Protestantism was born in 16th-century Europe, which had been primarily Catholic until that time (except for small clusters of Jews throughout the continent and the Muslim Moors in Spain). The centuries of rule had taken their toll on the Catholic hierarchy, which by the 15th century seemed corrupt to many. It controlled vast property and wealth, its priests were sometimes immoral, and it demanded too much money from all ranks of society. Protestantism denied the authority and infallibility of the pope and advocated a “return” to the “true” church, with an emphasis on scripture.
Calvinism
Calvinism, based on the teachings of French religious leader John Calvin (1509-64), emphasized five principal tenets: the total depravity of humans, God’s unconditional “election” of certain people to eternal salvation, Jesus Christ’s atonement for human sins being limited only to the sins of the elect, the inability of the elect to refuse salvation, and their inability to fall from their state of grace. Calvinists believed that God’s will was supreme and that the task of the elect on earth was to compel everyone to carry out God’s will. No one on earth had any way of knowing who was predestined for salvation, but a blameless life was an indication that a person might be elected.
Calvinism flourished in the New World initially, especially among Puritans, but by the end of the early 18th century it was in decline. The logic of predestination suggested that there was little point in leading a moral life, because the elect could not fall from grace. In addition, the seeming arbitrariness of predestination gradually lost its appeal in a society which emphasized rewards and success for merit and hard work.
Conflict with Catholicism
Protestants believed that Roman Catholics were not true Christians. They denied the supremacy of the pope and despised the ritual of the Catholic service, believing that it obscured rather than revealed the true nature of God. Their first attempts were to reform Catholicism, not to destroy it. However, Martin Luther and others soon realized that they would have to leave the church rather than change it.
The Puritans who founded Massachusetts had no tolerance for Catholicism. Any Catholic found in the colony was banished; if he or she returned, the penalty was death. Most other 17th-century colonies also oppressed Roman Catholics to a greater or lesser degree. Exceptions were Maryland, founded as a Catholic colony in 1634, and Pennsylvania, in which all peaceable worshipers of God were welcome. After the Glorious Revolution in England (1688), the Catholic Calvert family who had established Maryland was ousted, and the population became increasingly Anglican.
The French and Spanish explorers who settled Canada and the Southwest were Roman Catholics. The missionaries who sailed with them converted many Indians, both forcibly and voluntarily; part of the original Spanish mission to the New World was to convert “heathens” to the Catholic faith. Franciscan friars founded missions throughout the Rio Grande Valley between 1598 and 1630, and Jesuit Father Eusebio Francisco Kino (1654-1711) founded many missions in Arizona in the 1690s. In 1768 the Jesuits withdrew from North America.
Denominationalism
Denominationalism is a system of voluntary church affiliation. Rather than being coerced by the state to join a particular church, people who live under this system are free to choose a church of their own. It is up to the church to recruit new members without assistance from the state.
Some colonies, such as Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, always operated under this system. In most colonies, however, the state enforced a system of either Anglicanism or Congregationalism. In spite of the first amendment to the Constitution, church and state were not separated in all states until 1833, when Congregationalism was officially disestablished in Massachusetts.
The many differing brands of Protestantism found among the population of the colonies, not to mention other faiths such as Catholicism, made denominationalism almost essential for survival in British America. Colonists in places such as New York soon realized that they could not bar Protestants from their rights as citizens simply because of the church at which they worshipped.
Protestantism and the English Reformation
The English Reformation differed from the Lutheran and Calvinist Reformation in continental Europe in an important respect: Its roots were political rather than theological. In fact, Henry VIII opposed Luther; he wrote a defense of the seven sacraments in 1521 for which the pope rewarded him with the title “Defender of the Faith.”
King Henry VIII (1509-47) used the pope’s refusal to grant him a divorce from Catherine of Aragon as his excuse to deny the supremacy of the church in England. In 1534 Henry created the Church of England, named himself as its supreme head, and granted his own divorce. The Church of England made no immediate attempt to change Catholic doctrine; apart from the denial of papal supremacy, Anglicanism and Catholicism seemed identical.
In 1547, when Edward VI became king, the Protestants took control of the government. They instituted significant changes to the church, removing images from churches, forbidding prayer to saints, and repealing the tradition of clerical celibacy. Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury during this period, wrote the Book of Common Prayer and the Forty-two Articles, which stressed justification by faith and the supreme authority of the Bible.
Under Catholic Queen Mary (1553-58) many of these reforms were repealed, and Cranmer and dozens of other Protestant leaders were executed. When Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603) took the throne in 1558, she restored the Protestant reforms. In 1571 the Forty-two Articles were shortened to the Thirty-nine Articles, which were not quite radical enough to please many Puritans. Thus, the English Reformation did not go far enough for this minority, thousands of whom eventually sailed to North America to worship as they pleased.
Evangelical Protestantism
Evangelical Protestantism emphasizes individual conversion, the authority of the Bible, and moral and social reform. Evangelicalism began with Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius (1560-1609), who argued that each human being had the power to choose or refuse salvation. This directly contradicted the Calvinist doctrine of predestination.
The prominence of Evangelicalism in early North America began in 1726, when Dutch Reformed minister Theodorus jACOBus Frelinghuysen of northern New Jersey demanded that members of his congregation openly repent of their sins and admit their reliance on the Holy Spirit. Church membership grew, and others, notably William Tennent, Sr., and his sons Gilbert, John, and William, followed Frelinghuysen’s lead. In the 1720s and 1730s ministers who graduated from Tennent’s Log College spread Evangelicalism further through the colonies.
Probably the most famous of all the evangelical ministers of the period is Jonathan Edwards of Northampton, Massachusetts. Edwards believed in justification by faith, not in the Arminian creed of salvation by choice, and his dramatic, emotional sermons led to a great rise in church membership during the mid-1730s. Edwards published a book about the religious revival he helped to bring about that attracted the attention of George Whitefield, who preached throughout 1739 and 1740 on the need for spiritual reawakening. The Great Awakening peaked with Whitefield’s tour of the colonies. It was responsible for a temporary schism within the Presbyterian Church, for the conversion of many Puritan New England congregations into Baptist ones, and for a sudden rise in the number of Baptist congregations in Virginia.
Lutheranism
Martin Luther argued that civil powers had a right to reform the church. This was an important tenet of Puritanism as it evolved in New England, where status as a church member meant status as a citizen. Luther denied that priests were any closer to God than were other Christians, because God spoke directly to all persons of faith. He held that only two sacraments—baptism and the Lord’s Supper—could be justified on the basis of the New Testament. He believed in justification by faith, with faith being the unquestioning acceptance of God. Faith could not be earned; it was a gift from God.
Swedish Lutherans founded a settlement called New Sweden in the Delaware River Valley during the 1630s; the first Lutheran congregation in North America was established in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1638. By 1669 Lutherans had established churches in Albany and Manhattan. When Pennsylvania was established in the 1680s, Lutherans arrived in large numbers. Their common language and culture led them to join in worship with German Reformed congregations.
In 1742 Henry Melchior Muhlenberg arrived in North America and formed the Lutheran Church’s first American governing body. Muhlenberg used this Pennsylvania Ministerium to return the Lutheran Church in North America to the teachings of Luther.
Puritanism
Puritanism had its roots in Calvinist doctrines of the depravity of humans and the supremacy of the will of God. Puritanism stressed the covenant between God and people and strict standards for church membership. Everyone was required to attend church, but only those who experienced conversion were entitled to be full church members and to have their children baptized. Only full church members could vote; Puritans trusted no one but the elect to decide on matters that affected the community.
New England was the stronghold of Puritanism. In the 1630s thousands of Puritans migrated to New England with the purpose of establishing a “New Jerusalem”—a modern city of God. In 1636 the Puritans established Harvard College across the river from Boston to ensure that their ministers would be educated. Ideally, the Puritan minister (always male) was better educated and informed about Scripture than his parishioners, but he was not an intermediary between them and God. Instead, a minister was considered a community leader and a teacher.
As the population of New England grew and the high standards for church membership ensured that membership rolls declined to the point of endangering the faith, Puritan leaders agreed to the “Halfway Covenant” of 1662. According to this covenant, the children of righteous Christians who were not church members were still eligible for baptism.
Quaker Doctrine
The Society of Friends (Quakers) followed the teachings of George Fox (1624-91). He rebelled against the strict Puritanism of his parents’ home, from which he ran away in his youth. Fox believed that religion was something experienced in the head and the heart, not externally by repeating set prayers or listening to ordained clergymen. When
Fox was 22, he believed he heard God speaking to him. He and his followers preached the doctrine that the enlightening power of the Holy Spirit was conferred directly on all people. Therefore, all members of a congregation were equal; there was no need for ordained clergy. In Quaker meetings any person who felt moved to speak of his or her reception of the Holy Spirit was encouraged to do so.
The doctrine that women and men were equal in the sight of God, both capable of receiving the “inner light” and equally deserving of attention when speaking in meetings, was unique to Quakers. Women held few positions of power in other Protestant denominations until the 20th century. Quakers did not accept the sacraments. They embraced pacifism and were the first denomination officially to condemn slavery.
Quakers were the targets of Puritan persecution throughout New England, except in tolerant Rhode Island. They eventually found a welcome in Pennsylvania, the colony established by Quaker William Penn in the 1680s. Inspired by notions about the equality of all peoples, Penn and his Quaker followers initially did not move onto Native American lands without purchasing them. Both Natives and Quakers benefited from peaceful trade and from sharing technology and knowledge. However, in the 1730s, as Quakers lost control of the boundaries between Indians and colonists, violence intensified between the Euro-Americans and Native peoples.
Further reading: Frank Lambert, Inventing the “Great Awakening” (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2001); Martin E. Marty, Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America (New York: Penguin, 1985); Gary B. Nash, Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania, 16811726 (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1968; reprinted 1997); Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Kenneth Silverman, The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).
—Stephanie Muntone
World History
