500 Years After Reformation, Many Protestants Closer to Catholics than Martin Luther
In 1517, Martin Luther staked his soul on two revolutionary ideas: sola fide, that salvation is dependent on faith alone; and sola scriptura, that Scripture is the only ultimate authority for Christian belief and practice and that it does not need oversight from church leadership or tradition to be read and understood.
The 95 theses Luther nailed to the door at Wittenberg served as the catalyst for one of the world’s largest religious splits, as thousands broke off from the Roman Catholic Church. His legacy, 500 years later, is 560 million Protestants across the globe, making up more than a third of the world’s Christians.
But many of them don’t actually agree with him.
Today, half of American Protestants say that both good deeds and faith in God are needed to get into heaven (52%); the same number believe that in addition to the Bible, Christians need guidance from church teachings and...
