How did the Protestant churches begin?

Answer 1

No one single person began the Protestant Reformation, it was the work of several wise men and women in Mediaeval times who came to dispute the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, but one of it's earliest seminal figures was Martin Luther. Luther was a German Professor of Theology as well as being a composer, priest and having served as a monk. Born in Saxony in 1483, he began his disagreement with the Catholic Church by rejecting the concept of 'Indulgences'- that is, that it was possible to buy your way to Absolution from sin by paying the Catholic Church. Pope Leo X demanded that Luther renounce his views, as did the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at a religious assembly called the Diet of Worms (seriously, that was it's name- it was named after the town on the Rhine where it was held and is pronounced 'Vurms'!) in 1521. Luther refused, resulting in his excommunication by The Pope and his condemnation as an outlaw by the Emperor. He went on to preach a great number of doctrines, central to which were his belief were that eternal life is not bestowed by doing good deeds but is a gift given freely to all those who were faithful to God and to Christs's teachings. He taught that The Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge from God, rejected the concept of Hell and Purgatory, and translated The Bible from Latin into German Vernacular, which made it much more accessible to ordinary people and set the precedent for William Tynedale doing the same thing in England later. He believed that priests should be free to marry and to have children, himself going on to marry a former nun called Katherina von Bora- but central to his beliefs were his rejection of aspects of the Catholic Church that he saw as being corrupt and morally wrong, and that Eternal Life can come only from faith in Jesus and God. In many ways, his teachings came close to rejecting the concept of Original Sin. He is most famous for having nailed a copy of his 'Ninety Five Doctrines' to the door of the church in his home town of Wittenburg. Unfortunately he was anti-Islamic, believing that the Turks were an Antichrist who were punishing the Holy Roman Empire for it's errant and sinful ways, although he did tolerate peaceful islamic practice. He also rejected Judaism as a sinful religion on the grounds that it was responsible for the death of Christ. Luther died in 1546 at the age of 62; since then, the Western European Protestant Church has become largely known as 'Lutheran', although there are Lutheran denominations in the US and elsewhere. But Luther was by no means the only founder of Protestantism- many other religious scholars, monks, priests and kings gradually came to disagree with the rigidity and hypocrisy of the Mediaeval Catholic Church, amongst them William Tynedale, the Lollard sect in England, King Henry VIII, and a lot more.

Answer 2

When the Reformation took place the Protestant churches began to grow. The Catholic Church was illegal in England and the Church of England became the official state church.