Introduction to Church History: Christian Humanists, Protestantism, and More

This article delves into the history of Christianity, covering topics such as Christian humanists, Protestantism, and missionary reformist expansions. It also discusses the Methodist Church, Deism, and Pentecostalism. Additionally, it explores the life of John Wesley and the concepts of established church, disestablishmentarianism, biblical criticism, and modernism.

Running head: INTRODUCTION TO CHURCH HISTORY
INTRODUCTION TO CHURCH HISTORY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note:

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Task 1
1.1 Three Christian Humanists are John Colet, Thomas More, and Desiderius Erusmus.
1.2 The three subjects that Calvin studied and became familiar with are Humanism, Lutheranism,
and the Early Church Fathers.
1.3 The reasons why great missionary reformist expansions were taking place in the Church was
because of immorality, political corruption and nepotism.
1.4 The Methodist Church was formed by John Wesley and his group and the name was derived
from the fact that the group used to conduct a methodical study of the Bible. Charles Wesley
his brother was also an important member of the group. George Whitefield in the beginning
was working together with Wesley but they later got separated on the difference over the idea
of predestination. The idea of Whitefield was that the decision of damnation was taken by
God since eternity. Wesley however did not believe in this ideal as this was against the idea
of compassion of God. The two streams worked separately and both of them gathered many
followers, however with time it was seen that the Wesley Methodist Church has gathered
mch more followers.
1.5 Deism- Deism is the belief in ultimately powerful Supreme God who is the creator of all
reality and the whole universe however who do not interfere in the life of the created
individuals (Ingram 2017).
Rationalism- To base the opinions and ideas on facts and logical reasoning rather than on
abstract theories which cannot be actually proved in real world situations.
1.6 Most of the Christians in the 19th Century had the idea that there country was progressing,
however such progress was not actually visible in the real world situations. Along with that
the idea of biological racism within the human world grew, in which it is stated that some of

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the human races were more advanced than others. These are some of the strange ideas that
grew in the 19th Century.
1.7 Pentecostalism means a revolution within the protestant Christianity and it is a renewal
movement (Kay 2016). The idea is to mainly renew the traditional religious practices and to
give an experience of the individual to be personally united with the Supreme Lord by
baptism with the Holy Spirit. Therefore the two most important things to remember about
Pentacostalism are union with the supreme on a personal level and baptism through the Holy
Spirit.
1.8 1806
1.9 The basic belief of Christian equality is that the people are equal before the eyes of the God
and the Christ. All people have equal responsibilities towards serving the Lord in the similar
ways. “All people are equal before God, and are equal in church, home, and society.”
Discrimination is not a valid Christian view.
Task 2
2.1 Germany had been progressing in various ways during the time before the Protestant
Reformation movement finally happened. The two primary factors which led to the reformation
movement in Germany was the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in 1440 and the
political organization of the German States as members of the Holy Roman Empire when Martin
Luther stated his 95 theses (Wengert 2017). Protestantism are very close concepts of Germany,
and were exclusively found in Germany that was then attached to the Holy Roman Empire in the
years between 1510 and 1520 (Becker, Pfaff and Rubin 2016). The starting of Christianization of
Germany happened in mainly the western part of the country. Before the advent of Protestantism
the political scenario of Germany was chaotic and after the fall of the King Henry IV, the dukes

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in the country had elected their own king the Rudolf of Swabia. Latin as a language fallen at this
time and the prevalent written language was German itself, the nationhood of Germany was
rising at this time. Therefore there was a natural rise of people’s opposition against the all-
powerful Church which they deemed an institution that harmed the nationalism within the
country however it is not true that the people were not any more religious. Christian humanism
was a concept that was going hand in hand with the reformation movement and brought about a
renewed interest in the art, religious education and personal spirituality. It was actually an
encouragement to the growth of protestant movement.
2.1 Johann Tetzel and Martin Luther had some basic differences about the views about God and
how they perceived spirituality and religion (French 2017). Johann Tetzel was a catholic
preacher under the Dominican Order which was radically different from the idea of Martin
Luther about spirituality. The idea of Protestantism is that the words of Bible are final and the
religious guidance to a Christian can be found in the Bible alone, however the Catholic
movement gave importance to the teachings of the Church, the spiritual leaders and the
traditions. Therefore this difference was visible in their religious views as well. Catholicism and
Protestantism have particular perspectives on the significance and the expert of the Bible. For
Protestant Christians, Luther clarified that the Bible is the "Sola Skriptura," God's solitary book,
in which He gave His disclosures to the general population and which enables them to enter in
fellowship with Him (Luther 2016). Catholics, then again, don't construct their convictions with
respect to the Bible alone. Alongside the Holy Scripture, they are furthermore bound by the
customs of the Roman Catholic Church. Therefore this is the basic difference between the idea of
Tetzel and Luther in their own areas of religious belief.

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2.3 Protestantism in South Africa represented 73.2% of the populace in 2010. Its history goes
back to the underlying European settlement on the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. From that point
forward, Protestantism has been the prevalent religion of the European pilgrims and today, of
South Africa all in all (Cabrita and Erlank 2018). The center of Protestant showing exists in the
Five Solae (Latin: 'Alone'), which give a rundown of Protestant religious philosophy. Basically,
Protestantism is portrayed by accentuation on the Bible as the sole wellspring of dependable
truth and the principle of salvation by effortlessness through confidence alone (These are known
as the formal and material reasons for the Reformation individually). Also, Protestants have
generally energized private elucidation of the sacred texts by people as opposed to depending on
the understanding of the congregation (just like the case, for instance in Roman Catholicism with
its Magisterium, or educating specialist). Sacred text is said to be perspicuous or clear with
respect to the basic certainties of salvation. Because of varying elucidations, different categories
have risen, for example, Baptists, Lutherans and Methodists, each holding their own particular
conventions. Therefore it can be stated that the local theology is more like Martin Luther than
Tetzel.
Task 3
3.1 John Wesley was a renowned minister of the eighteenth C. He served to establish the
Methodist development. John Wesley was conceived on 17 June 1703 in the town of Epworth in
Lincolnshire. His dad was Samuel Wesley and his mom was Susanna. In 1714 John had went to
Charterhouse school. In the year 1720 Wesley visited the Oxford University. In 1724 he was
granted a Bachelors of Arts and in the year 1727 a Masters of Arts. John Wesley was appointed a
cleric in 1728. In 1729 John Wesley turned into a guide at Oxford University (Simon 2017). At
the time he established a religious and spiritual club and individuals nicknamed them the

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Methodists. At that point in the year 1735 John had been to Northern America. Anyway his times
in the province of Georgia wasn’t a win and he came back to England in the year 1738. However
on the expedition to Georgia Wesley encountered some German Moravians and he was
profoundly awed by those people. In the year 1738 Wesley's experience and life was transformed
when he was going to a religious and spiritual gathering in the city of London. He afterwards
said that someone was perusing Martin Luther's Preface to Romans. Then John Wesley stated 'I
felt my heart unusually warmed'. A short time later he turned into an extraordinary minister. On
his voyage, Wesley turned out to be profoundly inspired by the quiet confidence of the Moravian
pilgrims. At the point when a tempest startled the travelers, Wesley noticed how the Moravians
tried to avoid panicking humming their psalms and asking. This urged the person to gaze all the
more profoundly at their spiritual practices and devotion. Be that as it may, Wesley gone away
from the city of Georgia underneath a cloud after an association with a lady went bad. She
guaranteed Wesley had guaranteed to wed her, however Wesley had severed the rapport. Wesley
was striven for breaching his statement; this brought about a malfeasance, and, after this
understanding, he cleared out America to come back to England. In England, Wesley turned into
a prominent evangelist in the Anglican Church. Wesley respected the evangelist George
Whitefield who delivered great messages in the outside to individuals rejected from Church.
Later an underlying hesitance, Wesley additionally started offering open air messages, trying to
interest a more extensive scope of 'miscreants' than cooked for by the customary church. Wesley
ended up a standout amongst the most productive ministers and explorers ever. He constantly
went around the nation, offering messages any place individuals would get him. In the event that
he was welcome to talk in a congregation he would, if that did not happen he was agreed in
talking outside. It is assessed by Stephen Tomkins that he “gave away 30,000 pounds, rode

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250,000 miles, and lectured in excess of 40,000 messages.” Wesley showed a basic regulation of
urging individuals to admit their transgressions and utilize the customary techniques for elegance
to purify the adherent. An outstanding part of his theory was instructing that everybody could
encounter the adoration for God in this lifetime – on the off chance that they were true in their
training. Wesley proliferated the possibility of an individual association with God – as opposed
to the somewhat unapproachable thought recommended by the conventional High Church.
Wesley was likewise persuaded of the significance of Holy Scripture. He connected every one of
his lessons to the Bible and saw the Bible as a definitive specialist.
3.2 The missionaries who were working for preaching mission in the Northern part of America
were endeavoring to spread Christianity however the colonial authority was more driven by
political motives therefore they often deviated from their missionary principles.
Task 4
4.1 Established church, a church perceived by law as the official church of a state or country and
bolstered by common specialist. Despite the fact that not entirely made by a legitimate get, the
lawful foundation is more similar to an authoritative substance than like whatever else and, in
this way, normally can't be shifted or denied by just a single gathering to it. The church isn't
allowed to roll out improvements in such things as regulation, request, or love without the assent
of the state. In tolerating such commitments, the church generally, however not generally, gets
money related help and other extraordinary benefits.
Disestablishmentarianism alludes to battles to disjoin interfaces among church and state,
especially in connection to the Church of England as an established church inside the United
Kingdom (Royce 2017). The crusade to disestablish the Anglican Church of Ireland started in the

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eighteenth century. Given that in Ireland not in any case ostensible adherence by the prevalently
Roman Catholic larger part populace could be normal for the (Protestant) established Church,
protection of the last turned out to be progressively troublesome, particularly after Catholic
Emancipation. In 1833 a Church Reform Bill was passed, diminishing the quantity of sees from
22 to 12, yet endeavors to redistribute the church's riches fizzled in the midst of political
contention.
4.2 Biblical criticism is an umbrella term for those techniques for concentrate the Bible that
states two firm points of view: the worry to maintain a strategic distance from creed and
inclination by applying a non-partisan, reason-based judgment, and the reproduction of history as
indicated by contemporary comprehension (Fuller 2015). While with present day writings it is
normally conceivable to check the printed duplicate against the writer's original copy, this isn't
conceivable with old biblical writings. For no situation has the creator's unique content, the
signature duplicate, been saved. What have survived are duplicates of the first (or, all the more
precisely, duplicates of duplicates), interpretations of the first into different dialects, and citations
of the first by later creators. Frequently, these were composed numerous years, even hundreds of
years, after the fact. Amid this mediating period, various changes happened, in the wording as
well as the content. Now and again, whole areas of the first have been lost, and along these lines
what remains is fragmented. Or then again, in different cases, maybe just bits of the first content
have been safeguarded, regularly in light of the fact that just certain entries have been cited by
different creators.
Modernism denies the scriptural portrayal of the idea of God. The God of the Old Testament is
viewed as a derisive god of retribution and is rejected. Albrecht Ritschl, for instance, renounced
the Bible confirmations with respect to Jehovah's heavenliness and fierceness and saw the Lord

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exclusively as a being of affection. This view disregards the equity of God, neglecting to
perceive that Jehovah will rebuff the rebel. Modernism receives a higher basic state of mind
toward the Bible, which overlooks the declaration of Scripture itself. For precedent, it is asserted
that Moses did not creator the Pentateuch, as both Old and New Testament proof propose. As far
as anyone knows, the initial five books of the Bible are nevertheless an aggregation of archives.
4.3 Quite a bit of what we know as biblical criticism today began with modernity, yet enthusiasm
for understanding the significance of biblical writings is significantly more established than that.
Indeed the Bible itself perceives the requirement for the clarification and elucidation of its
substance. The look for understanding the Bible's importance begins with specific inquiries not
just about the substance of individual books, yet additionally about when, why, how these books
were created. To give sensible answers to these inquiries, biblical researchers have utilized
logical and quasiscientific techniques. It must, in any case, be said that biblical criticism is as
much a craftsmanship as it is a science. Its items are the interests we have in knowing as much as
we can about the Bible, its reality, its thoughts, its lessons, in fact its exceptionally truth. The
purpose of flight for any sort of biblical criticism, at that point, is the human want to know
whatever can be thought about the Book of scriptures.
4.4 The Germany Church had talked in contradiction to the ascent of Nazism, however the
Catholic adjusted Center Party gave in 1933 and was prohibited. In the different 1933 decisions
the level of Catholics voting in favor of the Nazis party was strikingly lower than the normal
(Strehle 2017). Nazi key ideologist Alfred Rosenberg was prohibited on the file of the
Inquisition, directed by later pope Pius XII. Adolf Hitler and a few key Nazis had been raised
Catholic, however in adulthood wound up unfriendly to the Church. Article 24 in the NSDAP
party stage called for contingent toleration of Christian groups and the 1933 Reichskonkordat

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bargain with the Vatican implied to ensure religious opportunity for Catholics, the Nazis were
basically antagonistic to the religion and the Catholic Church confronted abuse in Nazi Germany.
Its youth associations, press and schools and were shut, much possessions appropriated and
about 33% of its pastorate confronted responses from specialists. Catholic lay pioneers were
focused in the Night of the Long Knives cleanse. The Church chain of command endeavored to
co-work with the new administration, yet in the year 1937, it is important to mention that the
Papal Encyclical Mit brennender Sorge blamed the legislature for "essential antagonistic vibe" to
the church. Catholics battled on the two parties in the World War 2. Then Hitler's attack of
prevalently Catholic Poland touched off the contention in the year 1939. Here, particularly in the
regions of the country Poland attached to the Reich, and as in other added locales of Austria and
Slovenia, Nazi mistreatment of the congregation was extreme.
Task 5
African Independent Churches which are also known as African Indigenous Churches,
African Instituted Churches or African Initiated Churches (AIC) are the independent 10000
Churches which are spread across the continent of Africa and are comprised of the Christian
denominations of Africa (Ngoepe and Ngulube 2014). These are more found in aggregate in the
Western part of Africa. The main feature of these Churches are that they were established by the
local African endeavors instead of foreign missionaries coming to the country. There are some
very unique features and traditions that feature these Churches. Two ways these churches
primarily came into being by the endeavors of the local Christian devotees, and not by foreign
hands, either by breaking up from existing Churches or independently getting established. There
are explanations that these churches are actually a combined syncretic belief of the local
indigenous African traditions and the Christian faith. There are Roman Catholic, Anglican,

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Pentecostal, Orthodox, and Methodist AIC traditions. Other variations include Ethiopian,
Zionist, or Messianic and apostolic.
Throwing off the white mask in this regard is mainly the phenomenon of doing away
with the dominance of the white people in field of Christian religion. It was one of the most
common feature of Christianity to see that the white skinned people occupying all the important
positions in the church. The independent Churches in Africa are mainly constituted and run by
the Black skinned indigenous African people. Therefore this is the phenomenon of throwing off
the white mask.
5.2 The African Indigenous Churches or African Independent Churches are often seen as a
problem to the demographic situation Africa. Often the traditions and customs followed by these
Churches are not supported by the Vatican and the final authorities of the Catholic or protestant
churches. The churches are spreading quickly across the continent and there are communal
problems with mainstream Christian churches and also other religions. This is one of the issues
pertaining the existence and spread of these churches. There are some times resistance from
various quarters and the Catholic Church is often against the further spread of these churches.
There are various factions of the African Independent Churches which include the protestant
variants as already mentioned.
5.3
a) Georg Schmidt who was a zealous Moravian missionary was one of the person who had great
interest in preaching work and wanted to spread the words of Christ to distant lands which often
put him into great trouble because many of the governments was doubtful about his desires. The

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state of DRC also therefore did not approve of his activities and there was friction among both
the parties.
b) The congregational churches are of independent protestant churches in which each of the
congregation manages itself and follows its own administration. The arrival of congregationalism
in South Africa started with the arrival of protestant religious movement in the country. They are
helpful in spreading the message of Christianity at a local level.
c) The Ordinance 50 was helpful in bring a change in the autocratic and despicable system of
slavery and discrimination by the British colonists to the African colonies (South Africa). The
ordnance which was brought by the person called Dr. John Philip helped in bringing equality by
stating that law is same for all people of any color.
d) The Boers were the farmers in the British colony of South Africa who used to mainly speak in
Dutch. The great Trek was actually the movement of these settlers on wagon trains in the interior
parts of the South Africa to escape British colonial forces. The Boers were of mixed religion
however the common religion was Calvinism.
e) The problem and friction between Bishop Grey of Cape Town and Bishop Colenso of
Pietermaritzburg was mainly on the issue of theology and philosophy. Bishop Grey was very
strict about his theology and also held high value to his own role and expected Colenso to obey
him. Colenso did controversial things like giving baptism to polygamous men.
f) Doppers Church or the Calvinist church developed in the Transvaal region which was mainly
result of the Afgeskeie Gereformeerde Kerk of Holand. This was a part of the reformation
movement within the Christian religion.

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Reference:
Becker, S.O., Pfaff, S. and Rubin, J., 2016. Causes and consequences of the Protestant
Reformation. Explorations in Economic History, 62, pp.1-25.
Cabrita, J. and Erlank, N., 2018. New Histories of Christianity in South Africa: Review and
introduction, pp.123-190.
French, H.F. ed., 2017. Martin Luther’s Table Talk: Abridged From Luther's Works, Volume 54.
(pp.220-290) Fortress Press.
Fuller, R.C., 2015. Alexander Geddes 1737-1802: Pioneer of Biblical Criticism (pp.250-310)
Bloomsbury Publishing.
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1650–1800, ed. Wayne Hudson, Diego Lucci and Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth, pp.190-300.
Kay, W.K., 2016. Pentecostalism. In The Wisdom of the Spirit (pp. 63-76). Routledge.
Luther, M., 2016. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, 1520: The Annotated Luther (pp.163-
210) Fortress Press.
Ngoepe, M. and Ngulube, P., 2014. Eternal memory or holy amnesia? Preservation of, and
access to records and archives of African independent churches in South Africa. ESARBICA
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European Integration (pp. 261-290). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

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Strehle, S., 2017. The Dark Side of Church/State Separation: The French Revolution, Nazi
Germany, and International Communism (pp.150-250) Routledge.
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