Fast facts
- Began
- 1517 onwards, beginning in Germany with Martin Luther
- Founder / origin
- Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and in England a royal break under Henry VIII
- Followers
- Roughly 900 million to 1 billion, counting independent and non-denominational churches
- Figure from
- Pew Research Center, Global Christianity (2011) and later projections
- Where
- Sub-Saharan Africa, the United States, northern Europe, Brazil, South Korea
- Scriptures
- 66-book Bible; the deuterocanonical books are treated as useful but not scripture
- View of God
The five solas
- Sola scriptura — scripture alone is the final authority, not popes or councils
- Sola fide — justification by faith alone, not by works
- Sola gratia — by grace alone
- Solus Christus — through Christ alone, with no priest as mediator
- Soli Deo gloria — glory to God alone
The main families
Lutheran, Reformed/Presbyterian (Calvinist, with predestination), Anglican/Episcopal (which sits between Catholic and Protestant in worship), Baptist (adult baptism by immersion, congregational independence), Methodist, Anabaptist and Mennonite, and the vast world of independent and non-denominational churches. Pentecostal and Evangelical Christianity is covered separately because it now behaves as its own movement.
There is no central authority, which is why estimates of the number of Protestant denominations run into the tens of thousands.
Practice
Sunday service centred on a sermon, hymns or worship music, personal Bible reading, and two ordinances — baptism and communion — usually understood as symbolic. No confession to a priest, no purgatory, no veneration of Mary or the saints.
The Islamic view
Where it meets Islam, and where it differs
Common ground
- Direct access to God with no priest standing in between — much closer to Islam than the Catholic model.
- Rejection of images, statues, relics and prayers to the saints. Reformed churches in particular are austere on this.
- High regard for scripture and for personal reading of it.
Where Islam differs
- , and the atoning crucifixion.
- Salvation by faith alone. Islam holds faith and action to be inseparable, and no one bears another's sin.
- Sola scriptura raises the obvious question: which scripture, in which , in which manuscript tradition, translated by whom.
Talking points
- Because they hold to scripture alone, scripture is the whole conversation. Ask them to show you the word '' in it, or a verse where Jesus (PBUH) says he is God and should be worshipped.
- James 2:17 — 'faith without works is dead' — is a good, gentle way into why Islam refuses to separate belief from action.
- They already reject statues and prayers to saints. Ask what principle drove that, and follow it one step further.
- The 1 John 5:7 comma, absent from every early Greek manuscript, is worth raising calmly with someone who values manuscript evidence.
Avoid
- Do not assume evangelical positions apply to a liberal Anglican, or vice versa. Ask which church.
- Do not treat their sincerity as ignorance. Many know their Bible better than the average Muslim knows the Qur'an.
Sources
- Pew Research Center, Global Christianity (2011)
- Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, on 1 John 5:7
- Bible: James 2:17; Mark 12:29
- Qur'an 4:171; 53:38–39
This overview describes the tradition as its own followers describe it. The Islamic view is kept in its own section above so the description stays honest.
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