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Protestantism detailed in encyclopedia
Aug. 4, 2005
Richard N. Ostling, Associated Press Writer
www.southbendtribune.com
More articles on this topic: BooksRevealing facts and stories fill new resource
Today’s history lesson begins with Balthasar Hubmaier.
Who?
Hubmaier, known to few Baptists today, was a Catholic theologian and vice rector of Bavaria’s University of Ingolstadt when the Protestant Reformation broke out. Soon he became a parish priest in Austria, offending church authorities by offering the laity wine as well as bread at Mass.
He fled to exile in Switzerland, where early Protestants arrested and tortured this proto-Baptist for turning against baptism of infants. Expelled again, he landed in the present-day Czech Republic, where Catholic authorities arrested, tortured and then burned him alive as a heretic in 1528.
Hubmaier’s story is among many revealing episodes tucked into the new Encyclopedia of Protestantism.
In 2003, a multi-volume work with the same title was published by Routledge but at $695 it’s mainly for research libraries. The new one-volume, 628-page encyclopedia (Facts on File, $75) is an invaluable resource for small libraries and history buffs.
Protestantism is the sort of dizzyingly complex phenomenon that most needs an encyclopedia to make sense of things, yet for years there was none, despite such works covering Catholicism, Judaism and world religions.
Amazingly, the new Protestant encyclopedia was written by only one author, the Rev. J. Gordon Melton, America’s premier fact-finder and trivia-monger on religions large and small.
Melton’s California-based Institute for the Study of American Religion continually collects data on new religions that crop up. He profiles them in his Encyclopedia of American Religions, a fascinating volume with ample sects appeal. The latest edition (Thomson Gale, $305) depicts 2,630 U.S. and Canadian faith groups.
Whatever their disagreements, the ever-splintering Protestants all basically follow the principle Martin Luther proclaimed at a 1521 imperial tribunal that ordered him subject to death for the rest of his life:
“Unless I am convinced by Scripture or by right reason (for I trust neither popes or councils, since they have often erred and contradicted themselves) — unless I am thus convinced, I am bound by the texts of the Bible; my conscience is captive to the Word of God.”
Despite the agreed biblical basis, it’s not easy to define what Protestantism is. Melton acknowledges that Protestants would consider some groups in his encyclopedia as “beyond the boundaries” and that the groups distanced themselves “from the Christian and Protestant tradition.” Yet he includes them as part of broad Protestant culture.
Examples: Christian Science, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Herbert W. Armstrong’s one-time sect, Unitarianism and the Unity School of Christianity.
Another distinctive category is the “African Initiated Churches” that rejected ties to Protestant missionaries from Europe and North America and incorporated tribal traditions.
Examples, all thriving:
• The Zion Christian Church, founded in 1925. With some 5 million members, it’s now the largest denomination in South Africa.
• Congo’s Church of Jesus Christ on Earth through the Prophet Simon Kimbangu. Its faith-healing founder had preached only three months when Belgian colonists arrested him; he spent the rest of his 30 years in prison.
• The African Israel Church Nineveh of Kenya, known for colorful processions and revival of Old Testament dietary and purification laws.
• The 95 Pentecostal-flavored Aladura denominations, which have spread from Nigeria across West Africa and beyond.
In fact, Melton is particularly useful in roving past rather familiar churches in the West to depict variegated movements and leaders in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
He also scans the history of Protestant foreign missions, which did not originate with pioneer U.S. Congregationalists (1810) or British Anglicans (1799) but the Moravians (1732) and young Lutheran pietists who went to India with aid from Denmark’s king (1705).
Melton also provides crisp and balanced summaries of the past century’s wars over Bible interpretation and careful treatments of such treacherous terms as “fundamentalism.”
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