Hillerbrand - Encyclopedia of Protestantism – Volumes 1-4

New York: Routledge, 2004.

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-92472-6 (hbk)

 

Protestantism, alongside the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions, has been one of the three major manifestations of the Christian religion ever since the sixteenth century. Its total number of adherents is estimated to be roughly 391,000,000, to which should probably be added another 345,000,000 who are members of so-called independent traditions, most of which are distinctly Protestant. While statistics of this sort are not always reliable, one may well conclude that Protestants at present comprise some 40% of world Christianity, with Roman Catholicism and Orthodox churches comprising the rest. Protestantism is not confined to Europe and North America but has been, since the nineteenth century, a truly global phenomenon.

 

Unlike Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, however, Protestant Christianity is divided not only geographically and culturally, but also theologically and ecclesiastically. There is no single Protestant Church as such the way there is, despite various diversities, a single Roman Catholic Church. Quite the contrary, there are dozens upon dozens of Protestant churches. Some of these, such as the Anglican Communion, are worldwide in scope and distribution of membership; others, such as the Church of the Prussian Union, are confined to a single country or are solitary church bodies or congregations, such as the independent snakehandling churches of the Appalachians in the United States. Despite such diversity, which Catholics in the past used to buttress their own truth claims (since truth, as Bishop Bossuet noted in the seventeenth century, must be one, not many), all of these traditions, however, have staked out the same truth claims as have the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. Until the modern era, all Protestant churches insisted on the exclusive prominence of Christian truth and, each in its own way, echoed the ancient Catholic notion that “extra ecclesiam nulla salus”—outside the church there is no salvation.

 

This diversity of Protestant traditions raises the question of their essential identity. The name “Protestant” itself comes, of course, from the “protest” which the supporters of the Reformation lodged in 1529 at Speyer against the decision of the Catholic estates and rulers to carry out the stipulations of the Edict of Worms against Martin Luther and his followers. The term is, therefore, a negative one, even though some interpreters of the action in 1529 have pointed to the root meaning of the Latin “protestari” as denoting “to bear witness.” Still, while Protestantism may well be defined with a number of positives, it is also correct to call Protestant all those individuals and churches that repudiate the authority and office of the Roman pontiff of the Catholic Church.

 

This Protestant diversity finds its obvious explanation in the absence of a central authoritative entity—either person or structure—in Protestantism that would constitute normative authority (and power). The Protestant recourse to the Bible, or the Word of God, as ultimate authority has produced multiple divergent interpretations of the Bible. And ever new and different theological or biblical interpretations have frequently assumed structural concreteness. Yet, it is neither fair nor theologically accurate to contrast the relatively homogeneous Catholic and Orthodox churches with the bewildering diversity of Protestant denominations—and to find in this diversity proof positive for the non-viability of Protestant truth claims. The Roman Catholic tradition can sustain its theological homogeneity through the process of excommunication or inciting the voluntary separation of dissenting members. Thereby, the Roman Catholic Church is at once able to retain its relative homogeneity but also to become the source of the larger diversity within Christendom. The very existence of Orthodox and Protestant traditions suggests that the Roman Catholic Church has not been able to sustain its truth claims universally but has sloughed off dissent within its ranks. In Protestant churches, excommunication and dissent likewise have led to separation, but with a difference—the frequent result of the establishment of new groups and churches. The phenomenon of new ecclesial structures has been particularly prominent in places where the legal freedom to do so existed. The absence of “established” churches in North America and the non-European world has allowed dissent from the mainstream to express itself organizationally, sociologically in the form of new churches, each of which advances its own truth claims.

 

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Kagawa, Toyohiko (1888–1960)

 

Japanese social reformer and evangelist. In the 1930s Toyohiko Kagawa was the most widely recognized Japanese Protestant in the Western world. Hailed by the U.S. press as “Japan’s Gandhi,” “Japan’s Schweitzer,” or “the St. Francis of Japan” because of his reputation for PACIFISM and selfless service to JAPAN’S poor, translations of his theological and economic writings were brought out by major publishers. He addressed over a million people in the United States and Europe on speaking tours in which he stressed his belief that the gospel demanded social and economic reform. Brotherhood Economics is the most concise expression of his vision of a world economy based on cooperative rather than capitalist enterprises. Especially admired by liberal Protestants, Kagawa delivered the Rochester Theological Seminary’s Rauschenbusch Lectures in 1936. A biography published in 1932 by the Protestant missionary William Axling was crucial in establishing the reputation that led Kagawa to such venues.

 

Kagawa was born in 1888 in Kobe, Japan. As a teenager he was introduced to Christianity by Southern Presbyterian missionaries, Drs. Charles Logan and Harry W.Myers. “It is not the Bible alone which has taught me what Christianity means, but the love of these two homes,” he later said. This concern with concretely following the gospel was dramatically expressed when, at age twenty-one, he took up residence in the slums of Kobe, preaching in the streets and turning his new quarters into a homeless shelter. Beginning with this intimate work with the poor, he went on to found schools, hospitals, orphanages, and cooperatives. His first major book, A Study of the Psychology of the Poor (Hinmin shinri no kenkyu) (1915), drew on his slum experience. He later used the royalties from a best-selling autobiographical novel, Crossing the Death Line (Shisen o koete) (1920) and other writings to fund his social programs. Extending his social concerns into the political realm, he also became a union leader and founding member of Japan’s socialist party.

 

On the eve of World War II Kagawa collaborated with the U.S. missionary E.Stanley Jones and other Protestant leaders in efforts to avert war that included international prayer vigils and lobbying government officials. After World War II his efforts centered on cooperatives and world peace. He died in 1960.

 

See also Liberal Protestants and Liberalism; Rauschenbusch, Walter; Schweitzer, Albert; Social Gospel

 

References and Further Reading