Christians have many ways of practicing their faith — through the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox church, and the many Protestant denominations such as the Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians. All Christians share their belief in and acceptance of Jesus Christ, but they also differ in many important ways.

The Church first underwent a split into the Western and Eastern Church in the Great Schism of 1054. (For more details on the Great Schism, see Chapter 4.) Much later, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Protestant movements split the Western Church further into the Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations.

The word Protestant comes from “protest.” The Protestant faiths splintered from the Catholic Church because ordinary people protested against the Catholic institution and some of its conduct and practices.

The Protestant Faiths

In some ways, the Protestant churches are similar to the Catholic Church. Most believe in the importance of the Bible, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Triune God (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost), the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, and other Christian doctrines and practices.

The main distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism is that Catholicism is a religion of sacraments (seeing the spiritual enfleshed in the secular world) while Protestantism is more a religion of the bodiless Word of God. Sacramentality is the idea that everything reveals God. Over time, Protestantism has retained only parts of this concept. Protestants don't believe, as Catholics do, in the special significance of Mary. They don't believe in transubstantiation (that the Eucharist is after declaration by a priest, the Body and Blood of Christ). They believe that priests and ministers are merely members of the laity, trained in the practices of that particular religion, and not that members of the ordained ministry are actually mediators of God's grace. Finally, they see religious statues and icons more as forms of idolatry than as windows to the spiritual world.

Another fascinating difference is in approaches to the Bible. Catholics believe that the Church — as the authentic moral and theological authority — should be their guide in interpreting the Bible. Peter, who was the first Bishop of Rome, wrote, “There is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation” (2 Peter 1:20). Protestants challenged this relationship. Many Protestant faiths accept personal interpretation of the Bible as they do a personal (unmediated) relationship between each person and God.

The Protestants also denied that the pope, as the head of the Church hierarchy in matters of faith and morals, was infallible in matters of faith and morals, a belief known as the Petrine Primacy or apostolic succession. In Catholic ideology, the pope is infallible because he is the representative of Christ on earth. He follows a line of succession back to St. Peter, the first bishop of the early Church, who received his appointment directly from Jesus.

There was also a difference in how Protestants and Catholics worshiped. Until recently, Catholics celebrate the Mass with a highly structured, formal ceremony conducted in Latin (today, most Catholic churches in the United States and many other countries have made a switch to having services in the vernacular). Protestant forms of worship were simpler: Believers prayed in their native tongues and there was more preaching. In some denominations, the service was completely unstructured, allowing the congregation a greater degree of participation.