Religion: Is Protestant a Bad Word?

A perennial thorn in the flesh of high-church U.S. Episcopalians is the official name of their denomination: the Protes tant Episcopal Church. It is bad enough, they feel, that Roman Catholics so often get away with calling themselves plain Catholics, although anyone who says the Apostles’ Creed identifies himself as a member of the Holy Catholic Church.* But to carry the label Protestant, which goes back more to Martin Luther than to the fuss with Henry VIII, seems to them unjustly imprecise.

Anticipating this week’s General Convention in Detroit, the conservative Episcopal weekly, the Living Church, published results of a poll among those who would like to see the denomination’s name changed. Inevitably, someone voted for the “Church of England in the Colonies.” The hands-down winner, with 585 votes: the “American Episcopal Church.”

* Major exception: Lutherans who say “Holy Christian Church.”