What “Protestant” Means

With these words before us, I want to try to speak to you tonight on the subject, “Should Protestantism Be Liquidated?” That term Protestantism is often used in a very loose and careless way. It is perfectly true that in the beginning it bore not only a religious but also a political significance. But we need to remember that in the times when the Protestant movement was first brought into being, Church and State were very intimately connected in every European country, so that it was almost impossible to protest against anything of a religious character without at the same time making a protest concerning things political. Evangelical believers were first designated Protestants in the year 1529 after a formal protestation had been handed in at what was called the Diet of Spires, when a great company of ecclesiastics met together to consider the Lutheran movement and what their attitude should be toward it, and a number of the German princes and the representatives of fourteen cities entered a protest to the Diet when they refused to consider the liberty of any German principality to rid themselves completely of Romanism and endorse the new evangelical program if they so desired. The Diet of Spires held that the mass must he everywhere recognized and that no German principality should be permitted any other form of religious service than that of the Roman Catholic except the few which had already become what we today call Protestant. They themselves were simply called evangelicals. But after putting in this protest, the name Protestant was applied largely by the Roman Catholic adversaries to the evangelical group. Eventually, however, they took it over for themselves for they felt there was something in the name which was worth preserving. They were protesting against certain great doctrinal principles and certain practices which they honestly believed to be contrary to the Word of God.