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50 free Protestantism trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 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.
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Q 01The Reformation is usually dated from which year, when Luther published the Ninety-five Theses?
1517
He was a professor of moral theology at Wittenberg protesting the sale of indulgences.
Q 02The first people to be called Protestants issued a protest against the edict of which 1529 assembly?
Diet of Speyer
Six princes and fourteen free cities signed; the word stayed a German political term for decades.
Q 03Martin Luther was born in 1483 in which German town?
Eisleben
He also died there in 1546, still formally excommunicated.
Q 04Before his break with Rome, Luther belonged to which religious order?
Augustinian
He entered the monastery at Erfurt in 1505 after a lightning bolt struck near him in a thunderstorm.
Q 05Luther's Ninety-five Theses attacked which church practice?
Sale of indulgences
Indulgences purported to remit the temporal punishment of sins for their purchaser.
Q 06Which pope excommunicated Luther in January 1521?
Leo X
He had demanded in 1520 that Luther renounce all his writings.
Q 07At which 1521 assembly did Emperor Charles V condemn Luther as an outlaw?
Diet of Worms
The resulting edict called him a notorious heretic and let anyone kill him without legal consequence.
Q 08In which castle did Luther hide and translate the New Testament into German?
Wartburg
He called it his Patmos; the translation helped create standard German.
Q 09Luther's wife Katharina von Bora had been what before their marriage?
A nun
The marriage set the model for Protestant clergy to marry.
Q 10The name Lutheran was first used as an insult by which opponent at the 1519 Leipzig Debate?
Johann Eck
Luther himself wanted his followers called simply Christian or Evangelical.
Q 11Who was the principal author of the 1530 Augsburg Confession?
Philipp Melanchthon
It remains the primary Lutheran confession of faith and sits fourth in the Book of Concord.
Q 12The 1555 Peace of Augsburg let rulers choose between Roman Catholicism and which confession?
Lutheranism
The settlement collapsed in the early 17th century, helping to cause the Thirty Years' War.
Q 13Which event at a Zurich printer's workshop in 1522 is considered the start of the Swiss Reformation?
The Affair of the Sausages
Zwingli and a dozen others deliberately broke the Lenten fast with two smoked sausages.
Q 21Presbyterianism takes its name from what?
Government by elders
Presbyters sit in representative assemblies; most churches trace to the Church of Scotland.
Q 22Which Scottish reformer spent 1547 to 1549 as a prisoner rowing in French galleys?
John Knox
He was captured at St Andrews castle and went on to lead the Scottish Reformation of 1560.
Q 23The Church of England renounced papal authority in which year?
1534
Henry VIII's Acts of Supremacy made him Supreme Head after Clement VII refused to annul his marriage.
Q 14Luther and Zwingli met at the Marburg Colloquy but could not agree on what?
The Real Presence
They agreed on most other points; the 1529 meeting is remembered for its failure.
Q 15Which reformer died on the battlefield in 1531 when Catholic cantons attacked Zurich?
Huldrych Zwingli
His alliance had tried a food blockade on the Catholic cantons; they struck back at Kappel.
Q 16John Calvin led the Reformation in which city?
Geneva
William Farel recruited him there in 1536, the year the Institutes first appeared in Basel.
Q 17Calvin was born in 1509 in Noyon, a town in which French province?
Picardy
His birth name was Jehan Cauvin; he fled to Basel after violence against French Protestants.
Q 18What is the title of Calvin's seminal work of theology?
Institutes of the Christian Religion
The first edition came out in 1536 and he revised it for the rest of his life.
Q 19Which Spaniard was burned at the stake in 1553 after Calvin denounced his view of the Trinity?
Michael Servetus
Catholics and Protestants alike regarded him as a heretic; the city council carried out the sentence.
Q 20Which Protestant tradition teaches double predestination?
Calvinism
Lutheranism affirms election to salvation but denies predestination to damnation; Arminians tie election to foreseen faith.
Q 24Which archbishop declared Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon void in 1533?
Thomas Cranmer
Cranmer went on to write the 1549 Book of Common Prayer.
Q 25The first Book of Common Prayer was published in 1549 under which king?
Edward VI
It was the first prayer book with complete English services; the 1662 edition is still official.
Q 26The Church of England's defining doctrinal statement, finalised in 1571, contains how many articles?
Thirty-nine
Cranmer's Forty-two Articles of 1552 were the earlier version.
Q 27About how many adherents does the Anglican Communion have?
85 million
That makes Anglicanism the second-largest Protestant grouping after the Pentecostal denominations.
Q 28William Tyndale was executed in 1536 near Brussels by which method?
Strangling, then burning
His New Testament was the first English Scripture drawn directly from Greek and Hebrew.
Q 29Which bishop bought up Tyndale's 1526 New Testaments and burned them in public?
Cuthbert Tunstall
Only three copies of the first edition survive; thousands were smuggled into England.
Q 30The King James Version of the Bible was published in which year?
1611
James commissioned it at the 1604 Hampton Court Conference, wanting no anti-monarchist notes like the Geneva Bible's.