Protestant Denominations Overview

At a glance

“Protestantism” is a family of families, not one church. Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Anabaptist, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, evangelical, and restorationist streams share some Reformation roots and diverge on baptism, the Lord’s Supper, church government, and the gifts of the Spirit.

A note written for Lutheran worship will miss a Pentecostal, and a note written for Baptist baptism will miss a Presbyterian. Use this page to pick the profile that matches the person.

Origin and timeline

Protestantism is a family of families, not one church. Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Anabaptist, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Restorationist, and Adventist streams arise across the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, with Pentecostalism exploding in the twentieth. The dates below are starting points. The linked profiles carry the detail.

• 1517+ — Lutheran
• 1520s–60s — Reformed / Presbyterian
• 1525+ — Anabaptists (Mennonite, Amish, Hutterite)
• 1530s+ — Anglican
• 1600s+ — Baptists
• 1700s — Methodism
• 1800s — Restorationist / Adventist movements
• 1900s — Pentecostal / charismatic growth
• Late 20th c.+ — Non-denominational evangelicalism

Key figures by family

Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Menno Simons, the early Baptists, Wesley, Azusa Street leaders, and Restorationist teachers each generate distinct emphases. A Pentecostal and a Lutheran do not teach the same sacramental theology. The names below are the people each family actually quotes.

• Luther — Lutheranism
• Calvin / Knox — Reformed
• Cranmer / Hooker — Anglican
• Menno Simons — Anabaptists / Mennonites
• Wesley — Methodist
• Early Baptists; Pentecostal pioneers; Campbell/Stone; Ellen White (Adventist)

Shared patterns and real differences

Nearly all historic Protestant confessions reject papal jurisdiction and teach some form of Scripture as the final rule. Beyond that, they divide. Lutherans baptize infants and confess a bodily presence in the Supper. Baptists baptize believers and usually call the Supper a memorial. Presbyterians often do both infant baptism and a spiritual, not bodily, presence. Anglicans keep bishops and a Prayer Book and disagree among themselves about what the Supper is.

• Shared: Scripture as the final public rule, stated in different formulas
• Shared: rejection of papal jurisdiction
• Divided: infant baptism and believer’s baptism
• Divided: bodily presence, spiritual presence, or memorial
• Divided: bishops, elders in courts, or the local congregation

Practices across the map

Worship runs from a sung Anglican Eucharist to a sermon-centered Baptist service to a Pentecostal meeting with prayer for healing. Some churches call baptism and the Supper sacraments. Others call them ordinances. Growth in Africa, Latin America, and Asia has changed which of these forms a visitor is most likely to meet.

• Liturgical and non-liturgical worship
• Sacraments or ordinances
• Weekly communion, monthly communion, or less
• Global churches, not only North Atlantic ones

Texts they argue from

Lutherans and Reformed churches start from Romans and Galatians on justification. Baptists and many evangelicals start from Acts on the order of belief and baptism. Pentecostals start from Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 12–14 on the gifts. Restorationist churches put Acts 2:38 at the center of baptism. The same New Testament is cited for opposite practices. Which verses a church treats as the rule, and which it explains in light of the others, is the practical difference.

• Romans 3–5
• Galatians 2
• Acts 2:38

  “Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins,”

• 1 Corinthians 12–14

  “Now concerning spiritual things, brothers, I don’t want you to be ignorant.”

The Catholic account, in brief

The Catholic Church teaches that Christ founded one visible Church, that Scripture is read with the apostolic tradition, that there are seven sacraments, and that the Mass is the sacrifice of the cross made present. Historic Protestant confessions reject the papal office and, in different degrees, those sacramental claims.

The Second Vatican Council’s decree on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio (1964), calls baptized Protestants brothers and sisters in Christ. It also says that the division is a wound, and that Reformation communities have not kept the Eucharistic mystery in its fullness because they lack the sacrament of Holy Orders as the Catholic Church understands it.

What the families share

The shared break is authority. The Augsburg Confession, the Westminster Confession, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and Baptist statements all refuse a pope who can bind the whole Church, and they make Scripture the rule by which other teachers are judged. They do not then agree on what Scripture requires. Infant baptism, the presence of Christ in the Supper, election, and church government are the usual forks.

How far each family moved from medieval practice also differs. Confessional Lutherans kept infant baptism, a weekly or frequent Supper, and a bodily presence. Zwingli’s Zurich and later Baptist churches treated the Supper as a memorial and, in the Baptist case, dropped infant baptism. Anglicans kept bishops and a set liturgy and left room for more than one reading. Later movements, Methodist, Pentecostal, restorationist, and Adventist, added their own marks.

Denomination pages

Each family has its own profile: dates, people, what they teach, and how they worship. The notes below are only a map.

• Lutheranism
• Reformed and Presbyterian Churches
• Anglicanism and the Episcopal Church
• Anabaptists
• Baptists
• Methodism
• Pentecostalism
• Evangelical and Non-Denominational Churches
• Churches of Christ and Restorationism
• Seventh-day Adventism

Lutheranism

Lutherans descend from Martin Luther’s protest in 1517 and from the Augsburg Confession of 1530. Confessional Lutherans baptize infants, teach that baptism regenerates, and confess Christ’s body and blood in, with, and under the bread and wine. They reject transubstantiation, the Mass as a sacrifice for the living and the dead, and papal jurisdiction. Justification, in the Book of Concord, is by faith alone.

In the United States the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (1847) subscribes strictly to the Book of Concord. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (1988) is the large mainline body. They share a history and do not share one ruling on ministry or morals.

• Key text: Augsburg Confession (1530); Book of Concord (1580)
• Baptism: infants, as regeneration
• Supper: sacramental union, not a memorial and not transubstantiation
• Full profile: Lutheranism

Reformed and Presbyterian Churches

This family runs from Zwingli in Zurich and Calvin in Geneva to Knox in Scotland, the Synod of Dort (1618–1619), and the Westminster Confession (1646). It stresses God’s sovereignty and covenant. Many Presbyterian churches baptize infants as children of the covenant. The Supper is a means of grace by the Spirit in Calvin’s teaching, and closer to a memorial in Zwingli’s. Government is by elders in a session, a presbytery, and a general assembly.

“Reformed Baptist” means Calvinist doctrine with believer’s baptism and congregational life. It is not Presbyterianism.

• Key texts: Heidelberg Catechism (1563); Westminster Confession (1646); Canons of Dort (1619)
• TULIP is a later classroom word for Dort, not a 1619 document
• Full profile: Reformed and Presbyterian Churches

Anglicanism and the Episcopal Church

The Church of England broke with papal jurisdiction under Henry VIII in 1534, took a Protestant shape in Cranmer’s Prayer Books under Edward VI, and settled under Elizabeth I in 1559. The Thirty-Nine Articles were agreed in 1563. Anglicans keep bishops and a liturgy. Parishes range from Anglo-Catholic to evangelical to liberal. The Episcopal Church is the American province, organized in 1785–1789.

In 1896 Pope Leo XIII ruled in Apostolicae Curae that Anglican orders are invalid. Anglicans reject that ruling. Provinces today also disagree with one another on the ordination of women and on same-sex marriage.

• Key texts: Book of Common Prayer; Thirty-Nine Articles
• Parties: high, broad, and low
• Full profile: Anglicanism

Baptists

Baptists began in English Separatism in the early 1600s, not in the ministry of John the Baptist. John Smyth’s congregation in Amsterdam (1609) and Thomas Helwys’s return to England are the usual start. They baptize believers, usually by immersion, govern the local church, and typically treat baptism and the Supper as ordinances. General Baptists taught that Christ died for all. Particular Baptists, authors of the 1689 Confession, taught a definite atonement.

The Southern Baptist Convention formed in 1845 in a split over slavery. It is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Many non-denominational churches teach a Baptist pattern without the name.

• Key texts: First London Confession (1644); Second London Confession (1689); Baptist Faith and Message (2000) for the SBC
• Not the same movement as the Anabaptists of the 1520s
• Full profile: Baptists

Methodism

Methodism began with John and Charles Wesley’s Oxford circle in 1729 and with John’s assurance at Aldersgate on 24 May 1738. Wesley preached grace that goes before a person’s response, justification by faith, and holiness of life, which he called Christian perfection: a whole love of God and neighbor, not a life without mistakes. He never meant to found a separate English church. In America the Methodist Episcopal Church organized at the Christmas Conference of 1784.

The United Methodist Church formed in 1968 and split in the early 2020s, with the Global Methodist Church as the large traditionalist exit. The African Methodist Episcopal Church (1816) is a distinct Black Methodist body. George Whitefield’s Calvinistic Methodists are not Wesley’s Arminian stream.

• Key texts: Wesley’s standard sermons; the Articles of Religion
• Aldersgate: 24 May 1738. American church: 1784
• Full profile: Methodism

Pentecostalism

Pentecostalism grew from the Holiness movement. Agnes Ozman’s tongues experience in Charles Parham’s Topeka school on 1 January 1901, and William J. Seymour’s Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles from 1906, are the events the movement itself marks. Classical Pentecostals teach a baptism in the Holy Spirit after conversion, with tongues as the usual first sign, and they expect healing and prophecy to continue.

The Assemblies of God organized in 1914 and kept the Trinity. Oneness Pentecostals, who split in 1913–1916, baptize in Jesus’ name only and reject three distinct divine Persons. Charismatics are people in older churches, including Catholics, who pray for the same gifts. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal is usually dated from 1967.

• Topeka 1901; Azusa Street 1906; Assemblies of God 1914
• Oneness is a different doctrine of God, not a louder Pentecostalism
• Full profile: Pentecostalism

Evangelical and Non-Denominational Churches

“Evangelical” names a cross-denominational pattern: the Bible as authority, the cross at the center, conversion as a personal turning, and an active mission. Historians often use David Bebbington’s four marks for that pattern. The modern American form runs through the Great Awakenings, the break with liberal Protestantism, the National Association of Evangelicals (1942), and Billy Graham’s crusades.

Many non-denominational churches teach believer’s baptism, a memorial Supper, and congregational government. That is Baptist practice without the Baptist name. Evangelical is also a wing inside Anglican, Presbyterian, and other older churches. The megachurch and the confessional parish should not be described as the same thing.

• Bebbington’s marks are a scholar’s description, not a creed
• Ask how they baptize and what the Supper is
• Full profile: Evangelical and Non-Denominational Churches

Restorationists and Adventists

The Stone-Campbell movement in the early American republic tried to drop denominational names and restore New Testament practice. It produced Churches of Christ, Christian Churches, and the Disciples of Christ, which later divided over instruments in worship and over mission societies. Many Churches of Christ teach immersion for the forgiveness of sins and sing without instruments.

Seventh-day Adventism comes from the Millerite expectation of Christ’s return and the Great Disappointment of 22 October 1844. The church, organized in 1863, keeps Saturday as the Sabbath, teaches an investigative judgment beginning in 1844, and regards Ellen G. White as a prophetic messenger under Scripture. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Latter-day Saints are not Protestant churches of this family. They have their own profiles.

• Stone and Campbell: 1801–1832. Census split of Churches of Christ: 1906
• Adventist dates: 22 October 1844, and organization in 1863
• Full profiles: Churches of Christ and Restorationism; Seventh-day Adventism

History and development

From 1517 to about 1650, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and Anabaptist churches took shape, and wars and state churches froze the divisions. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Pietism, Methodism, and the American revivals made faith more personal and multiplied new bodies. In the twentieth century Pentecostalism and non-denominational churches grew, and many older mainline bodies shrank.

The Council of Trent (1545–1563) answered the Reformation with a defined Catholic doctrine of justification, the sacraments, and the Mass, and with a reform of discipline. In 1999 the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation signed a Joint Declaration on justification. Other Protestant bodies were not parties to it. The map of churches above is the reason a single reply does not fit every Protestant.

In conversation

Ask four questions before you describe someone’s church: Who baptizes, and when? What do they say the Supper is? Who can teach the last word on doctrine? Which confession, if any, do they name? The answers sort Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, and Pentecostal faster than the sign on the building.

• Lutheran: infants, bodily presence, Book of Concord.
• Presbyterian: infants often, spiritual presence, Westminster or Heidelberg.
• Anglican: bishops and a Prayer Book; ask which party.
• Baptist: believers, usually a memorial, local rule.
• Pentecostal: ask whether they confess three divine Persons.

Common misconceptions

Sources

Citations for this article. Browse the full bibliography to see every place each source is used across the library.

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