The Label of "Protestant". A Redux.
As you might know, the word "Protestant" denotes a splinter group of Christians that protested the Pope and The Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation period (1500-1650).
From the Oxford English Dictionary (the only dictionary worth its salt):
In the 17c., 'protestant' was primarily opposed to 'papist,' and thus accepted by English Churchmen generally; in more recent times, being generally opposed to 'Roman Catholic,' or ... to 'Catholic,' ... it is viewed with disfavour by those who lay stress on the claim of the Anglican Church to be equally Catholic with the Roman.
Like all great nicknames, it was originally a derogatory epithet that Roman Catholics created; with the idea being that Protestants were just disagreeable, obstinate... so on and so forth.
The Lutheran Church really embraced the epithet (Martin Luther being the person he was), but the Swiss and French breakaway Churches preferred the simple label of "Reformed" because they simply wanted to remove wayward practices happening in The Church Universal... with the practical goal of reinvigorating and resourcing The Roman Catholic Church herself.
Both epithets arose from the same seed bed of religious upheaval happening in The Roman Catholic Church: "Protestant" being more of a gutsy, tongue-in-cheek epithet, and "Reformed" as a more precise, well-mannered epithet.
In our day, the label of "Protestant" has been diluted to include Christians from all sorts of Churches... non-denominational, Pentecostal, Baptist, Methodist, the list goes on. To the extent that the label is now glossed over, and considered as a term that feels really vanilla, and innocuous.
So, here is my semi-regular reminder that it's not for no reason "Protestant" uses the word "protest" as the root noun. We have a rich heritage that's actually quite substantive. To the point that our uniquely Republican socio-politcal ethos is now the philosophical basis in all Continental, and American thinking.
