A New Definition

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 10, 1913

THE Protestant Episcopal Church, which meets in general convention next October, will have placed before that body a petition signed by many prominent churchmen of that denomination, asking that the word Protestant in the church name be changed to that of Catholic. According to the Independent, “there is a wing in the Episcopal Church which hates this name of Protestant because they are really more inclined to the Catholic Church than to their Protestant sister churches.” It is this party in the church which is strongly advocating the proposed change. Speaking of this agitation, the editor of the Independent, in the issue of April 10, says:—

Certainly the denomination which bears the name of the Protestant Episcopal Church is not catholic in the sense in which the Roman communion is catholic. But on the other hand, it is not Protestant. It has stopped protesting, as have all our other Protestant bodies. That means that the word Protestant has lost its etymological meaning. It no longer suggests hostility to the Pope. The Protestant denominations are going about their own business, and in their churches you will hear ten protests against civic corruption to one against their ancient enemy. Protestantism simply means the churches which are not subject to the Vatican, nothing more, and one of them is the Protestant Episcopal Church. . . . The name Protestant is not a beautiful one, but it is no longer a quarrelsome one. It is not a name to cling to, but it will do till a better one is found.

What has occasioned this new definition of Protestantism? What has brought about this change in the attitude of the Protestant churches toward Romanism? It certainly is not because Rome has come over on to Protestant ground. She boasts that she never changes, and if we are to accept the oft-expressed sentiments of her modern teachers and theologians as representative of the spirit of the church, we find that spirit in full accord with the spirit of the church in the past. Rome to-day would relate herself to governments, to heretics, so called, to everything, in fact, that does not meet her mind and conform to her standards, precisely as Rome did when she possessed the power to enforce her decrees. A change has taken place in Protestantism. It no longer protests as it once did, because to protest would be to condemn her own practises as well as the practises of Rome. Little by little it has come to view questions from Rome’s standpoint, and all this is most regrettable.

The Scriptures of Truth in their purity and simplicity need today as never before to be held forth as the one true foundation of faith and the only test of morals. Some there are in the Protestant connections who recognize the dangerous trend of the present day Romeward. They are sounding the warning. We as Seventh-day Adventists need to sound it, not as others who have not the light of truth for this day, but we need to give the warning as the warning of God, as that contained in the Scriptures of Truth, in the prophecy of the third angel’s message. The only thing which will check the advance of Romanism is the pure, unadulterated gospel of the Word.