John and plt,

I echo your caution to be wary, taking the unspoken assumptions of writers into account. I just wanted to extend it in the opposite direction of the point you made to say that even if a source uses BC/AD, it may be no more explicitly or accurately Christian in its interpretation than one which uses BCE/CE.

I would also add that the degree of confidence to place in a source depends on the nature of the material being conveyed. So if you have a choice of obtaining a piece of historical information about a Christian denomination from 2 articles--one by a Jew who is a respected historian and the other by a Christian for whom history is not a strength--you should clearly give more weight to the article by the historian.

In the information you are seeking, plt, that principle would hold for many basic details, as in the link I gave you above: dates, countries, tracing the development of which branch split into others, general categories of denominational distinctives, names of key figures involved. These are matters of such common knowledge that any well-documented source could be accepted with little fear of prejudice against the truth.

The "wariness" John advises is essential, however, when looking for any explanation of the actual teaching of a particular group, since an author's core assumptions--even the most allegedly neutral--inevitably intrude on his critique or defense of an article of faith.

In light of this I would urge you to consider the following plan of study of Protestant teaching, once you have spent time with Pilgrim's links above.

Without exception, the major Protestant branches emerging from the Reformation--Lutheran, Calvinist/Reformed, Anglican--and their immediate offspring--Presbyterian, Congregational, Baptist--very quickly drew up documents stating with varying degrees of precision what they themselves considered the essential elements of their belief. The advantages of your going to this source material would be many:
  • these confessions of faith are written in an accessible vocabulary
  • they tend to be concise and yet thorough
  • they display a remarkable sense of unity across the several branches on all major points of doctrine--or said another way, the common points of doctrine reveal themselves as those appearing in the several confessions
  • the topical treatment lends itself to comparison against the Scriptures
  • if you have a general sense of where each of the branches began, it will be much easier for you to regard later developments as enhancements to, fallings away from, or returnings to, the original teaching in the confessions


The Highway's front page has links to 2 of the most important of these "founding documents":

Presbyterianism's Westminster Confession of Faith

and the Reformed Church's The Canons of Dordt

More can be found at The Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics' Historic Church Documents page.

I doubt that I am alone in praying that your interaction with the material that has been recommended will be of greater profit to you than you can now imagine.