Lutherans and Quakers and Baptists, oh my!

Dear Ask Isabel readers,

I had to take a long absence for restoration, rejuvenation, and some retooling of how this column will work and what platform will host it. I’ve decided that a pace I can maintain is biweekly publication. And I find it a lot harder to research platforms and set up a new site than to write the columns, but when I have completed that process, I’ll make it easy for you to follow me to the new place.

Thanks, and see you in two weeks. Don’t forget to subscribe so that you get a reminder in your inbox.

And now, on to today’s column.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Dear Isabel,

I grew up Protestant, but I am still so confused about what all the denominations are about. Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, etc. -- are they all Protestant? Why do they have all these different names? Why are there so many of them to begin with?

Bewildered by Sects

Subscribe now

Dear Sects,

The TL;DR is yes, they are all Protestant. As for why there are so many and where their names come from, there’s no short version of that. Except, I suppose, what my late father-in-law used to say about political movements. He said a person could write their history and title it, And Then There Was a Schism. Same with religion.

Let’s look at Protestant Christianity, since that’s the example you gave. Until the 16^th century, there were pretty much two forms of Christianity: Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. In 1517, a Catholic monk in Wittenberg, Germany, named Martin Luther wrote up his suggestions for points of Catholic practice that ought to be debated—ninety-five of them—and nailed the list to the doors of churches in the city. This sounds pretty in-your-face to us, but actually, in the German Catholic Church, it was not only acceptable to nail things to church doors, but it was the required procedure for theses (points of debate).

Luther wasn’t the first to raise these questions, and he almost certainly didn’t intend to start a whole new movement. But, in retrospect anyway, it was a turning point. Luther and others who made similar criticisms were excommunicated (kicked out of the Catholic Church), but when that happens to people, they don’t typically go away. They think they’re being good Christians (and often they are), so they carry on. If many people with the same interpretation of Christianity start gathering, then presto: a new church. Maybe just one congregation, or maybe a whole movement.

Subscribe now

They started popping up all over the place in 16^th-century Europe, fueled by such things as rampant corruption in the Roman Catholic Church and by the fact that thanks to the invention of the first Western printing press, the Bible was now being printed and distributed more widely than ever. Also, these Bibles were no longer just in Latin, but in the languages people spoke, like German, Spanish, French, and English. You didn’t need to be a scholar or monk to read them, though you did need to know how to read. Literacy rates were still only around twenty percent at the beginning of the 16^th century, but they rose like rockets.

So, you mention Lutheran churches. They trace their roots back to—ta da—Luther and the German Protestants of the mid-1500s. Another critic of the Catholic Church around that time was Jean (John) Calvin, who set up a whole theocratic government in Geneva. A lot of the churches of our time that stem from Calvin’s form of Protestantism are Presbyterian.

That name points to one of the ways different sects of Christianity get their names: because of how they’re organized. Episcopal churches give authority to special clergy-above-clergy called bishops; “episcopal” comes from the Latin for “bishop.” Congregational churches give the most decision-making power to each individual congregation. A presbytery is a regional council of clergy and lay elders, and that’s who holds the authority in Presbyterian churches.

Another way sects get their names is if they name themselves after some element of their belief or practice. Or, occasionally, others pick the name for them, possibly as an intended insult. Baptism is the ritual by which most Christians are formally admitted to the community of Christianity. Baptists think that instead of baptizing infants, as Catholics and many others do, we should hold off on baptism until the person is old enough to decide for themselves that they want to follow the church’s teaching. Methodists got that name for the methodical way they went about deepening their spirituality. Quakers was a mean nickname for members of the Society of Friends, because they would sometimes tremble with religious ecstasy during their religious meetings. They didn’t think there was anything wrong with trembling with religious ecstasy, though, so they accepted the name cheerfully enough. The Shakers, who are a different sect from Quakers, were given that name for the same reason.

But religion isn’t only a history of schisms. Sometimes different sects unite. The Unitarians and Universalists merged in 1961 and became Unitarian Universalists. The United Church of Christ (UCC) was formed in the 1957 merger of numerous denominations. Even the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, which split apart during the reign of King Henry VIII of England, have had some conciliating talks about how they might possibly one day consider maybe reuniting.

Subscribe now

I could give parallel examples in other world religions, but you asked about Protestantism and it’s enough to say that there are many sects of Islam yet they are all Islamic, there are many varieties of Judaism that are all Jewish, etc. In other words, people have lots of firmly held opinions, and in no realm of life do they hold onto them more firmly than in religion. So it is no wonder that people choose to gather with those who share their take on the nature of Jesus, who should hold authority and make the decisions for the church, the way to learn about their faith, etc. And each gathering has a name.

But although many of these schisms have been accompanied by enough tears, blood, and persecution to fill a horror movie festival, once passions cool and a couple hundred years go by, a lot of the differences stop mattering much. So someone might well grow up Presbyterian, move to a new place where there isn’t a Presbyterian congregation and decide to join the Methodists, then discover that in their next home, the UCC church has the best preaching, or the liveliest young adult group, or the best post-service coffee. And they will feel right at home.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Next time (July 21, 2026): I’m an atheist, and sometimes I just go along with prayer or a religious ceremony for the sake of other people, people who do believe. Is this hypocritical? Do other atheists do this?