Protestants have long been known not only for the special authority they have accorded the Bible but also for the encouragement they have given to laity to read the Bible and make sense of it for themselves. But for much of their history they have assumed this would be done in the context of worshipping communities, where believers could interpret the Bible together, guided by the results of these communities' ongoing deliberations as codified in creeds, confessions and catechisms. In recent times, however, this has been breaking down because of the rise of increasingly radical forms of individualism. The resulting turn away from creedal religion is celebrated by some as an advance, but it is not without problems. This article identifies some of those problems, and briefly considers how they might be addressed.

中文翻译：

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还是“书里的人”？

长期以来，新教徒不仅因为他们赋予圣经的特殊权威而闻名，而且还因为他们鼓励平信徒阅读圣经并自己理解圣经。但在他们的大部分历史中，他们都假设这将在敬拜社区的背景下完成，在那里信徒可以一起解释圣经，以这些社区正在进行的审议结果为指导，这些结果编纂在信条、告解和教义问答中。然而，近年来，由于日益激进的个人主义形式的兴起，这种情况已经瓦解。由此产生的对信条宗教的转变被一些人庆祝为一种进步，但这并非没有问题。本文确定了其中的一些问题，并简要考虑了如何解决这些问题。