Anglicans and Protestants: Main DIFFERENCES

The great dominance of christianity For centuries it has led many people to try to change it, creating reforms to reduce its power and influence or to seek a new way of looking at the Christian faith. To talk about two of the doctrines born of the reform of Christianity, in this lesson from a PROFESSOR we are going to talk about the differences between Anglicans and Protestants.

In the 16th century the so-called Protestant Reformation. It was a movement in which a large part of religious they separated from the Catholic Church, defending that in recent years they had fallen into a series of great theological errors and that they had turned their backs on true religion. From that moment, the followers of this new trend, called Protestants they defended a new religion separated from the Vatican concept in many aspects.

One of the most relevant elements of Protestantism is that it is much more diverse, there are numerous divisions in other types of doctrines, and it is even common for a country to have a type of Protestantism only from the region. Some of the

branches of Protestantism are the Anglicanism, Lutherans, Calvinism, or Methodists.

To better understand how Protestantism works we must talk about its main ideas and, thus, we will understand its theological system. We must bear in mind that the different branches of Protestantism have great differences, but we must talk about those ideas that resemble all of them. The main characteristics of Protestantism are as follows:

• Its base is the calls ninety-five theses of Luther, which criticized the actions of the Catholic Church and asked the Pope to react to the inequalities and greed created in recent years.
• All authority related to faith must be derived from the sacred texts of God, that is, everything related to faith must come from the Bible. Within Protestantism there are different ways of seeing the Bible but in all of them it has great relevance.
• Salvation at the end of life is only achieved with faith towards God, breaking with the idea that salvation could be bought by giving money to the Church.
• The only mediator that can function between man and God is Jesus Christ, thus ending with the figure of the Virgin Mary that exists in Catholicism.
• They do not believe in the sacraments, since it is not considered that a sacrament like penance can end all sins.
• The belief that God can only be given glory and adoration, so he rejects the worship of angels or other people.
• They end the authority of the Pope, since they reject the position born in San Pedro.

To understand the differences between Anglicans and Protestants we must also understand what Anglicanism is. It is the faith that characterizes all those churches that make up the anglican communion, sharing the ideals of the Church of Canterbury, being especially common in England.

As for its origin we can go back to century XVI, when the British joined the Reformation advocated by Luther to change the religion of the time. The founder of Anglicanism is considered Henry VIII, being the king of England in this period and having many differences with the Papacy for not letting him divorce his wives. The importance of Anglicanism was vital for the English, since at that time the figure of English monarch took more relevance than that of the Pope, taking control of the state religion British.

Anglicanism it is still just another branch of Protestantism, being a kind of middle ground between this and Catholicism. The religious branches being are difficult to understand, and for that reason we must next talk about some of the main characteristics of Anglicans, to understand their important thinking. Some of the main ideas of Anglicans are as follows:

• It is considered part of the reformed doctrines, although there are numerous differences in the thinking of theologians, since many of them place it in Protestantism and many others in Catholicism.
• The only valid rule in Anglican religion is the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments.
• The main sacraments of Anglicanism are the baptism and eucharist.
• Anglicanism does not enjoy special protection for the saints, since they consider that all the baptized people are saints.
• His thinking about the female religious figure and homosexuality is much more open than in other religious branches.

To conclude this lesson we must talk about the main differences between Anglicans and Protestants, the elements that differentiate both religions. The most prominent are the following:

• Anglicanism is a branch of the many that make up the Protestantism, being born from her but evolving in another way.
• You could say that the Anglicanism it's a midpoint between Catholicism and Protestantism.
• Protestantism rejects all the sacraments, except baptism and the Eucharist, while Anglicanism thinks that the rest of the sacraments must be performed even if they are secondary.
• While Protestantism defends that salvation is only achieved through faith in god, Anglicanism talks about how good deeds and the sacraments can lead to God.
• Protestantism says that the only valid thing is the Bible, while Anglicans believe that there are other elements necessary to follow the doctrine of God.