The Church in History by Dr. T.Y. Hiter

hiterSometimes, people ask “Why all this talk about Lutherans and Anglicans and Calvinists?  Aren’t the real Protestants the American Evangelicals like Baptists and Methodists?”  Well, the answer has to be a qualified “maybe”.  Technically, of course, the answer is “no”.  Both Baptists and Methodists are technically part of the Anglican thread of reform, as are Presbyterians (Cumberland and otherwise) and, in their own way, Congregationalists, Campbellites and even Quakers.  Unitarians, too, when you think about it.  All these English-speaking Churches left Roman Catholicism as part of the English Reformation, and only later left the Anglican Church to form their own branches of Protestantism.  Also technically, none of these named Churches were at Speyer, and so couldn’t possibly have “protested” the political decisions made there.

But let’s face it: Our heritage, religious and otherwise, is English.  Even if we’re Pentecostals, the Pentecostal movement sprang from the Methodist tradition, which itself spent the first half of its life being Anglicans.  Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone were ordained Presbyterians who, becoming enamored of Baptist worship forms, changed horses in the middle of that stream.  Joined with the already-Baptist John Smith, the three started the whole “Restoration” movement, which eventually became the Church of Christ, the Christian Church and the Disciples of Christ.  Are they “Protestant”?  Well, yes, but technically…,

Perhaps more important in any discussion of Protestantism, though, is the work of certain other continental reformers, most of whose names, and whose Churches, are rarely even named in American History books.  One of these was a fellow named John Hus.  Hus and the Hussites predated even Luther in their opposition to the Bishop of Rome.  Hus was a Czech who lived (and died) in Bohemia.  He was executed in 1415, over a hundred years before Luther posted his theses.  His work among the people of Central Europe was very instrumental in bringing people into the Protestant camp after Luther did get started.

Ulrich Zwingli was another Protestant reformer about whom we hear little, but again, his work was enormously important.  A Swiss, Zwingli was roughly contemporary with Luther, but disagreed with him in several particulars.  Zwingli opposed the Roman hierarchy, but also opposed the Anabaptists.  Like Calvin, he believed in the expository sermon as the primary tool of a reformist preacher. Johannes Bader was yet another.

If it seems like Northern Europe seems to have produced more than its share of reformers, it may indeed be so.  It was, after all, a good deal further from Rome to Germany, Holland or England than it was from Rome to Austria, Southern France, Northern Italy and Spain! It is probably not surprising that the North Sea was more receptive to reform than the Mediterranean.