Protestantism and Non-Christian Religions

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. The anti-Catholic bias of the Encyclopaedia Britannica has been noticeably decreasing in the last twenty years. As late as the eleventh edition, Conybeare’s article on the Eucharist was an attempted refutation of the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence. “To the modern mind,” he concluded, “it is absurd that […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Reformed Churches are lineal descendants of the church of John *Calvin, and therefore collateral relations of the Presbyterian bodies in Europe and America. But whereas Presbyterianism is mainly an Anglo-Saxon development through the Scot John *Knox, the Reformed groups derive from Calvin directly. Their immediate ancestors are the Calvinists […]

by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J. The multiplicity of separate and independent Protestant churches in the United States is something unique in the modern world, which Protestants themselves are the first to deplore. “The fissiparous tendency,” they confess, “which has characterized the whole of Protestantism has run riot in the United States.” [1] In view of […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. In a previous article (February, 1955), we have seen the extent to which American Protestantism is disunited on the two basic levels of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and doctrinal profession. Ninety denominations are separated into two hundred and thirty sects, which are further divided into thousands of autonomous churches where the […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. A brief description of the ecumenical movement in the United States would be to call it the effort to join a divided Protestantism into some semblance of religious unity. Protestant sectarianism has been given many epithets by the critics from its own ranks, but none more critical than the […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. A class or society of individuals called by the same name; in the U.S. the term is used to describe the variety of religious bodies, mainly in the Protestant tradition. The terms church, denomination, and sect are often used indiscriminately, but they are quite distinct. Properly understood, church refers […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. The Sunday school movement, probably the most far-reaching educational activity in the field of religion since the Reformation, was initiated by Robert Raikes (1735-1811), a native of Gloucester, England. In 1780 he started a school for factory children in his own (Anglican) parish for teaching the Bible, reading, and […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. When President Van Dusen of Union Theological Seminary was recently asked, “What are Protestants protesting against?” he sharply replied, “They are not protesting against anything.” Their name, he said, means a solemn affirmation of religious belief. However, all that we know of Protestantism as a historical movement confirms the […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Outline The beginnings of the Unitarian movement go back to the early years of Christianity, when the Gnostics, Arians, and Nestorians disagreed with the traditional teaching of the Church regarding the divinity of Christ. However, the name “Unitarian” was not used until the sixteenth century to identify certain Protestant […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. The origins of Protestant youth movements in America are traced to the singing classes or schools of the early 18th century. There is record of one in Boston, Mass., in 1717, and by 1800 more than 60 different songbooks had been printed for such choral group. Somewhat later, young […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Founder of *anthroposophy; b. Kraljevic, Austria, Feb. 27, 1861; d. Dornach, near Basel, Switzerland, March 30, 1925. His formal schooling in natural science at the University of Vienna was supplemented by extensive reading, notably in *Goethe, whose complete works he edited (1889-96). For a time he was coeditor of […]