Church History in Plain Language

A focused reading path

Protestant History

The Protestant story in 22 chapters, from the medieval forerunners to today. Each chapter is part of the full history, so you can always step sideways into the wider story.

Protestantism began as a protest inside the Western Catholic Church in 1517. It quickly divided into several families: Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and Anabaptist. Later came Baptists, Methodists and Pentecostals. Today it numbers around 900 million people, most of them in the Global South. Read the steps in order for a continuous story. For the context, read the Catholic chapters too, such as Catholic Reformation and Renewal and Vatican II.

Useful diagrams on the way: the Reformation family tree, the Protestant family tree to today, and the Catholic–Orthodox–Protestant comparison. You can also see only the Protestant dates on the master timeline.

  1. Forerunners. A century before Luther, Wyclif in England and Hus in Bohemia already appealed to Scripture against popes. Hus was burned for it.

    Step 1 · Era 4: The Christian Middle Ages · 590 – 1517The Late Medieval CrisisThe Black Death, the Avignon papacy, the Great Western Schism, conciliarism, Wyclif, Hus, and the fall of Constantinople.

  2. The world Luther was born into: lively devotion, anxiety about purgatory, Erasmus's Greek New Testament, and the new printing press.

    Step 2 · Era 5: The Reformation · 1517 – 1648Christianity on the Eve of ReformWhat religion was like around 1500: the parish, purgatory, saints and indulgences; humanism and Erasmus; and the printing revolution.

  3. The spark. A monk's search for a gracious God leads to justification by faith, the 95 Theses and the break with Rome.

    Step 3 · Era 5: The Reformation · 1517 – 1648Martin LutherLuther's struggle, the 95 Theses, justification by faith, Worms, the German Bible, the Peasants' War and the Lutheran churches.

  4. A second Reformation. Zwingli and Calvin push further, creating the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition.

    Step 4 · Era 5: The Reformation · 1517 – 1648Zwingli, Calvin and the ReformedZwingli in Zürich, the Lord's Supper controversy, Calvin's Geneva, the Institutes, predestination, and the spread of Calvinism.

  5. Those who said Luther and Calvin stopped halfway: the Anabaptists, ancestors of Mennonites and of the free churches.

    Step 5 · Era 5: The Reformation · 1517 – 1648The Radical ReformationThe Swiss Brethren, believers' baptism, the Schleitheim Confession, Münster, Menno Simons, and other radicals.

  6. England's very political Reformation, and Scotland's Presbyterian one. The roots of Anglicanism.

    Step 6 · Era 5: The Reformation · 1517 – 1648Britain's ReformationsHenry VIII, Cranmer, Edward VI, Mary I, the Elizabethan Settlement, John Knox and the Scottish Reformation.

  7. Division turns into war, until Westphalia (1648) ends a century of bloodshed and sets the map of Protestant Europe.

    Step 7 · Era 5: The Reformation · 1517 – 1648Wars of Religion and WestphaliaWars in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Britain; the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre; the Edict of Nantes; the Thirty Years' War and the Peace of Westphalia.

  8. What Protestantism changed: married clergy, literacy, hymns, the idea of vocation, and the slow road to toleration.

    Step 8 · Era 5: The Reformation · 1517 – 1648Reformation LegaciesThe long-term effects of the Reformations on marriage, women, literacy, art, music, memory, work, science and toleration.

  9. Puritans try to finish the English Reformation. Out of their ferment come Baptists, Quakers, Congregationalists and New England.

    Step 9 · Era 6: The Age of Reason and Revival · 1648 – 1789Puritans, Baptists and QuakersPuritanism, the English Civil War, Cromwell, the Pilgrims and New England, Baptists, Quakers, Bunyan, and the Toleration Act.

  10. A “religion of the heart” revives cold orthodoxy. The Moravians launch Protestant world mission.

    Step 10 · Era 6: The Age of Reason and Revival · 1648 – 1789Pietists and MoraviansSpener and Francke's Pietism, Halle, Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians, the 100-year prayer meeting, and the Jansenists and Quietists.

  11. Reason puts faith on trial. Protestants answer with rational defense, liberal adaptation, or revival.

    Step 11 · Era 6: The Age of Reason and Revival · 1648 – 1789The EnlightenmentThe scientific revolution, Descartes, Locke, Deism, Voltaire, Hume, Kant, the Galileo affair, and Christian responses to the Age of Reason.

  12. John and Charles Wesley's Methodist revival transforms English-speaking Protestantism.

    Step 12 · Era 6: The Age of Reason and Revival · 1648 – 1789John Wesley and the MethodistsThe Holy Club, Aldersgate, field preaching with Whitefield, Methodist organization, Charles Wesley's hymns, and the split from the Church of England.

  13. Revival sweeps America: Edwards, Whitefield, and the birth of American evangelicalism and the Black church.

    Step 13 · Era 6: The Age of Reason and Revival · 1648 – 1789The Great Awakening in AmericaThe First Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards, Whitefield's tours, Old Lights and New Lights, enslaved Africans and Christianity, and the American Revolution.

  14. Protestants finally go global: Carey, Judson, Livingstone, Hudson Taylor, and the women who outnumbered them.

    Step 14 · Era 7: The Age of Progress · 1789 – 1914The Great Century of MissionsCarey and the missionary societies, Judson, Livingstone, Hudson Taylor, Catholic missions, women missionaries, African and Asian Christians, and colonialism.

  15. Evangelical faith fights slavery and urban misery, from Wilberforce to the Salvation Army and the Social Gospel.

    Step 15 · Era 7: The Age of Progress · 1789 – 1914Saving Souls and SocietyChristian campaigns against slavery, Christian responses to the Industrial Revolution, and movements for social justice.

  16. A nation of denominations: camp meetings, Methodists and Baptists, the Black church, and Moody.

    Step 16 · Era 7: The Age of Progress · 1789 – 1914Christianity in AmericaThe Second Great Awakening, Finney, Methodists and Baptists on the frontier, the Black church, Mormons and Adventists, Catholic immigration, and Moody.

  17. Darwin and biblical criticism split Protestants into liberals and conservatives, a divide that still shapes them.

    Step 17 · Era 7: The Age of Progress · 1789 – 1914Faith, Science and Liberal TheologySchleiermacher's theology of feeling, Hegel, Strauss and the quest for the historical Jesus, Darwin, Marx and Nietzsche, and liberal Protestantism.

  18. Barth's “No” to liberal theology, and the Confessing Church and Bonhoeffer against Hitler.

    Step 18 · Era 8: The Age of Ideologies · 1914 – presentWorld Wars and the Confessing ChurchThe First World War, Barth and neo-orthodoxy, the churches under Nazism, the Barmen Declaration, Bonhoeffer, the Holocaust, and the Armenian genocide.

  19. After four centuries of splitting, Protestants lead the movement for Christian unity, and reconcile with Rome on justification (1999).

    Step 19 · Era 8: The Age of Ideologies · 1914 – presentThe Ecumenical MovementThe origins of ecumenism, the World Council of Churches, church unions, Catholic and Orthodox involvement, and major agreements.

  20. Fundamentalists, Billy Graham's evangelicals, Martin Luther King Jr., and the culture wars.

    Step 20 · Era 8: The Age of Ideologies · 1914 – presentEvangelicals and FundamentalistsThe Fundamentals, the Scopes trial, Billy Graham, Lausanne, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black church, the Religious Right, and global evangelicalism.

  21. The newest and fastest-growing Protestant family, born at Azusa Street in 1906.

    Step 21 · Era 8: The Age of Ideologies · 1914 – presentPentecostals and CharismaticsOrigins in the Holiness movement, Azusa Street, speaking in tongues, healing, the charismatic renewal, and Pentecostalism in the Global South.

  22. Most Protestants now live in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Where the story goes next.

    Step 22 · Era 8: The Age of Ideologies · 1914 – presentThe Global SouthThe southward shift of Christianity, African Initiated Churches, liberation theology, the Korean and Chinese churches, and the "next Christendom."