Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World

by Alec Ryrie

Protestant Christianity began with one stubborn monk in 1517. Now it covers the globe and includes almost a billion people. On the 500th anniversary of Luther’s theses, a global history of the revolutionary faith that shaped the modern world

Five hundred years ago an obscure monk challenged the authority of the pope with a radical vision of what Christianity could be. The revolution he set in motion inspired one of the most creative and destructive movements in human history. It has toppled governments, upended social norms, and transformed millions of people’s understanding of their relationship with God. In this dazzling global history that charts five centuries of innovation and change, Alec Ryrie makes the case that Protestants made the modern world.

Protestants introduces us to the men and women who defined and redefined this quarrelsome faith. Some turned to their newly accessible bibles to justify bold acts of political opposition, others to support a new understanding of who they were and what they could and should do. Above all, they were willing to fight for their beliefs. If you look at any of the great confrontations of the last five centuries, you will find Protestants defining the debate on both sides: for and against colonialism, slavery, fascism, communism, women’s rights, and more. Protestants have also fought among themselves. What unites them all is a passion for God and a vital belief in the principle of self-determination. Protestants are people who love God and take on the world.

Protestants have set out for all four corners of the globe, embarking on courageous journeys into the unknown to set up new communities and experiment with new systems of government—like the Puritans, Quakers, and Methodists who made their way to our shores. They are resourceful innovators and are making new converts every day in China, Africa, and Latin America. Protestants created America and defined its special brand of entrepreneurial diligence. Whether you are yourself a Protestant, or even a Christian, you live in a world, and are guided by principles and ideas, shaped by Protestants.

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction, Christianity, Church History, Christian, Philosophy

464 pages, Hardcover

First published April 14, 2017

About the author

Alec Ryrie is a prize-winning historian of the Reformation and Protestantism. He is the author of Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt and Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World. Ryrie is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University and Professor of Divinity at Gresham College, London.

Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m really glad to have found this book. Ryrie has such a reasonable, realistic but empathetic way of explaining highly controversial events. He makes it a human story of choices, consequences, inspirations, and limited accomplishments. It’s a balanced book, giving roughly equal coverage to the Reformation, religious movements in the modern West, and Protestant communities around the world—with special focuses on South Africa, Korea, China, and global Pentecostalism. Ryrie’s combination of honesty with compassion makes for a remarkable sort of objectivity. For a stark example, he ends his chapter on the trials and hypocrisies of Protestants in Nazi Germany like this: “There is only one reason we do not share their guilt: we were not there.”

[John Boyne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was probably the best book on the history of the Protestant Church that I have ever read. The author writes very clearly and is easy to read. The book also served as a nice reference on some of the distinctions between the different Protestant denominations. Highly recommend!

[Palmyrah · Rating 2 out of 5]

‘I also,’ states the author in the introduction to his book, ‘have my own corner to defend, and it is only fair to be plain about it. I am myself a believing Protestant Christian and a licensed lay preacher in the Church of England.’

In fact, as we learn from the acknowledgements (which have been placed after the text, very near the end of the book), Alec Ryrie is Professor of Theology & Religion at Durham University in the United Kingdom.

Perhaps it was simple modesty that discouraged Prof. Ryrie from being more truthful about the size and shape of his ‘corner’; yet his evasion is symptomatic of the slippery nature of theology itself. It is the study of something that is acknowledged to be rationally incomprehensible, so we cannot expect either logical rigour or fidelity to empirical evidence from its arguments. Not that this book is a theological treatise; there is, for my money, a great deal less theology in it than there should be. Ryrie shows little interest in the philosophical and doctrinal differences that distinguish one variety of Protestantism from another.

My argument throughout this book has been that Protestants are best treated as a family... [whose common] characteristics are hard to pin down, but you know them when you see them. Protestants are divided from one another by their beliefs but tied together by a deeper unity of mood and emotion. Their tradition began from Martin Luther’s ravishing love affair with the God he met in the Bible... Since his day, Protestants have pursued that love in radically different ways... Often that old flame has been reduced to a simmer or doused altogether, sometimes it has blazed beyond any control, but it is the same fire...

Clearly nervous about being held to any strict account, the author insists repeatedly that his book isn’t about Protestantism, but about Protestants. Rubbish. There are a few more or less rudimentary character-sketches of famous individual Protestants – the founding fathers of the Reformation and a few pivotal figures from later in the history of the movement – but nothing remotely resembling biography in the tradition of Plutarch or Suetonius. Nor is it in any sense a book about the ‘Protestant character’; Ryrie is far from convinced that any such thing exists, and I agree with him. No, Protestants is a history of Protestantism, pure and simple, though the range of wildly differing sects and cults that Ryrie is willing to subsume under the heading of ‘Protestant’ is far wider than many people, religious or not, will accept.

Yet despite his reluctance, typical of academic theologians, to own up to a definite statement about anything, Ryrie must surely have used some working definition to decide what to write about in his book and what not to; and so indeed it proves.

As a historian, I prefer a genealogical definition: Protestants are Christians whose religion derives ultimately from Martin Luther’s rebellion against the Catholic Church.

Well then, that’s that sorted. Now all we need to decide is who qualifies as ‘Christian’. Do Jehovah’s Witnesses? the author says yes, even though JWs deny the divinity of Christ. How about Mormons? No, although the full name of their religious organization invokes that of Jesus. The Taiping rebels of nineteenth-century China? No again – despite the fact that they fit Ryrie’s genealogical definition pretty well.

Before we continue, I suppose I should do as the author has done, and declare my own bias. I am culturally an Anglican, baptized and confirmed in the Church of Ceylon: a formerly religious man whose own individualism and fondness for ethical inquiry, combined with a scientific education, slowly eroded his faith in God without destroying his acceptance of the moral philosophy of Christianity or his fondness for the rituals and liturgy of the Church in which he was raised. I am no longer a Christian but you may call me a sympathetic fellow-traveller; and what I think the world needs is a history of Protestantism written, not by a believer like Alec Ryrie, but by someone like myself – someone who despises religious double-talk and is willing to take a firm empirical and moral attitude towards his material. Sadly, it is hard to imagine any unbeliever taking the trouble.

You’ll have guessed by now that I don’t think much of this book, though I slogged through it almost to the end. I skimmed through the penultimate chapter (about Pentecostalism, of which the author seems strangely fond), and let the last chapter go unfinished because I thought Ryrie’s predictions concerning the future of Protestantism were based on a poor and ill-informed understanding of trends and developments in the secular world. For all that, I found much to interest me within these pages, and quite a bit to praise. Concerning the former, the moral and theological support given to apartheid by the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa shocked and revolted me. It also put me in mind of the devil’s bargain between institutional Buddhism and majority-community racialism in my own country, especially when I read how ‘“Christian” was a tribal identity, “race-and-religion” a single word’ among Boer revivalists. In Sri Lanka, ‘Sinhalese Buddism’ is a tribal identity of exactly the same kind, race and religion proclaimed as one – but I digress.

Returning to Ryrie’s book, I must say it was news to me, though perhaps it should not have been, to read that Jehovah’s Witnesses suffered serious persecution in Germany under the Nazis (over a thousand died in concentration camps). I also found Ryrie’s account of the growth of Protestantism in Korea absorbing and enlightening; I had had no idea that, until the division of the country, there had been more Christians in the north of Korea than the south. By contrast, the chapter on China was plodding and rather confusing in terms of timelines, and much of the material concerning the Mao era seems to have been assembled from hearsay evidence.

I was equally disappointed by what the book leaves out. The theology professor seems largely inclined to paper over theological controversies; the Reformation and Counter-Reformation period are reasonably well covered, but there is almost nothing about, for example, the quarrels over ritual and doctrine among English Christians in the nineteenth century. Hardly anything about political Evangelicalism, no more than two sentences about Anglo-Catholicism, nothing at all about Muscular Christianity or the Oxford Movement. There are other yawning gaps of this kind: there’s not nearly enough about colonial missionary efforts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or about the establishment and growth of Protestantism in the colonized world (China, Korea and South Africa are the only exceptions); nothing at all about huge missionary societies like the CMS and the rivalries between missionary groups that so agitated Protestants in that era. The public controversy over evolution and the age of the Earth, which was inflamed by the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 and continues to this day, is handled with asbestos gloves and the author’s eyes nervously averted; apart from this, the effects of the scientific challenge to Christianity (and especially to Biblical literalism) are largely ignored.

Concerning the interaction of Protestantism with the secular world, many obviously evil actors receive the benefit of Christian charity and tolerance not only for themselves, which is perhaps acceptable, but for their ideas. The section in which Ryrie recounts the pro arguments concerning the theological justifications for apartheid (which, he willingly admits, was ‘a form not of fascism but of Calvinism’) is positively nauseous.

So what are we to make of this deceitful book, which claims to be about Protestants but is really about Protestantism, which pretends to make no judgements while being constantly selective in the material it chooses to treat of, and says almost nothing about the ‘corner’ its author claims to defend?

Reading it wasn’t exactly a waste of time. Although history is a principal interest of mine, Protestantism isn’t my field, and there were many things I didn’t know until I read this book. For example, I was quite ignorant about the details of the Reformation and the developments that followed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I wish this section of the book had been bigger. I also wish the author had spent more time on events in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, instead of saving the lion’s share of his attention for the twentieth.

A more secular and sceptical approach to the material would have freed Alec Ryrie from the parson’s bind of never being able to call a spade a spade. This is what the book most lacks, and what is most likely to irritate those of us whose moral compasses do not need constant recalibration by Divine Authority. Protestants is a milk-and-water treatment of a religious movement that trades largely in fire and brimstone; a lukewarm posset, richly deserving of the treatment prescribed for such potions in Revelation 3:16.

What did stay with me from my reading was a sense of the apparently unbreakable association between Protestantism (however loosely defined) and intolerance. This intolerance appears in many forms: doctrinal, ritual, textual, racial, sexual, social. Some Protestants even refuse to tolerate facts, as in the widespread refusal to ‘believe in’ evolution. Sometimes this intolerance is personal and results in a turning away from secular society, as with the Quakers or the Amish; more often it explodes into violence of one kind or another: witch-burnings, the drawing and quartering of heretics, religious wars and uprisings, pogroms and lynchings. It is hard, reading this book, not to think of Protestantism as a religion of hate. This is the real case the movement has to answer. Ryrie barely touches it.

[Franklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written. Encyclopedic coverage. Honest and fair. He doesn't make truth judgments but covers as a historian. Every insular Protestant should read it to truly come to terms with what the "Reformers" really birthed - not a Church, but movements - splinters which one could not honestly or reasonably claim to be the "pillar and bulwark of the truth" as St Paul writes. To be that would mean being in agreement with what the truth is before the watching world. But in fact the ‘reformers’ were arguing about the form, function and doctrine of the Church from the beginning. If you dispose of the worship and received tradition of the early church, you have removed the living context within which ones identity and truth in Christ can be discerned. Once that is removed, one is at the mercy of ones own projections into an 'infallible' text - out of which one makes a tradition to replace the one that was rejected. Ironies abound.

[Michael Huang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ryrie tells the story of Protestantism as a messy, human, and often self-contradictory enterprise. It begins, naturally, with Luther — fat, fond of Saxon beer, and chronically constipated. His great insight: no priest or pope can stand between man and God. In practice, though, Protestants needed princes more than princes needed Protestants, and those princes didn’t hesitate to seize monasteries and their ill-gotten wealth.

From there, Ryrie parades a cast of splintering sects — Calvinists obsessed with predestination, Presbyterians insisting on their right to elect presbyters (Greek for “elders”), and English monarchs lurching between Catholicism and Protestantism until Cromwell abolished the throne altogether. Out of the chaos came Quakers, pilgrims, and a diaspora of dissenters who carried their faith — and their quarrels — to the New World.

Modernity brought no peace. America turned Protestantism into a free market: Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and assorted visionaries — including a female Christ — competed for souls, whether by conversion or procreation. Science and Darwin added fuel, forcing some believers to reinterpret scripture while others claimed evolution itself as evidence of God’s hand.

If you’re curious about the sprawling family tree of Protestantism, Ryrie offers a vivid, sometimes unflattering, but always fascinating portrait of its many branches

[Thomas Creedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A treat to read and sad to finish it this evening. Lots learnt, lots to disagree with, and a surprising number of laughs. A superb book that has restored my joy in books. Probably won’t review but will read more Ryrie!

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful overview of Protestantism's history. The main problem is that his definition of Protestant is far too broad - even including Jehovah's Witnesses.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was excited to find this book, finally able to merge my love of history with my faith. This is a comprehensive volume, and certain sections will appeal to different people depending what points of history fascinate you the most. For myself, I loved reading about Luthor, Calvin and the other early Protestants. I found each of their personalities fascinating and how they all tackled a new intellectual view of the Bible differently. Luthor was especially fascinating to me as you can see a lot of the modern world in his work, and not just the church. He was a thinker ahead of his time whose movement shaped our world for the better. Not all Protestants were as positively influential. This book does a good job of highlighting the good and the bad. Ryrie likes to label the two sides of every point in history as a religious right and a religious left. It was particularly interesting to read the biblical arguments on both sides of slavery, see just how terribly the Bible was warped to justify it, and also how early on a lot of Protestants fought against it. I also really enjoyed learning about the church in the Nazi Empire. How the idea of separation of church and state made most Christians stay apolitical warping Luthor's idea of 'Two Kingdoms." Hitler did not stay as separate though and even created a Bible that removed all Jews (It was a very short book). I was surprised to see that the Jehovah's Witnesses were the only German church to stand up against the Nazis and were jailed heavily for it. I won't be making jokes about them again anytime soon! This book is a fair look at the Protestant movement and will be interesting to believers and nonbelievers alike.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very solid, broad overview. Ryrie writes very clearly, and somehow manages to be reasonably objective, but also sympathetic, but also takes his stands when he wishes to. As others have pointed out, this book is very light on theology and doctrine, which is fine--this is a history of people, not of doctrines. The book is also very light on anything about the Baptist churches, which is very strange, given how much space Ryrie gives to sects that even he doesn't believe to be Protestant. There's a slight tendency towards writing a history of what-Protestants-did-at-important-moments-of-history, rather than a history of Protestants (did we need quite so much on the Nazi churches? Quite so much on abolitionism?), but again, that goes with the size of the project. This has certainly piqued my interest in Protestantism in America, in particular; the chapters on China, Korea, South Africa and so on are decent first stabs at a more inclusive history, and certainly taught me a lot.

[David Dunlap · Rating 5 out of 5]

Splendid book -- exceptionally well-written, with clarity, wit, and an admirable mastery of the source materials. The book traces the beginnings and development of Protestant thought, with prominent explorations of the major threads and figures in the movement. Very informative! (One fact I learned: Ulrich Zwingli is more properly the founder of what has been called 'Calvinism,' although Calvin gave Reformed ideas greater and fuller expression than Zwingli was able to do. The chapters on the antebellum United States and the rise of liberal Protestant thought were also thought-provoking!) I appreciate the author's description of the Reformation in terms of a renewed love affair -- with God and the Bible. -- The book concludes with a number of very helpful chapters tracing the development of Protestantism in South Africa, Korea, and China -- along with a history of the rise of Pentecostalism. A book that merits MORE than five stars, IMHO...

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is by necessity a light touching on global Protestantism. Ryrie roots his history in the revolutionary elements of Protestantism and traces it through time and space. He uses particular places like China and South Africa to show how people fueled by the visions of Protestantism changed their worlds.

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was published in the timely year that is the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation which began when Martin Luther started raising concern with the corruption of the Catholic Church that eventually led to Luther’s recovery of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, among other things. Here the author Alec Ryrie examines Protestantism historically as a movement. Ryrie also evaluated the impact that Protestantism has had for good or for bad in history. Given how much Protestantism has shaped world history and has contributed to what society and civilization looks like today, this is indeed a fascinating book for both Protestants and non-Protestants alike.
The book is divided into three parts. Part one is on the Reformation Age. Early in the book the author tells us that this section is on the development of Protestantism from the moment of its birth, it struggle for survival and eventually the spread of the Protestant faith around the world. Part two explores new crisis for Protestantism in the modern world. Finally part three explores Protestantism in a global age. Here in part three the author is to be commended for the global perspective that he has in writing something as complicated as the history of Protestantism over the span of five centuries which in of itself is already a difficult task, but now he covers Protestantism in different parts of the world outside of the West such as Protestant Christianity in China, South Africa, etc.
As a whole the theme of Protestants as lovers of God and also fighters for the sake of the God they love is an ongoing topic that Ryrie points out again and again. This has great explanatory power of Protestantism’s rather interesting history. I think the author in the book did a good job of explaining Protestants’ stance as motivated by their love for God even if it seems strange and questionable to those outside of it. Of course the history of Protestantism and also every Protestants are from perfect because of our sin nature but the tension of Protestants’ love for God and yet Protestants’ sinfulness explains historically why some Protestants and their movements seek for more worldly things such as money, power and possession while at times there’s higher principles at war with more worldly concerns. The book rightfully argued how Protestantism were important in the development of our contemporary age and certain sensibilities, values and ideas we take for granted; thing such as free inquiry, democratic ways, apololiticism (that is, the desire to be left alone) and free of conscience can be seen in the forging process during the Reformation. The book’s argument about these matters was not a simplistic or crude argument that the Reformation was exactly like our age in these values and ideals for as the book pointed out sometimes early Protestants can be inconsistent or haven’t fully worked out the implications of what they believed in ways that future generations learned from. There were also at times points of tension with certain values such as the point of tension historically on the point of limited government. If you read this far in the review I want to make it clear that this book isn’t primarily about attacking Protestantism historically for while shortcomings of Protestants in history are pointed out the author also turned it around by saying it is because of Protestants commitment to Sola Scriptura (that is, Scripture alone) that makes Protestants willing to reconsider their most cherished and treasured values and beliefs and see if it is biblical and true. This has allowed for much change for the better in history. The book’s discussion of the abolition of the slave trade, abolition of slavery itself and also the Apartheid were really good examples of this.
The book is over 600 pages; certainly there are a lot of things that readers will discover from reading this book. I really enjoyed learning from this book details about the Reformers that I did not know before or facts I previously knew but were put in a better perspective as a result of reading this work. For example in talking about Martin Luther I had previously understood that Luther’s literary output was incredible; but the book goes on to argue that “Luther’s literary achievement was unparalleled in human history.” The author himself goes on to admit that this might seem rather extravagant but Ryrie goes on to share the statistics of Luther’s output: Luther produced over five hundred forty four books, pamphlets and separate articles over a period of thirty years; that is about one every three weeks. Luther’s work account for a fifth of what the German Press printed in the 1520s and his work outnumbered his critics. I also enjoyed the book’s discussion about Luther’s two kingdom theology and also problems with it. Ryrie’s look at Protestantism and pointing out flaws was not immune to the Reformers or Bible believing Protestants; he also pointed out serious issues of liberals in Protestantism; I was surprised to learn about the Episcopal church in 1972 were giving donations to violent groups who supported revolution and how donations from their laity who disagreed with their liberal leaders dramatically decreased. But the book isn’t only about problems with Protestantism; the author’s discussion about China was a treat. Ryrie argues rather persuasively that the Communist persecution of the church in China was what allowed it to be as indigenous church movement when ties to the West and her missionaries were eventually cut during the era of Red China. This allows Christianity to be eventually viewed not as merely “colonialism” since the church now has its own history and identity forged during the persecution era yet at the same time Christianity is also something different and interesting. I also appreciated the author putting the era of the persecuted Chinese Church under Red China in perspective: Sometimes some in the West can idealized or idolized those period but he argues that it was certainly not a good time; churches at times were nonexistent as most Christians were individual believers isolated from others and didn’t do church as we think of Church. This was a time of a lot of stunted Christian growth as well. I think the author has a good point in giving us a more balanced look of the Church in Communist China under Mao.
With all the positive aspects of the book that I mentioned above I do believe the book has some serious shortcomings. For starters I wished the author had a better grasp of the Scriptures and it shows itself from time to time that made the book deficient in its evaluation. I think for instance of the book statement that gay marriage is more about culture than theology to be rather misinformed; the issue is about theology no matter where in the spectrum of the debate you land upon, since it is about how one handles and approach the Word of God. I think the author at times made some outrageous claims about Conservative Christians. For instance in chapter twelve Ryrie accused Christian fundamentalists were drinking from the same well as the Ku Klux Klan. That’s rather a stretch. I think here the author is rather sloppy in pointing out how both groups do share some similar opponents; but here the author failed to account for the differences in terms of worldviews and motivations with those overlapping common enemies. In chapter thirteen there’s a similar outrageous claim that the Apartheid was not so much a form of fascism but of Calvinism and that Calvinism was what led to its creation. To the author’s credit he does go on to say that he believes Calvinism is also influential in its dissolution. But his claim that the Apartheid was a form of Calvinism misrepresents Calvinism itself.
If you read this book, read it as a history book which is the clearly stated purpose of the author. Don’t read this to develop your theology; that should be primarily the job of the Bible. Although there are secondary source books on theology that helps us understand the Bible in developing a good and sound theology, this is not the function of the book though I would say as a historical insight if one has a biblical worldview this book would be an immense blessing and enrichment.

[StephenM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in an easy, conversational style, there are probably better, more scholarly books on every topic this book touches, but very few that actually cover the breadth of history recounted here. While Ryrie is occasionally given to making overly sweeping statements like "Luther was fundamentally opposed to every sort of law," and his deliberately broad definition of "Protestantism" is vague enough to be incoherent, and leads him to include groups like Unitarians and Shakers, he is often much better than I expected him to be. He covers the expected things--the Reformation, Wars of Religion, Puritans and Lutheran Pietists, the First and Second Great Awakenings, etc.--but what makes the book special are the focused chapters on unusual topics. One can quibble with whether he needed to discuss the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses or not, but at least he admits up front that they aren't really Protestant, and tying them in with the Second Great Awakening period, the Millerites, and the Seventh Day Adventists, is all quite fascinating.

The really helpful chapters for me, were the ones on slavery and Protestant responses, the German churches under the Third Reich, the Dutch Reformed churches of South Africa and the rise and fall of apartheid, and 100 years of Protestantism in Korea. (There are also chapters on Protestants in China and the global Pentecostal explosion that are worthwhile, but feel more sketchy.) In these chapters Ryrie shows himself capable of real subtlety and balance in his narratives, peppering the pages with interesting details that complicate our responses and assumptions about these topics. Rather than harangue us with his opinions, he is interested in people's intentions and why they chose to act certain ways as much as the outcomes, and does a good job tracing shifts in doctrines and political stances over time. And throughout, he has an eye for surprising and telling anecdotes that always keep things lively.

I do think the celebratory way he speaks of Protestantism constantly adapting and mutating is the wrong attitude to take, and his final chapter looking to the future is quite bad, but still: I learned a lot from this book, and I'd recommend it.

[Chad D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this book is truly wonderful. Educational. The kind of nonfiction that has an insight every other sentence and reframes topics about which you already know so that you know them better, fresher. Ryrie's writing is fun, full of surprises, from wit to snark to a reverential slip showing.

It has a thesis--that Protestantism is about a love affair with God, and runs on that kind of personal energy. The thesis seems true.

Ryrie admits that the book was impossible to write. You can't really do JUSTICE to the topic of Protestants in a single volume. And he doesn't. It's hard to be objective and subjective at the same time, cool and warm. Sometimes he's one or the other. I thought the book would be more warm and subjective, how it feels like to be Protestant, what religious experience is like from the inside. Sometimes it gets there, but most of the time it doesn't, quite. It doesn't quite have time to; it's got too much to cover and has to go quickly from the outside rather than a deep dive (South Africa gets perhaps the best case study). Also maybe occasionally sometimes a good punch line proves tempting enough to override nuanced analysis. But that could be worse. Punch lines are nice.

So, thoroughly enjoyable and educational, about all sorts of Protestants every which direction. And if you ARE a particular version of Protestant, you might feel understood as well as shrewdly observed.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a big book - but how can any book that tackles Protestantism, with it's splintering upon splintering upon splintering, remain anything but big - but Ryrie is an engaging writer and keeps you reading. Luther starts the book off with bang, and it never really slows down. Obviously, this isn't a book for every reader, but if you like well written histories, or like reading histories of religion, you'll enjoy this one. The last chapter is what Ryrie thinks will happen to Protestantism now that's its what he calls is adolescence (500 years old); it's definitely not dead and gone.

[Dmitry · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly well-researched and thoughtful overview of the historical interaction of the Protestant Christianity with the surrounding society on many levels - politics, other religions, ethical dilemmas, poverty, slavery, Nazism and Communism, etc. Special chapters are dedicated to Protestant Christianity in South Africa, Korea, and China, which have a fascinating and controversial history. Reading the book helps one think deeper about the importance of various doctrines in the life of the church and in the life of a person. It is not a quick read - almost 500 pages of dense text, but the time that it takes to go through a work of this size is conducive for additional contemplation and analysis. I highly recommend this work to any serious thinker.

[Tosin Adeoti · Rating 4 out of 5]

This afternoon, I finished Alec Ryrie’s “Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World”. I told a friend I just finished it and he exclaimed, “Finally”. I have the uncheerful pleasure of saying 73% of those who started the book with me abandoned me along the way. :-D

Yet it’s not because it’s not a great book – it’s packed – but because it is a book of considerable length. The book has thoroughly schooled me on Protestantism, its origin and influences. It is a book I would encourage anyone interested in the Christian religion to read, particularly Christians.

Alec Ryrie, a British Preacher, in this book took us on a journey of how Protestantism was snatched from the jaws of the Universal Catholic Church in Germany. Then its spread to England, France, the rest of Europe, to North America, Latin America, to China and its East Asia neighbors, and then to Africa (with a disappointingly brief stop in Nigeria).

Along the way several things just jump at you. For instance, how can any modern Christian reconcile that the respected father of Protestantism, Martin Luther, was not cool with a chunk of the books in the Bible. He taught very little of the books of the Old Testament, even to the point of wanting the book of Esther removed entirely. About the book of James, he “…[felt] like throwing Jimmy into the stove...” and placed it at the end of the NT, along with three other NT books he despised. He picked what he wanted and ignored the rest. Not much as changed in this cherrypicking game.

It’s said that every historical hero held on to beliefs and committed acts that would utterly horrify today’s admirer. I saw many examples in this book. Luther claimed there is no sin in killing Jews. It was hideous to read the part John Calvin, a most beloved protestant, played in the 1553 burning alive of a heretic who denied the authority of the Bible.

I’m amused when 21st century zealots think disagreement over doctrines originated with them. I have been in groups whose members believe they are the only one against the doctrine of tithing. How untrue! Since 1600, protestant groups have been against not just tithing, but collection of offerings. Every single doctrine in the Bible has had advocates and critics. As far back as 1556, an entire sect was decimated because they denied the trinity. There were strong disagreements about Predestination, Sunday Worship, Salvation by Faith, Eternal Security, Speaking in Tongues, etc.

Divisions seem to be a hallmark of Protestantism. Denominations broke away from their parents for all kinds of reasons - for ridiculous reasons. A sect once broke out because, along with other things, it considered neckties diabolical.

And oh, they killed in the name of these differences. Whether they were dealing with Catholics, supposed witches, radicals (a name they coined for fellow Protestants whose doctrines they don’t agree with), Protestants killed in the name of religion with a zeal that was second to none.

One of the stories that made me chuckle was how regular the change of date of the second coming of Jesus was and continue to be. The first recorded prediction was done by William Miller, who decided that it would be March 21, 1843. When it didn't happen, he changed it to the same day in 1844. The followers sold all their belongings and went to a hill to await the sound of the Trumpet. Like you know, it didn't happen. If you've ever heard of the Great Disappointment, that's the word coined to describe this episode. Another sect, the Jehovah Witnesses put the date of the second coming of Christ to be 1914, then 1925, then 1975. Well... Since then, several other people have calculated and continue to calculate when Christ would come back again. They all failed (and will continue to fail?).

Usually when the date fail, the sect doesn’t recover from the betray of trust. But the JWs have continued to wax stronger. Viable theories have been expounded for why this is so. That aside, I put down the book totally in awe of the resilience of the JWs. Unbelievers hated them. Believers wanted nothing to do with them. Entire countries, including the British Empire either killed them in droves or violently punished them for their beliefs, but none was as vicious as the German Nazi. Because they were the only group to ever openly renounce and conduct relentless in-your-face campaigns against its Aryan doctrine, they suffered for it. Yet that did not deter them. They embraced the ordeal. One SS officer commented that Jehovah’s Witnesses were the only prisoners who could be trusted to shave their captors with cutthroat razors. No other Protestants of any kind offered defiance like this or paid this kind of price. And because they were the most widely despised sect of all, no one spoke out for them in the concentration camps. 😢

There were quite some surprising little details in the book. For example, as someone who completed the reading of the entire Bible a couple of times in my late teens to early twenties, and memorized copious parts, multiple chapters at some point, I considered the book of Revelation one of the most difficult books in the Bible. Imagine my surprise when I read of the Korean preacher, Kil Sŏnju, whose extreme Biblicism led him to memorize the entire book of Revelation and recite it aloud more than ten thousand times. Men have done stuff sha.

Say whatever you want about the instability of the religion of Protestantism (the Chinese consider Protestantism as different from Catholicism as it is from Islam), you cannot deny its influence in our history. Groups within it have advocated for Nazism as well as spearheaded ongoing efforts to exterminate it. They have supported slavery and its widespread abolition would probably not have happened had sects like the Quakers not been at the forefront. They have provided biblical basis for Apartheid as well as provided justification for why it is untenable in the sight of God. Same has happened for causes like Colonalism, Racial Segregation, and Civil Wars around the world.

What is consistent with Protestantism throughout history is its endless adaptability to every culture, norm and belief. And make no mistake, it is perhaps the only reason it has survived centuries of attacks and persecutions. But there have been people like Martin Luther King Jr. who have insisted that the Christian church must be “not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion” but “a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.” This was the church that helped end the Nazi regime, end slavery, end segregation in America, end Apartheid in South Africa.

This is the church the world is more in need of. But then, in classical Protestantism, even this is subject to private interpretations by its over 3000 different sects.

[Kelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who grew up in a very Protestant culture (USA Southern Baptist), I was interested in this book as a history of the Protestant religion in general and was hopeful that it would clarify for me the differences between the many different denominations and their evolution over time.

It definitely delivered on that front- the author details the history of Protestant Christianity from its beginnings with Martin Luther, and touches on the very complex evolution of Protestant beliefs. I was surprised to see how much they changed over time and how each denomination of Protestant Christianity came to exist. From the Anglican church in England, to Methodists, Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, to the modern global rise of Pentecostalism, and many more smaller movements, you learn a lot about the overall history and beliefs of Protestants. The author even covers the origins of the Anabaptists (i.e. the Amish and Mennonite communities), touches on the Mormon faith, and showcases how Protestant beliefs have evolved in places where it spread through colonialism and missionary work (South Africa, Korea, China).

This was not a five star read for me just because I find pure history a bit boring and it took me a long time to read. Perhaps someone who is a believing Protestant Christian would find this more interesting, however, but I would really recommend it to understand the history of Protestantism in general and especially in regards to how certain denominations came to be.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, dense, slightly eccentric in structure, incredibly informative, occasionally overwhelming...it's certainly not what I was expecting from an historical examination of Protestantism. But it certainly held my attention, and as someone brought up Catholic...and a teacher of history who knows the influence of Catholicism on the history of the last 2000 years...this felt like a breath of fresh air, and an interesting alternative history narrative.

[Hundeschlitten · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have long wrestled with both God and the Protestant faith of my ancestors, and this book goes a long way to clarifying why. It is a 500-year history pointing to one idea: That Protestants are divided in their beliefs but "tied together by a deeper unity of mood and emotion," namely a passionate love of the Holy Spirit. Ryrie straddles the line between academic and believer, delving into some of the deep contradictions of the faith without ever descending into an outright apologia, bolstered by his argument that you can't understand the modern world without appreciating the fevered reveries of these disparate bands of believers.

[Daniel Clemence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Protestants go over the developments of Protestant movement from Luther, Calvin and Zwingli to Pentecostalism. It looks at what was successful in spreading Protestantism and Christianity in the 20th century. It also deals with controversies such as Arminianism Vs Calvinism and Liberal Protestantism. A good overview of the origins of Protestantism.

[George Kettler · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and engaging series of essays that covering Protestantism origins, development and spread. Instead of trying to creat a single cohesive narrative, Ryrie instead zooms in on how specific Protestant movements shaped the social and political realities of specific times and places. Ryrie avoids the pitfall of so many religious historians of chronicling the many tedious theological developments of a religion, instead focusing on how the practitioners used their religion to come to terms with the questions of their day be it the divine right of kings, nazism or apartheid.

[bookthump · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ryrie made a subject that was previously abstruse to me much more palatable. He even inspired me to branch out and seek more information in the midst of this reading. I paused my progress through this book twice to read other books about subjects or historical figures Ryrie referenced. It was great to stretch my academic muscles again after such a lengthy dormancy.

[Nile · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well done. This is sort of a world history book of the last 500 years (starting with the reformation) that is told through the perspective of Protestant religion. It starts by going in detail through the reformation (major events and people) and hits on major and difficult topics like slavery, WWI, Nazis, and apartheid, showing how the Protestant religion was used and abused to justify actions. He does an excellent job showing how people reasoned their way into atrocities we often write off wholesale. This in no way justifies, but reminds you that we are all human, even slave owners and Hitler.

I gained a new understanding of Christianity in Korea and China as well as the beginnings of denominations and occult groups that I previously only knew by name.

I listened to the audiobook for this one and it was fantastically done.

[Peter Kyhn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent non-technical historical study of the birth and spread of the Protestant Christian faith, with a global perspective. The only reason I gave it 4 out of 5 stars is that Ryrie did not address a protestant offspring - the so-called prosperity gospel. I purchased a digital copy of the volume to use as the basis of a church history class I'm considering putting together.

[David Breeden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wide-ranging and fascinating.

[Toni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite an accomplishment this book: It tells the 500 year history of Protestantism, following it wherever it has gone, both to new countries and continents, as its believers have often been exiled or gone on a holy mission, as well as in new directions, new sects and schools of faith. Alec Ryrie shows convincingly that it is in the DNA of the Protestant faith to splinter and fragment, as it is a child of the centrifugal religious wars, with a skepticism towards human authority and tradition, as well as a belief in the authority of the heart (the love affair with their god). The book is focused more on protestants than Protestantism, that is, it is a history of religious movements (with a common heartbeat, so to speak, but in the plural) more so than a theological history. There are a few theological chapters, without which the former history would not make sense. But Ryrie uses the theological dimension to tell a story of human movements, and the emphasis is on the latter. There's very little political economy in the book, but it is not entirely absent, and Ryrie doesn't paint an overly innocent picture of his subjects. Sometimes it is obvious that faith turns around the little finger of a local prince or a "holy pilgrimage" is in fact a pretty way of describing a band of desperate peasants fleeing persecution and poverty. There's an ecumenical mind behind this analysis, and it's probably the only way to write a history of such a diverse and fragmented religious movement - the author must have at least some sympathy for everyone. The book can be read chronologically, opportunistically or as a reference work in case one wants to understand the emergence of one particular Protestant sect or movement (and as this book shows, there are many). I give it a strong three stars, because I read it somewhat instrumentally and use-oriented, and the narration was good enough that you can read it casually too. I skipped some chapters, but take specific chapters about movements you need to know about, and this is a great resource.

[Jaime Ball · Rating 4 out of 5]

In honor of the 500th anniversary, Alec Ryrie gave a talk at the Oxford Literary Festival in which he compared summarizing the Reformation in a nutshell to giving a witness testimony of watching a car crash. Describing the what, where, when, and whys of the Reformation seem to create differing accounts. One thing the authors of the books I have chosen to read on the Reformation seem to agree on is that the Reformation defied any attempt at simple classification. I actually agreed with Ryrie’s violent metaphor of describing the Reformation since it is such a broad and often confusing field of study that realistically any attempt to categorize it will be flawed. Ryrie’s book on Protestants is more about the people themselves than it is the religion and doctrine itself. It is a great resource that takes a look outside Europe and America. I chose to read his book first so that I could understand how the religion splintered away from the Catholic Church first so I had a grasp of the effects of Luther’s movement. Afterward, I focused on Lyndal Roper’s and Brad Gregory’s books which dealt more directly on Luther himself.
Alec Ryrie actually acknowledges in “Protestants”, at the beginning of the book, something that I noticed right away reading his introduction; that he took on a mighty subject! He recognizes this and asks for leniency, proposing that what is more important than giving answers, is to raise the right questions regarding the people that created and spread the Protestant religion. This does seem to be his method as he, rather than going over what is already known about Protestantism for the entire book, follows Protestants as they moved outward from Europe into the world, examining Protestantism as a movement. Ryrie evaluates the impact of Protestantism on world history, for the good and for the bad. This book can be fascinating for both Protestants and non-Protestants given how much the faith has contributed to civilization and how society looks today. The book is divided into three parts. Part one, of course, begins with Martin Luther, is on the birth and development of Protestantism and its struggle to survive as it spreads out through Europe and eventually the world, known as the Reformation age. Part two covers the problems Protestantism faced in the modern world including slavery, Nazism, and the Apartheid. Part three explores Protestantism globally. Ryrie took not only the complicated history of Protestantism that spans five centuries, which is already a mighty task, but now he covers it in different parts of the world outside of the West.
Ryrie states that Martin Luther “was not a systematic theologian” (page 20) since Luther attempted to form his understanding and doctrines as he went along. Perhaps that is what made him perfect for creating a faith based on one’s individual relationship and love for God. Ryrie describes Protestants as lovers of God but also fighters of their faith and the God that they love. He does a great job at explaining Protestants’ motivation by their love for God even as it might sound strange to those outside of it. However, the history of Protestantism and Protestants themselves are far from perfect as Ryrie writes about movements that show they also sought worldly things such as power, money, and possessions. Showing that at times there were higher principles at war with more worldly concerns. The concern for worldly matters didn’t always translate into opposition from their religion for the Protestants, due to their commitment to Sola Sciptura it allowed Protestants the room to reconsider their beliefs and values at times. This is apparent when Ryrie discusses the abolition of slavery and the Apartheid.
There was much to gain from the book, and it is clear that Ryrie has a great understanding of Luther and the other reformers. I had previously been aware that Luther was indeed a best selling author for his day, but I did not realize that the title could still befit him even in today’s standards. Ryrie states that “Luther’s literary achievements was unparalleled in human history”. Ryrie shares statistics that state Luther’s literary output rate would mean he published a work every three weeks for a period of thirty years! I liked how Ryrie covered more than just Luther and included the other reformers and early Protestants. I agree with Ryrie in that one aspect of the Reformation age that made the Protestant faith stronger (and able to take on the larger and strong Catholic Church at the time) was that these reformers all tackled a new intellectual view of the Bible differently and challenged each other. It should be noted that not all Protestants were as positively influential and I think Ryrie does a good job of highlighting the good and bad, as he labels two sides of every point in history as a religious right and a religious left. Ryrie describes how the Bible was used to justify slavery and then how later Protestants used the Bible to fight against it and many became leading abolitionists. I also found it interesting to read about the Protestant Church during the time of the Nazi Empire and how Luther’s ideas of “Two Kingdoms” was warped in a way that allowed for many Christians to stay apolitical. Surprisingly, I also learned that the Jehovah Witnesses were the only German church to stand up against Nazis at the time of Hitler’s reign and were arrest and jailed due to their stance.
This book helped me to see the legacies of the Reformation and appreciate my own faith more. I appreciated that the book was light on theology and doctrine because I wanted to see the Protestant movement in a historical perspective. I also appreciated that Ryrie manages to stay reasonably objective, but also sympathetic at times to struggles of the Protestants.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a lot. It’s a fairly comprehensive history of Protestant life, and that means it covers a lot of familiar territory related to Luther and company and goes on a few tedious tangents. But overall it’s a fascinating story and I thought the author had a lot of relatively important things to say about the relationship between Protestantism and slavery. I also appreciated the attention he paid to Protestantism in China and Korea. A chapter covering the Jehovah’s Witnesses was also particularly interesting. So I guess what I’m saying is that a lot of books on Protestantism dwell on the religious wars but this book is more global in scale and takes us a lot about modern currents. The book might have been improved by talking about the relationship between Protestantism and the other global religions in more depth.

[Russell Threet · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is my belief that in the very near future this book is going to be the go to text for the topic of Protestantism at the collegiate and even seminary level. All I can say is thank goodness. This book is great because even though it has the breadth of a textbook it reads very well. I might even describe it as compelling. Ryrie does a good job of delving into the many different streams of Protestantism while acknowledging and expounding upon their common roots. This book will not only be a vital tool for the student of religion, but is also a great text for the student of general history because it highlights the ever present influence of Protestantism on the world as we have come to know it.