Reformation and branches
The movements that preceded, carried out or followed the sixteenth-century Reformation, ordered by century. The site records 20.
12th century
c. 1173
A movement of lay preaching and voluntary poverty that began in Lyon around 1173, was condemned in 1184 and persecuted for centuries.
15th century
After Jan Hus was executed at Constance (1415), Bohemia saw a reform movement that demanded, among other things, communion in both kinds for the laity.
16th century
1517
It grew out of Martin Luther’s protest against indulgence preaching (1517) and was given confessional form in the Augsburg Confession (1530).
Zwingli began preaching at Zurich’s Grossmünster on 1 January 1519, and after the public disputations of 1523 the city council adopted the Reformation.
On 21 January 1525 in Zurich, dissenting followers of Zwingli baptized one another as adult believers.
1534
Henry VIII’s break with Rome (Act of Supremacy, 1534) was at first more jurisdictional than doctrinal; theological reform advanced under Edward VI and Cranmer and settled with the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559.
Calvin arrived in Geneva in 1536, was expelled in 1538 and returned in 1541, when he organized the church with pastors, doctors, elders and deacons.
c. 1560
A Reformed current within the Church of England that, from the 1560s, sought to "purify" it of what it saw as Catholic remnants.
1560
A form of the Reformed tradition governed by elders (presbyters) meeting in sessions, presbyteries and synods.
17th century
1609
They arose from English Separatists exiled in Amsterdam, where John Smyth founded a believers-only baptizing church in 1609; Thomas Helwys brought the group back to London in 1612.
1675
A renewal movement within Lutheranism that, from Spener’s Pia Desideria (1675), stressed personal piety, small-group Bible study and holy living.
18th century
c. 1734
A wave of revivals in Britain’s American colonies and in Great Britain, peaking around 1734–1745, that crossed denominational lines.
1739
A renewal movement within the Church of England that took off in 1739, when John Wesley began field preaching in Bristol after his Aldersgate experience (1738).
c. 1790
A series of revivals in the United States from c. 1790 to 1840, with frontier camp meetings and new evangelistic methods.
19th century
A movement born on the American frontier that sought to overcome denominational divisions by returning to the New Testament pattern of the church, without creeds as a test of fellowship.
A 19th-century current, rooted in Methodism, centered on "entire sanctification" as a second work of grace.
20th century
1906
A movement teaching baptism in the Holy Spirit, usually evidenced by speaking in tongues, and the continuing operation of spiritual gifts.
A largely American Protestant reaction against liberal theology and biblical criticism, defending doctrines seen as "fundamental" such as inerrancy, the virgin birth and bodily resurrection.
A transdenominational current that, from the 1940s, moved away from fundamentalism to engage the culture while keeping biblical authority, personal conversion, the centrality of the cross and mission.
The spread of Pentecostal spirituality within historic churches (Anglican, Lutheran, Catholic and others) from 1960, without members leaving their churches.