This is a good thread about how, theologically & historically, to construe the 16th century reform movements we term "the Reformation" as well as ongoing "Protestant" identity.

My question: Beyond a few academics, do any actual non-RC/EO Christians think of themselves this way? https://twitter.com/benjamindcrosby/status/1251699391926161408

And not just individual believers, but traditions as a whole? Perhaps Anglo-Catholicism in the UK/US? Anyone/anything else?

In other words: Is there a plausible reading of Protestant-ISM in the present, or across the last 250 years, as a proposal for renewing catholic identity?

I see next to no evidence for that. Even for those traditions whose theologians are friendliest to particular thinkers between St. Augustine and Luther, Protestantism largely goes about the faith as if next to nothing of theological import happened between Chalcedon and Worms.

Certainly nothing that ought to bear in some strong way on the present, or inform the living liturgy or witness of the church. Nor is that history (the lives of the saints, the experiences of the church in those times) remembered or hymned or memorialized. It's a sheer void.

And there are certain Protestant traditions that recognize, theorize, & justify the void, & others that do not. But all—with, again, the partial exception of the Anglicans—share the void. And if so, then the initial protest *for* the integrity of the *catholic* faith is lost.

I don't know what that means for the divided church in the present tense. But it's best to acknowledge the fact as it stands, and (whatever else we are called to do) to lament it.