Protestantism
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48 free Protestantism trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Protestantism started as a political label for six princes and fourteen free cities who protested at the Diet of Speyer in 1529, and grew into a family of churches with somewhere between 640 and 830 million members, depending on who counts the Pentecostals. Its story runs through a monk in a thunderstorm, a sausage supper in Zurich, a Frenchman in Geneva, a king who wanted a new wife, a massacre at a Paris wedding, a ship called Mayflower, a preacher whose heart was strangely warmed and a run-down building on Azusa Street. These 48 questions cover the Reformation and what came after. Luther at Wittenberg, Worms and the Wartburg, Zwingli and Kappel, Calvin and Servetus, Melanchthon and the Augsburg Confession, the Peace of Augsburg, Henry VIII and Cranmer, Tyndale's strangling and the King James Bible, the Huguenots from Saint Bartholomew's Day to Fontainebleau, the Westminster Confession and the Puritans, Anabaptists, Mennonites, Amish and Quakers, Wesley and the Holy Club, Edwards and the Great Awakening, the Southern Baptists, Parham and Seymour, Billy Graham and Max Weber. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01To what did Luther famously nail his Ninety-five Theses?
A church door
A church door: historians still debate whether Luther posted them at all, but he did send copies to the Archbishop of Mainz, who forwarded them to Rome.
Q 02The first people to be called Protestants issued a protest against the edict of which 1529 assembly?
Diet of Speyer
Diet of Speyer: its Catholic majority revoked a 1526 ruling that let each prince decide how to treat Luther's followers, so the reforming rulers lodged a formal protest.
Q 03Martin Luther later said a 1505 thunderstorm made him abandon his university studies in which subject?
Law
Law: he vowed to become a monk if he survived, and his father, who had wanted a lawyer for a son, was furious.
Q 04Before his break with Rome, Luther belonged to which religious order?
Augustinian
Augustinian: Johann von Staupitz, his superior in the order, pushed the brooding young monk to earn a doctorate and teach theology at Wittenberg.
Q 05Luther's Ninety-five Theses attacked which church practice?
Sale of indulgences
Sale of indulgences: the friar Johann Tetzel was selling them in towns near Wittenberg to help pay for rebuilding St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Q 06Which pope excommunicated Luther in January 1521?
Leo X
Leo X: when the pope's 1520 bull gave Luther time to recant, Luther publicly burned it at Wittenberg, and the excommunication followed weeks later.
Q 07At which 1521 assembly did Emperor Charles V condemn Luther as an outlaw?
Diet of Worms
Diet of Worms: Luther refused to recant there, by tradition saying 'Here I stand', and the emperor's edict ordered his writings to be burned.
Q 08In which castle did Luther hide and translate the New Testament into German?
Wartburg
Wartburg: Luther lived there incognito as a knight called Junker Jörg, growing out his hair and a beard while he worked on the translation.
Q 09Luther's wife Katharina von Bora had been what before their marriage?
A nun
A nun: in 1523 Luther arranged for a herring merchant to smuggle her and other nuns out of their convent, which was a crime at the time.
Q 10Which Catholic theologian debated Martin Luther and Andreas Karlstadt at Leipzig in 1519?
Johann Eck
Johann Eck: a year after the Leipzig debate he went to Rome and helped compose the papal bull that threatened Luther with excommunication.
Q 11Who was the principal author of the 1530 Augsburg Confession?
Philipp Melanchthon
Philipp Melanchthon: when the emperor's theologians rejected much of it in a Confutation, he answered with a long defence, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession.
Q 12Which English Nonconformist preacher wrote the allegory 'The Pilgrim's Progress'?
John Bunyan
John Bunyan: a tinker by trade, he spent 12 years in jail because he refused to promise that he would stop preaching.
Q 13Which event at a Zurich printer's workshop in 1522 is considered the start of the Swiss Reformation?
The Affair of the Sausages
Q 21Presbyterianism takes its name from what?
Government by elders
Government by elders: when Charles I tried to force English-style worship and church rule on Scotland, many Scots signed the 1638 National Covenant against it.
Q 22Which Scottish reformer spent 1547 to 1549 as a prisoner rowing in French galleys?
John Knox
John Knox: he had joined the Protestant garrison holding St Andrews Castle after Cardinal Beaton's murder, and was captured when French forces took it.
Q 23Which archbishop declared Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon void in 1533?
Thomas Cranmer
Thomas Cranmer: under Mary I he signed recantations of his Protestant faith, but on the day he was burned he publicly took them back.
The Affair of the Sausages: the printer Christoph Froschauer served sausages to guests during Lent and was arrested.
Q 14At the 1529 Marburg Colloquy, Luther and the Swiss reformers could not agree on what?
The Real Presence
The Real Presence: Philip of Hesse called the meeting to build a Protestant alliance, but Luther took 'This is my body' literally while the Swiss saw a symbolic rite.
Q 15Which reformer died on the battlefield in 1531 when Catholic cantons attacked Zurich?
Huldrych Zwingli
Huldrych Zwingli: Zurich and Bern had cut off grain and salt to five Catholic cantons, and that food embargo drove them to declare war.
Q 16John Calvin led the Reformation in which city?
Geneva
Geneva: its council expelled Calvin in 1538, but he returned in 1541 expecting to stay six months, and stayed for the rest of his life.
Q 17Which Czech reformer was burned at the stake in 1415, a century before Luther's protest?
Jan Hus
Jan Hus: he travelled to the Council of Constance under the emperor's promise of safe conduct, but was declared a heretic and burned anyway.
Q 18What is the title of Calvin's seminal work of theology?
Institutes of the Christian Religion
Institutes of the Christian Religion: Calvin wrote its first edition partly as a defence of persecuted French Protestants, addressed to the king of France.
Q 19Which Spaniard was burned at the stake in 1553 after Calvin denounced his view of the Trinity?
Michael Servetus
Michael Servetus: he had already escaped a Catholic heresy trial in France, whose judges had to settle for burning him in effigy.
Q 20Which Methodist minister founded the Salvation Army after starting a mission in London's East End?
William Booth
William Booth: his mission fed and housed the poor, and in 1878 he renamed it and organised it on military lines, with himself as general.
Q 24The first Book of Common Prayer was published in 1549 under which king?
Edward VI
Edward VI: within three years it was replaced by a far more Protestant 1552 revision.
Q 25Which statement of Church of England doctrine was finalised in 1571?
Thirty-nine Articles
Thirty-nine Articles: Oxford made its students sign them, so for centuries anyone who rejected the Church of England's doctrine was barred.
Q 26Which South African churchman won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for opposing apartheid?
Desmond Tutu
Desmond Tutu: after apartheid ended, he chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which could grant amnesty to abusers who confessed in full.
Q 27William Tyndale reportedly vowed that one day which humble worker would know more Scripture than a learned cleric?
A ploughboy
A ploughboy: when the Bishop of London refused to back his translation, Tyndale left England, and his New Testament was printed abroad and smuggled home.
Q 28Which pastor and theologian was hanged by the Nazis in April 1945 for his part in the resistance?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: he had accepted an invitation to teach in New York in 1939, but returned to Germany within weeks to share its ordeal.
Q 29The King James Bible grew out of a 1604 conference at which royal palace?
Hampton Court
Hampton Court: James backed a new translation there partly because the marginal notes in a popular rival Bible questioned the authority of kings.
Q 30Which Lutheran composer spent his last 27 years as cantor of Leipzig's St Thomas Church?
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach: Leipzig offered the post first to Telemann and then to Christoph Graupner, and turned to Bach only when both stayed put.