“The primacy of the Bible as the only source of revealed truth” would seem to exclude any other source as being considered.
I think that possibly the fact that they consider the Book of Mormon as a source of revealed truth keeps them outside the Webster definition.
I’m pretty sure Elder Cunningham was overstating the situation when he said “So the Bible is actually a trilogy and the Book of Mormon is ‘Return of the Jedi!’”
The answer is very simple: Mormons don’t consider themselves Protestants nor identify as such. Hence, they are not Protestants. It’s much simpler to take everyone at their word.
As for why they don’t consider themselves Protestants, that’s a longer story. Mormons believe that they are a restoration of the early Christian church. They believe that everything basically from Constantine on was wrong. How can they be part of a “protest” movement when they don’t acknowledge the legitimacy of the reformers or the original Catholic church?
Now, in reality, many of the Mormon ideas and doctrines are directly borrowed from Protestant thought, especially those ideas popular at the time that Joseph Smith was cobbling together his hybrid religion. However, they reject the name and heritage of Protestantism (as well as have a large amount of unique wacky beliefs), so I don’t see any point to forcing the Protestant label on them.
You assumption is wrong, which comes as no surprise given that everything you post on this board is wrong. I pointed out that there’s no benefit in posting an OP exactly identical to one that was posted a few days earlier. Do you disagree, or are you just going to post worthless snark?
Thanks, this was informative. I was confirmed and baptized PECUSA and never thought/was told about this distinction about priestly lineage.
I wouldn’t consider Episcopalians / Anglicans to be Protestants either. To me, “Protestant” is the line of Christianity that branched off from Catholicism starting with Martin Luther. Wikipedia has the same sentence as Webster’s dictionary (as cited in the OP) as its first sentence but then goes on to add “It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regard to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.”
The Church of England split off from Catholicism in an earlier, different schism (Henry VIII). I don’t see any more reason to characterize them as Protestants than for characterizing Eastern Orthodox Christianity as Protestant.
But I’m probably paying more attention to history and less attention to doctrinal theology.
I asked my Episcopalian minister about this once, and he just hemmed and hawed. I’m with you.
Here is the Episcopal Church’s description of its history.
Thanks (and I agree).
I find it amusing that the Chaplains Corps even recognizes that there are LDS Chaplains. It is my understanding that they (LDS bishops) are lay people called upon to serve from a “higher” authority. They have not had any formal training.
To be nitpicky, the Episcopal Church’s legal name of its corporate entity is “The Foreign and Domestic Mission Society.” That’s what it says on it’s legal documents and such.
Its constitution and canons refer to itself as “The Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA” which for decades was shortened to PECUSA in common parlance. About a decade ago - in an effort to style itself as a more global church (which it is) and de-emphasize it’s protestant roots in favor of a more via media (“middle way”) between Protestants and Catholics - it rebranded itself as simply “The Episcopal Church” or commonly, TEC.
I personally, as an Episcopalian myself, do not consider it either Protestant or Roman Catholic, but a reformed catholic faith that blends the best (and sometimes the worst!) of both worlds.
I had a friend who for a while wanted to be an LDS Chaplain. They have formal military training, but not formal LDS training. It’s an unusual situation, to say the least.
Ah, then you are misunderstanding what an LDS chaplain is and does. The LDS church does not “recognize” their chaplains; they endorse the member’s desire to serve as a military chaplain. An LDS chaplain is not a bishop nor a stake president. On top of that, the military does require that they have formal training. Here is the LDS church’s information page about military chaplains (currently found in two countries’ militaries: the US and France).
They have had formal training. BYU, for one, does have a theology program specifically designed for those who wish to enter the military as a chaplain. See the link I posted just above for more information on that.
Martin Luther kicked off the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Henry VIII was initially a good Catholic and opposed the new Lutheran teachings–that’s where English monarchs first got the “Defender of the Faith” title from the Pope–but by the 1530s he decided to break with the Roman church for his own reasons. Exactly what this meant for the Church of England and how far reform should go in England was a divisive topic and there were many factions within English political and religious thought. Lutheran Protestant ideas most certainly played a major role in the debate on the Reformation of the English church. About the time of Henry’s break with Rome, John Calvin was beginning to publish the works which lead to Calvinism, the second generation and even more radical and sweeping version of Protestantism. The Scottish church wound up going Calvinist (Presbyterian) in a big way, but Calvinism and Calvinistic ideas had many proponents in the English church, including both Presbyterians and congregationalist Calvinists.
The question of how radically Protestant the Church of England should be was and I guess still is a topic of debate–relatively moderate reforms vs. Puritans who wanted it to be thoroughly Calvinistic, and “high church” liturgical vs. “low church” evangelical, and the more recently developed idea that the Anglican churches should be a “middle way” or bridge between Protestant and Catholic. Again, though, the Protestant-ness of the Church of England was a major political and legal as well as theological issue, and certainly by the 18th century the Church of England was legally defined as Protestant.
In my experience, Mormons (LDS and some other smaller groups) and Jehovah’s Witnesses are widely considered to be non-Protestants, especially by groups universally recognized as Protestant. Also, I believe that Mennonites and Amish may not consider themselves to be Protestant because their movement was originally in opposition to both Catholicism and high-church Protestantism.
Are any breakaway groups from Eastern Orthodoxy considered to be Protestant?
For an interesting read, check out the original dedication to the King James Version of the Bible. It doesn’t explicitly refer to a “middle way”, but it refers to being “traduced by popish persons” on one hand and “maligned by self-conceited brethren” on the other hand.
Anonymous (Bible): King James Version of the Holy Bible - Christian Classics Ethereal Library (with modern spellings)
There are other denominations whose baptisms aren’t accepted, though, who are Protestant. There are a few denominations that don’t believe in baptizing in the name of the Trinity, which is a requirement for an acceptable Catholic baptism. They take this from scriptures that mention being baptized in the name of Jesus, but don’t spell out that they are baptized “in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
Some, like Oneness Pentecostals, go so far as to say the Trinity doesn’t actually exist, and that God was just in multiple places at once. He’s all one person, instead of three eternally existing persons in one being. And that person’s Name is Jesus. The scripture doesn’t say “in the Names,” they argue. And if there’s only one Name, there’s only one person.
If you wonder, other biblical literalists take those scriptures I mentioned above to either just be a convenient shorthand, or believe that these people were Jews and thus already baptized in the name of the Father and the Holy Spirit, and thus only needed the extra baptism in the Name of Jesus. Unlike some Christians, these people don’t believe you specifically have say “I baptize you in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit [Ghost]” in order for the baptism to qualify as being in that Name.
EDIT: It is kinda interesting that Pentecostals still consider themselves Protestant, as I guess since their differences in doctrine come from direct revelation in the early 1900s, it could be considered like Mormonism. I guess it’s just the primacy of the Bible that keeps the Protestant.
Lapsed Catholic here with two questions, not intended to derail the thread:
–What other Christian denominations don’t consider themselves “Protestant”? Amish? Mennonite? Seventh Day Adventist? Christian Scientist? Unitarian? Jehovah’s Witnesses?
–What “Catholic” elements remain in Anglicanism? Do they pray to saints as intercessors, for instance?