

(1) Take a test on this lesson. The test will include dates from the “Key Events in Church History” timeline (1517-1648).

(2) Prepare a biographical summary of one of the following Christian leaders: Nicholas Ridley, Ignatius of Loyola, or Francis Xavier. Your summary should include three parts:

• Biography: When did he live? Where did he live? When and where did he die?
• Events: What are the most important events in his life?
• Influence: What was his lasting influence on the Christian church?

You have two options for presenting this summary:

• Submit a 2 page written paper to your class leader.
• Give a 3-5 minute oral presentation to your class.

(1) Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin are called the _________________ Reformers.

(2) Grebel, Manz, and the Anabaptists are called _________________ Reformers.

(3) List any three of the five principles emphasized by the Anabaptists.

(4) ________________________ became a leader of the Anabaptists and rescued the Radical Reformation from heresy.

(5) The English Reformation began as a political movement over the issue of succession to the throne. It was led by King _______________________.

(6) __________________________ printed the first English Bible.

(7) Archbishop ___________________________ led the Church of England to Protestantism. He replaced the Latin services with the __________________________.

(8) Between 1567 and 1660, the ______________________ led a second English Reformation.

(9) The Counter-Reformation was led by a Council that met in _____________ between 1545 and 1563.

(10) ____________________ was the first western missionary to Japan.

(11) The Peace of ____________________ in 1648 ended the Thirty Years War.