The rite of baptism was gradually embellished and became an elaborate liturgy by the 3rd century. Infants were probably baptized in the early church, following the Jewish understanding that even the youngest children belong to the covenant community. Most Protestant churches adopted traditional views and practices regarding baptism, often stressing its covenantal character more than its relation to sin.

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Eucharist or Lord's Supper, central rite of the Christian religion, in which bread and wine are consecrated by an ordained minister and consumed by the minister and members of the congregation in obedience to Jesus' command at the Last Supper, "Do this in remembrance of me." In the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and many Protestant churches, it is regarded as a sacrament that both symbolizes and effects the union of Christ with the faithful. The practice of eating meals in remembrance of the Lord and the belief in the presence of Christ in the "breaking of the bread" were universal in the early church. Early Christian documents indicate considerable diversity in the practice and understanding of the Eucharist.

The theologians of the early church tended to accept Jesus' words "This is my body" and "This cup . . . is the new covenant in my blood" as sufficient explanation of the miraculous transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. According to scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), the substance of the Eucharistic bread is, by the power of God, wholly transformed into the body of Christ. This view has been the official teaching of the Roman Catholic church since the Middle Ages. In the 16th century, Protestant reformers offered several alternative interpretations of the Eucharist.

Eucharistic doctrine also concerns the sacrificial character of the sacrament— how the Eucharist is related to Christ's sacrifice on the cross. Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Anglican churches have traditionally taught that the Eucharist is a means by which believers can partake of Christ's sacrifice and the new covenant with God that it inaugurated. Protestants in general have been hesitant to apply sacrificial categories to celebrations of the Eucharist. Normally the Eucharist consists of two parts. The first consists of Scripture readings, a sermon, and prayers. The second part consists typically of an offering of bread and wine, a prayer of consecration, the distribution of the consecrated elements to worshipers, and a final blessing and dismissal.

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Evangelicalism, movement in modern Protestantism emphasizing personal commitment to Christ and the authority of the Bible. Evangelicals believe that individuals need spiritual rebirth and personal commitment to Jesus Christ, through faith in his death on the cross for human salvation. They emphasize strict orthodoxy on cardinal doctrines, morals, and especially the authority of the Bible. In the general sense, evangelical means simply pertaining to the Gospel. The word identified the early leaders of the 16th-century Reformation, but eventually referred to Protestants in general.

Forebears of 20th-century Evangelicalism include pre-Reformation dissenters, 16th-century reformers, English and American Puritans, and early Baptists and other Nonconformists. In England, the leaders of Pietism and Methodism taught the necessity of personal saving faith rather than routine membership in the national church. This teaching profoundly impacted personal devotional life, evangelism, church reform, and even broad social reform.

British evangelist George Whitefield linked English Evangelicalism with revivalism in the American colonies, where the Great Awakening developed about 1725. The Evangelical label began to be applied to interdenominational efforts at outreach and the establishment of foreign missions. During the early 19th century, Fundamentalism reacted broadly to emerging theological Modernism and historical criticism of the Bible. The term Fundamentalism gradually designated only the most uncompromising and militant wing of the movement, and more moderate Protestant conservatives adopted the older designation of Evangelical.

The largest Protestant body in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention, embraces Evangelical tenets; other components of Evangelicalism include Pentecostalists, the Charismatic Renewal, Arminian-Holiness churches, conservative confessionalists, and numerous black Baptists. Current Evangelicalism bridges the conservative and revivalist elements that were generally antithetical in the 19th century. According to a recent estimate, there are about 157 million Evangelicals throughout the world, including about 59 million in the United States.

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Methodism, worldwide Protestant movement dating from 1729, when a group of students at the University of Oxford in England began to assemble for worship, study, and Christian service. The term methodists arose as a derisive allusion to the methodical manner in which they performed the various practices that their sense of Christian duty and church ritual required.

Among the Oxford group were John Wesley, considered the founder of Methodism, and his brother Charles, the sons of an Anglican rector. John preached, and Charles wrote hymns. Together they brought about a spiritual revolution, which some historians believe diverted England from political revolution in the late 18th century. The theology of the Wesleys leaned heavily on Arminianism and rejected the emphasis in Calvinism on predestination. Preaching the doctrines of Christian perfection and personal salvation through faith, John Wesley quickly won an enthusiastic following among the English working classes, for whom the formalism of the established Church of England had little appeal.

Opposition by the English clergy, however, prevented the Wesleys from speaking in parish churches. Consequently, Methodist meetings were often conducted in open fields, leading to a revival of religious fervor throughout England. John Wesley's message as well as his personal activities among the poor encouraged a social consciousness that was retained by his followers and has become a hallmark of the Methodist tradition. Wesley never renounced his ties with the Church of England, but he provided for the incorporation and legal continuation of the new movement. Soon after John Wesley's death in 1791, his followers began to divide into separate church bodies. During the 19th century many such separate Methodist denominations were formed in Great Britain and the United States, each maintaining its own version of the Wesleyan tradition.

Methodism was brought to the United States before the American Revolution (1775-1783) by emigrants from both Ireland and England. Francis Asbury, commissioned in 1771, was the missionary most instrumental in establishing the American Methodist church. Methodism, spread by the circuit rider and the revival meeting, advanced westward with the frontier.

At the end of the 18th century, black Methodists in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, withdrew from the church, where segregation had been forced upon them, and established an independent congregation. Soon church groups from other cities along the Atlantic seaboard joined with them to form the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Other splits occurred because of ecclesiastical or social differences, such as slavery, which became the most divisive issue in the history of Methodism. The different groups formed their own churches, including the Evangelical United Brethren Church. In 1968 this church joined with the Methodist Church to become the United Methodist Church, bringing more than half of world Methodism into one denomination.

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Church of England or Anglican Church, the Christian church in England, dating from the introduction of Christianity into that country. More specifically, it is the branch of the Christian church that, since the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, has been the established Church of England. The Church of England has a baptized membership of about 27.5 million, roughly two-thirds of the population of England.

The ritual and discipline of the early English church were largely introduced by the Celtic and Gallic missionaries and monks, but after the arrival of missionaries from Rome in 597, the Celtic forms gradually gave way to the liturgy and practices of the Roman West. After the Norman conquest of 1066, continental influence strengthened the connections between the English church and the papacy. A number of English kings sought to limit the power of the church, but without success until the reign of Henry VIII.

The acts of Parliament between 1529 and 1536 mark the beginning of the Anglican church as a national church independent of papal jurisdiction. Henry VIII, vexed at the refusal of Pope Clement VII to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragón, induced Parliament to enact statutes denying the pope's jurisdiction over the Church of England. Although Henry did not change the basic nature of the church, after his death the impetus for religious reform increased. After the 1603 accession of the first Stuart monarch, James I, as king of England, agitation for religious change became closely associated with the struggle of Parliament against Stuart absolutism. When King James II attempted to reintroduce the practice of Roman Catholicism, he lost his throne to William III and Mary II in the ensuing revolution of 1688.

In the 1700s the Evangelical Revival infused a new sense of piety and of personal consecration into the established church. During the 1800s a movement was launched by a group of clerics at the University of Oxford to revive the Catholic elements in the church's spiritual heritage. Low Church members, who felt more allied to Protestantism, opposed this movement; but the High Church Oxford movement prospered, transforming the face of the English church. It gave a new emphasis to the dignity and beauty of religious ritual and to the central place of worship.

The foundation of an independent Protestant Episcopal church in the United States dates from the time of the American Revolution (1775-1783), when Anglican church members in the former colonies could no longer give their allegiance to the mother church. Other churches developed that were centered upon the Church of England. They became known as the Anglican Communion.

The doctrine of the Church of England is found primarily in the Book of Common Prayer, and secondarily in the Thirty-nine Articles. The Church of England differs from the Roman Catholic church chiefly in denying the claims of the papacy both to jurisdiction over the church and to infallibility as promulgator of Christian doctrinal and moral truth.

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Lutheranism, major Protestant denomination, which originated as a 16th-century movement led by Martin Luther. Luther, a German Augustinian monk and professor of theology, originally planned to reform the Western Christian church. Because Luther and his followers were excommunicated by the pope, however, Lutheranism developed in a number of separate national and territorial churches, thus initiating the breakup of the organizational unity of Western Christendom. Lutheranism is the largest Protestant denomination in the world, with about 80 million members.

According to Lutheran teaching, all human beings are considered sinners and unable to contribute to their liberation. Salvation does not depend on worthiness or merit but is a gift of God's grace. Lutherans believe that faith, understood as trust in God's steadfast love, is the only way toward salvation. For Lutherans, baptism signifies God's unconditional love, which is independent of any intellectual, moral, or emotional achievements on the part of human beings.

From the beginning, the methods of worship in the Lutheran church diverged from those of the Roman Catholic church. The Lutheran church practiced only two of the seven sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist. Worship was conducted in the language of the people, as opposed to in Latin. Lutherans also encouraged congregational participation, especially singing, in worship. In the Lutheran celebration of the Eucharist, the symbolic bread and wine were given to all communicants, whereas Roman Catholics had allowed the wine only to priests. Lutherans accept the authority of the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. Lutherans study the books of the Apocrypha of the Old Testament and traditionally include them in vernacular versions of the Bible. Unlike Roman Catholic priests, Lutheran clergy may marry. The European Lutheran churches are closely tied to their respective governments as established churches, either exclusively, as in the Scandinavian countries, or in a parallel arrangement with Roman Catholicism, as in Germany.

The early development of Lutheranism was greatly influenced by political events. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was unable to suppress Lutheranism because the empire was being threatened by the Turks. Despite the Edict of Worms (1521), which placed the Lutherans under imperial ban, the movement continued to spread. Intermittent religious wars followed, ending in the Peace of Augsburg (1555), which to a certain extent sanctioned Lutheran churches.

Beginning in the late 17th century, the reform movement called Pietism, which stressed individual conversion and a devout way of life, revitalized Lutheranism. Lutheran theology during the 18th century reflected the rationalism of the Enlightenment. The establishment of the Church of the Prussian Union in 1817 united Calvinists and millions of German Lutherans into one church. This development was bitterly opposed by a large number of Lutherans, some of whom broke away to establish a separate church. In the 20th century Lutheran leaders in Norway and Denmark took major roles in the resistance to Nazi occupation of their countries.

Lutheranism arrived in North America with early European settlers. In the 17th century European Lutherans settled in New Amsterdam (now New York City) and in Delaware. At the beginning of the 18th century German Lutherans settled in large numbers in Pennsylvania. Because of the large numbers of immigrants to the United States and Canada in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the integration of Lutherans into North American society went slowly. Lutheranism was divided into numerous German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, and Slovak groups. Following World War I (1914-1918), however, unification and integration proceeded rapidly. Lutheranism is the third largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Recently, Lutheranism has grown most rapidly in Africa and Asia. The only country outside of Europe where a majority of the population is Lutheran is Namibia in southern Africa.

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Baptists, Protestant Christians who accept the basic tenets of the 16th-century Reformation (justification by faith, the authority of the Scriptures, and the priesthood of the believer) but have added other beliefs and practices, including baptism of believers by immersion only, the separation of church and state, and the autonomy of the local church. The great majority of Baptists (more than 34 million in the early 1990s) live in the United States, where they make up two-fifths of the Protestant population.

Baptists believe in a church composed only of individuals who have had a personal experience of the Christian religion. Individuals join voluntarily following repentance for sin and affirmation of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Baptists emphasize baptism by immersion and reject infant baptism. They do not consider baptism a sacrament through which special grace is received, but rather an ordinance whereby one makes public confession of a faith already received. They reserve the ordinance until a time of understanding (usually early teenage years and after), when joining the church will be by personal choice. Baptists also observe the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, which they interpret as a memorial experience (see Eucharist).

The Bible, interpreted by the individual, is regarded as the ultimate religious authority in matters of faith and practice. Although Baptists follow the doctrine of separation of church and state, they feel a responsibility to exert moral and spiritual influence on the state. Baptists believe in the autonomy of the local church, which ordains and calls its own clergy. Baptists argue that the self-government of the local church preserves the spirit of democracy, encourages the participation of lay persons in the church, and permits a wide range of theological expression. Baptists have never adopted a universal creed.

John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, English separatists of Congregational persuasion, founded the first Baptist church on Dutch soil at Amsterdam in 1609. Smyth eventually joined the Mennonites, and Helwys returned to an unfriendly England. There, in 1611 or 1612, he led a small group of Christians in establishing the first Baptist church on English soil, at Spitalsfield, near London. From their base in England, Baptists have grown to number more than one million members in Europe.

It was in America that Baptists experienced their greatest growth. Roger Williams, an English Puritan clergyman, founded the first Baptist church in America at Providence, Rhode Island, in 1639. Baptist growth accelerated in the 1700s. In the 1800s the Baptists split over the issue of slavery in the United States. This led to the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845. In 1907 the northern Baptists drew together to form the Northern Baptist Convention (now the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A.). The southern Baptists are more conservative in theology than their northern counterparts and more revivalistic in methodology.

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Sin, in religion, transgression of a sacred or divinely sanctioned law or practice. Some idea of sin is found in most religions. Perhaps the earliest manifestation of it was the strong opprobrium attached to violating a taboo. In no other sacred book is the sense of sin so fully developed as in the Bible, where sin is the element that puts human beings at enmity with God. In the New Testament, sin is the essential human condition that calls for the redeeming work of Christ. However, it was not until the time of theologian Saint Augustine that the Christian doctrine of sin was fully developed. Augustine maintained that Adam's sin corrupted humanity's whole nature, and that his guilt and its penalty pass to all his descendants (see Adam and Eve). The Orthodox church has continued to affirm that the human will is as free as Adam's was before the fall. During the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, German reformer Martin Luther and Swiss reformer John Calvin maintained the Augustinian emphasis on original sin and on God's grace as the means of redemption, while the doctrine of Arminianism denied hereditary sin altogether.

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