For the most part, Protestantism does not venerate images. This page shows that through the confessions of faith and teaching materials of the churches themselves, tells the story of the debate over images during the sixteenth-century Reformation, and then shows what Protestants place at the centre of a church instead of statues: the pulpit with an open Bible, the Communion table, the font or baptistery, the plain cross and boards of written text. The library uses photos of real churches, books and paintings, with the photographer's name and the licence under each photo. The only image drawn by the library is a diagram. The altarpieces from the Cranach workshop appear here because they stand in Lutheran churches, where pictures are kept to teach, not to be venerated.
IProtestants do not venerate images
In short, Protestants do not bow before statues or pictures, and do not pray before the image of anyone. In a Protestant church, what stands at the centre is not a statue but the pulpit with an open Bible, the Communion table, the font or baptistery and, in many places, a plain cross.
Source: Virtual Museum of Protestantism (Musée protestant, France), Protestant religious architecture. Nguyễn Xuân Hùng, Nghi lễ và lối sống của tín đồ Tin Lành, trường hợp Hội Thánh Tin Lành Việt Nam (Miền Nam) (Rituals and way of life of Protestants: the case of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South)), Religious Studies Review (Nghiên cứu Tôn giáo), nos. 11 and 12, 2016. Christian Reformed Church in North America, Heidelberg Catechism (English text), questions 96 to 98.The reason lies in the second of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:4 to 6). A daily Bible lesson of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South) draws three points from it: do not make carved images, do not make an image of God, because he is the true God and invisible, and do not bow down before images.
Source: Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South), httlvn.org, daily Bible lesson: Điều Răn Thứ Hai (The second commandment), 29/6/2020.Even so, Protestantism is not a single block. From the sixteenth century there were two directions. Luther's direction kept pictures and the crucifix as aids to memory and teaching, as long as they were not venerated. The direction of Zwingli and Calvin cleared all images out of places of worship. The Church of England stood somewhere in between and changed its course several times. This page goes through each direction in turn.
Source: Journal of Lutheran Ethics (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, ELCA), Suzanne E. Hoeferkamp Segovia, Martin Luther and the Visual Arts, 2018. Wikipedia, Aniconism in Christianity. Virtual Museum of Protestantism (Musée protestant, France), Protestant religious architecture.What the confessions say
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The table above summarises the texts and is not an official translation. The Heidelberg Catechism and the Westminster Catechism belong to the Reformed and Presbyterian churches. The Lutheran churches do not use them.
IIThe debate over images in the Reformation
Whether to keep pictures and statues in churches divided the reformers from the very first years. The three names below stand for three answers.
Source: Journal of Lutheran Ethics (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, ELCA), Suzanne E. Hoeferkamp Segovia, Martin Luther and the Visual Arts, 2018. Wikipedia, Aniconism in Christianity.Martin Luther
Wittenberg, GermanyHow to recognize: Kept pictures and the crucifix as aids to memory and teachingOn 24 January 1522, while Luther was still hiding at Wartburg Castle, Andreas Karlstadt persuaded the Wittenberg city council to have pictures, statues and altars removed. Townspeople then smashed statues and pictures in the parish church. Luther returned and preached eight sermons in a row from 9 to 16 March 1522, usually called the Invocavit sermons. In 1525 he wrote at greater length in Against the Heavenly Prophets. In his view, images are permitted as long as they are not venerated but kept as memorials. He wrote that when he hears of Christ, the image of a man hanging on a cross forms in his heart, just as his face appears in water when he looks into it.
Huldrych Zwingli
Zürich, SwitzerlandHow to recognize: Cleared images, and even the organ, out of the churchesZwingli preached at the Grossmünster in Zürich. After the disputations of 1523, in 1524 and 1525 the city had images and organs removed from its churches, dissolved the monasteries and replaced the Mass with a simple Lord's Supper. His successor was Heinrich Bullinger, author of the Second Helvetic Confession.
Jean Calvin
Geneva, SwitzerlandHow to recognize: Painting is a gift of God, but images do not belong in the place of worshipIn the Institutes, book 1, chapter 11, Calvin writes that sculpture and painting are gifts of God and must be used rightly. One should paint only what the eye can see, while the majesty of God cannot be painted. He notes that for the first five hundred years Christian churches had no images. In his view, the only images a church should hold are the living symbols that the Lord instituted by his Word, namely Baptism and the Lord's Supper.
Wikipedia sums up scholarship as saying that for Lutherans the Reformation renewed rather than removed the religious image, and that Lutherans strongly opposed the image breaking of the Reformed side. The Virtual Museum of Protestantism in France also notes that Lutherans were less austere: in Alsace and Montbéliard they did not remove the pictures and statues already in their churches. So the phrase "Protestantism has no images" holds for most Reformed, Presbyterian and Baptist churches, but not entirely for the Lutheran churches.
Source: Wikipedia, Aniconism in Christianity. Virtual Museum of Protestantism (Musée protestant, France), Protestant religious architecture.IIIThe removal of images in the sixteenth century
Images were removed in two ways. In some places the city government ordered it and it was done in an orderly way, as in Zürich in 1524. In others crowds did it themselves, as in Wittenberg early in 1522 and above all in the Low Countries in 1566.
Source: Journal of Lutheran Ethics (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, ELCA), Suzanne E. Hoeferkamp Segovia, Martin Luther and the Visual Arts, 2018. Britannica, Huldrych Zwingli. Wikipedia, Beeldenstorm.The Beeldenstorm, 1566
In Dutch this wave is called the Beeldenstorm, the storm against images. On 10 August 1566, the feast of Saint Lawrence, a crowd broke into the chapel of the Sint-Laurens monastery at Steenvoorde, in the part of Flanders that is now in northern France. From there the movement spread quickly, reaching Antwerp on 20 August and Ghent on 22 August. Before this, open-air sermons (hagepreken) had spread widely, outside the reach of the town authorities.
Source: Wikipedia, Beeldenstorm. Saskia Beranek, Iconoclasm in the Netherlands in the Sixteenth Century, Smarthistory 2015, republished on Pressbooks.According to Saskia Beranek, statues were torn from their niches, windows were smashed, and altars were taken apart and burned. Where statues were part of the building itself, their heads were hacked off. The theological reason was the second commandment: venerating an object was seen as idolatry. She also points out that 1566 was not only about doctrine but also had political and economic causes, and that the image breaking helped spark the Eighty Years' War.
Source: Saskia Beranek, Iconoclasm in the Netherlands in the Sixteenth Century, Smarthistory 2015, republished on Pressbooks.
England
In England the crown directed the process. Under Elizabeth I, the royal injunctions of 1559 condemned images that were superstitiously abused, and the commissioners who carried out the visitations ordered all pictures and images to be destroyed. Across the country, parishes paid to have roods, images and altar tabernacles taken down.
Source: Wikipedia, Elizabethan religious settlement.The whitewashed churches
Once the statues and pictures were gone, many medieval churches in the Netherlands were left with white walls, stone pillars and light. The painter Pieter Saenredam (1597 to 1665) became known for painting these spaces. Britannica calls him a pioneer of the church portrait, painting real buildings as they were. Emanuel de Witte, who was younger, added people and the furnishings that remained in Reformed churches, such as a congregation sitting around the pulpit to hear a sermon.
Source: Britannica, Pieter Saenredam. Wikipedia, Pieter Jansz. Saenredam._-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
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IVWhat stands at the centre instead of statues
The Virtual Museum of Protestantism names three lasting features of Protestant churches in France: no religious statues or paintings, an interior rearranged to put the pulpit and the Communion table forward in place of the altar, and many windows that make the building very bright. Nguyễn Xuân Hùng, in an article on Protestantism in Vietnam, writes that for almost all Protestant branches the core of worship is the reading and preaching of the Bible.
Source: Virtual Museum of Protestantism (Musée protestant, France), Protestant religious architecture. Nguyễn Xuân Hùng, Tìm hiểu về giáo thuyết, tín lý, đạo đức và lối sống của tín đồ Tin Lành tại Việt Nam (On the doctrine, beliefs, ethics and way of life of Protestants in Vietnam), Religious Studies Review, no. 12, 2017.The diagram above shows a layout common in Reformed and Presbyterian churches. Lutheran and Anglican churches keep the altar at the far end of the main space.
The pulpit and the open Bible
How to recognize: A raised platform with a rail, often with a canopy above, holding a large BibleBritannica notes that because the preaching of the Word is central to Protestant worship, after the sixteenth century the position of the pulpit became a question both theological and practical. When the Protestant denominations built their own churches, the pulpit was placed centrally on a platform at the end of the church, facing the congregation. The Bible on the pulpit is in the people's own language: Luther's translation printed complete in 1534, the King James Version of 1611, the Dutch Statenbijbel of 1637. The Canons of 1604 of the Church of England required every parish to provide a Bible of the largest volume and a comely pulpit.
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The Communion table
How to recognize: A wooden table, not a stone altarMany Reformed, Baptist and Methodist churches, and the low church wing of Anglicanism, call it the Communion table or the Lord's table. According to Wikipedia, they avoid the word altar because they do not see Communion as a sacrifice, and they use a wooden table instead of a stone altar for the same reason. In everyday speech the two names are often used interchangeably. The English Canons of 1604 required every church to have a decent table, covered with a fine cloth during services and with a white linen cloth at the celebration. On the table are the bread and the cup.
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The font and the baptistery
How to recognize: A small basin beside the pulpit, or a pool set into the floorIn Dutch Protestant churches, the pulpit is surrounded by an area with a low wooden rail called the dooptuin. The name comes from the fact that baptism was administered there, right below the pulpit, rather than in a separate chapel near the door. Baptist churches baptise only those who have come to faith, and do so by immersion in water, so their meeting houses have a baptistery.
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The plain cross
How to recognize: Two bars of wood or metal, without the figure of JesusBritannica distinguishes two things: the cross is a sign recalling the death and redemption of Jesus, while the crucifix bears his figure. The Lutheran churches keep the crucifix, and many Lutheran churches hang it above the altar. In most other Protestant denominations the crucifix is less common and a plain cross is preferred. The Reformed confessions quoted above do not accept images of Jesus in the place of worship. Some sixteenth-century Reformed and Anglican theologians even opposed the use of the cross in worship. According to Wikipedia, that reaction did not last, and the cross later became common in these traditions. In Vietnam, Nguyễn Xuân Hùng records that Protestant churches do not use the image of Christ on the cross, only the cross itself.
Boards of text: the Ten Commandments and Bible verses
How to recognize: A wooden board painted black or a dark colour, with gold or white letteringWords take the place of pictures. In France, the Reformed temples of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were decorated only with the Tables of the Law, Bible verses and civic coats of arms. In the Netherlands, the Ten Commandments board (tiengebodenbord) is described by Dutch Wikipedia as the Protestant answer to Catholic statues of saints and crucifixes. In 2014 about 135 such boards remained in the country. In England, the Canons of 1604 required the Ten Commandments to be set up at the east end of every church, where the people could best see and read them, along with other chosen sentences written on the walls. In Norway a catechism board in lettering from about 1590 survives.
The Luther rose
How to recognize: A black cross in a red heart, set in a white rose, on a blue field, within a gold ringThis was Luther's own seal, made in 1530, and it is now a familiar emblem of the Lutheran churches. In a letter to Lazarus Spengler dated 8 July 1530, Luther explained it himself: the black cross in the heart is a reminder that faith in the Crucified saves us. The white rose says that faith brings joy, comfort and peace. The sky-blue field is the heavenly joy that has already begun. The gold ring is the blessedness of heaven that never ends. It is an emblem, not an object of worship.
Source: Wikipedia, Luther rose.VAltarpieces and altars in Lutheran churches
The Lutheran churches kept the altars they had from before the Reformation. Some even commissioned new altarpieces whose content taught Lutheran doctrine. Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472 to 1553), a close friend of Luther, and his son were the main painters. According to Wikipedia, altarpieces with an explicitly Lutheran programme of this kind are relatively few, and the phase was mostly over by about 1555.
Source: Journal of Lutheran Ethics (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, ELCA), Suzanne E. Hoeferkamp Segovia, Martin Luther and the Visual Arts, 2018. Wikipedia, Wittenberg Altarpiece. German Wikipedia, Altar, section Altar in lutherischen Kirchen.The Wittenberg Altarpiece
1547, St. Mary's Church, WittenbergHow to recognize: The Last Supper around a round table in the centre, and below it Luther preaching before the crossThe altarpiece was made for the Wittenberg parish church in 1547, a year after Luther's death. The front shows three sacraments: the Lord's Supper in the centre, Philipp Melanchthon baptising a baby on the left wing, and the pastor Johannes Bugenhagen hearing confession and granting absolution on the right wing. The predella shows Luther in the pulpit, with Christ crucified between him and the congregation. The back shows the risen Christ, the sacrifice of Abraham, and Moses with the bronze serpent. The people in the painting are real people of Wittenberg, including Luther's wife, Katharina von Bora.
The Weimar Altarpiece
1552 to 1555, Church of St. Peter and Paul, WeimarHow to recognize: Christ on the cross in the centre, Luther and Cranach standing at its footCranach the Elder began it and Cranach the Younger finished it in 1555 after his father's death. It was commissioned by John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony, for the high altar. Luther and Cranach himself are shown standing beside John the Baptist at the foot of the cross.
Law and Grace
1529, Lucas Cranach the ElderHow to recognize: A tree divides the picture into two halves, with lines of Bible text belowThis is a picture for teaching, not for the altar. According to the note on its file page, it draws on the letters of the apostle Paul to show the path of humankind from condemnation, sin and the law to eternal life, faith and grace. The design exists in several versions, among them the one in Gotha dated 1529.
The Torgau chapel and the pulpit altar
The chapel of Hartenfels Castle in Torgau was built in 1543 to 1544 and consecrated by Luther himself on 5 October 1544. It is often described as the first newly built Protestant church. Wikipedia, however, ranks it second, after the chapel of Neuburg Castle, consecrated in 1543.
Source: Wikipedia, Torgau.Later, in the German-speaking Protestant lands, the Kanzelaltar appeared: the pulpit placed directly above the altar as one unit, sometimes with the organ above that. The arrangement says that the preached Word and the sacrament at the altar belong together. The oldest surviving pulpit altar is in the chapel of Wilhelmsburg Castle in Schmalkalden, built in 1585 to 1590. In 1861 the Eisenach regulation rejected this form and required Lutheran churches to have a free-standing altar in a sanctuary.
Source: Wikipedia, Pulpit altar. German Wikipedia, Altar, section Altar in lutherischen Kirchen.
VIDifferences between the denominations
Britannica names five major branches of Protestantism: Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed and Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist. The Pentecostal movement came later, at the start of the twentieth century. The table below gives only common features. Within each branch some churches do things differently.
Source: Britannica, Lutheranism. Britannica, Pentecostalism.Anglicanism: from removal to return
The Thirty-Nine Articles, in their final text of 1571, reject the adoration of images. Britannica observes that the articles are in places Calvinist in tone, in places close to Lutheran or Catholic positions, and in many places deliberately left open. From 1833 the Oxford Movement, with John Keble, John Henry Newman and Edward Pusey, stressed the catholic character of the Church of England. One result, according to Britannica, was greater use of ritual in worship. All Saints, Margaret Street, in London, rebuilt in the 1850s, and the chapel of Keble College, opened in 1876, are both by the architect William Butterfield and both linked to this movement. Wikipedia notes that Anglicanism today holds both approaches: the low church wing keeps the aniconism of the Reformation, while the wing shaped by the Oxford Movement has brought images back into use.
Methodism
The Methodist movement began in eighteenth-century England with John Wesley, who sought to renew the Church of England from within. Britannica counts simple worship and the hymns of Charles Wesley among its main features. Wesley's Chapel in London opened on 1 November 1778 and has been called the mother church of world Methodism. Wikipedia quotes the United Methodist Church as saying that, strictly speaking, United Methodists do not have an altar.
Baptists
Baptists share the common beliefs of Protestantism and hold the Bible as the highest authority. What sets them apart is that they baptise only those who have come to faith, and do so by immersion rather than by sprinkling or pouring. For this reason the baptistery is an essential part of the meeting house.
Pentecostalism
The Pentecostal movement began in the United States at the start of the twentieth century and grew out of the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles in 1906. Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, founded in 1958 and affiliated with the Assemblies of God, is a very large Pentecostal congregation. The photo on this page shows only the church's outdoor plain cross.
VIIProtestant churches around the world
Germany
The homeland of the Lutheran church. Churches keep altars and crucifixes, and Wittenberg and Weimar have altarpieces from the Cranach workshop. The Frauenkirche in Dresden is a Lutheran church built specifically for Protestant worship, with its foundation stone laid in 1726. It was destroyed at the end of the Second World War and rebuilt between 1994 and 2005.
Netherlands
Medieval churches were kept for Reformed worship after their statues and pictures had been removed. Inside are white walls, the pulpit at the centre with its dooptuin rail, a Ten Commandments board and the Communion table. The Groote Kerk in Maassluis is a newly built Protestant church, opened on 9 October 1639.
Switzerland
In Zürich, the reform of Zwingli and Bullinger left the Grossmünster plain. Its statues and organ were removed in 1524. Stained glass by Augusto Giacometti was added in 1932, and by Sigmar Polke in 2009. In Geneva, St. Pierre Cathedral has been the principal church of the Protestant Church of Geneva since 1535. At the Reformation its interior was stripped of its side chapels and decorative works of art, except the stained glass.
France
French Reformed Protestants call their place of worship a temple. Sixteenth and seventeenth-century temples followed two plans: a long plan, as at Charenton, and a round plan, as at Lyon, Caen and Rouen. The congregation sat in circles around the Communion table and the pulpit, with galleries for extra seating. The Paradis temple in Lyon was built from 1564 and destroyed in 1567. After the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685, very few temples were left.
Scotland
The Church of Scotland is Presbyterian and has used the Westminster Catechisms since 1648. Burntisland Parish Church, built in 1592, is one of the first churches built in Scotland after the Reformation. Its plan is square, 18 metres on each side inside.
England
After the Reformation, Anglican churches had a Communion table, a pulpit and a Ten Commandments board under the Canons of 1604. St Mary Abchurch in London was rebuilt in 1681 to 1686 after the Great Fire. From the nineteenth century the Oxford Movement brought decoration and ritual back into many churches.
Nordic countries
The Nordic countries follow the Lutheran church, so their churches still have altars, altarpieces and carved pulpits. The Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, the Lutheran cathedral, was completed in 1829. Bertel Thorvaldsen carved for it the statue of the risen Christ in the niche above the altar, the twelve apostles along the nave, and a font in the form of an angel holding a scallop shell. It is a clear example that Lutheran churches do not avoid statues.
United States
Old Ship in Hingham, Massachusetts, built in 1681, is the only surviving seventeenth-century Puritan meetinghouse in the United States. The Puritans called their place of worship a meetinghouse and left it plain, without decoration. The meeting house of the First Baptist Church in America in Providence, a congregation founded in 1638, was built in 1774 and 1775.
South Korea
Saemoonan Church in Seoul was founded by the missionary Horace Grant Underwood in 1887 and is the first organised Presbyterian church in Korea. Yoido Full Gospel Church, founded in 1958, has about 870,000 members according to Wikipedia.
VIIIProtestant churches in Vietnam
Protestantism came to Vietnam in 1911 at Đà Nẵng, through missionaries of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA). Today there are two organisations with the same name, identical in doctrine but operating independently. The General Assembly of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam (North) has its headquarters at 2 Ngõ Trạm, Hà Nội. The General Confederation of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South) has its headquarters in Hồ Chí Minh City.
Source: Vietnamese Wikipedia, Hội Thánh Tin Lành Việt Nam (miền Bắc) (Evangelical Church of Vietnam, North). Vietnamese Wikipedia, Hội Thánh Tin Lành Việt Nam (miền Nam) (Evangelical Church of Vietnam, South). Wikipedia, Protestantism in Vietnam. Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South), httlvn.org home page.Nguyễn Xuân Hùng, of the Institute for Religious Studies, describes the churches as follows: simple architecture, no image of Christ on the cross, no lavishly decorated sanctuary. On the walls there are no images of the fourteen Stations of the Cross, only a few Bible verses painted and hung where they are easy to see, and the cross. He also notes that Protestants worship God alone and do not venerate pictures, statues of saints or relics.
Source: Nguyễn Xuân Hùng, Nghi lễ và lối sống của tín đồ Tin Lành, trường hợp Hội Thánh Tin Lành Việt Nam (Miền Nam) (Rituals and way of life of Protestants: the case of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South)), Religious Studies Review (Nghiên cứu Tôn giáo), nos. 11 and 12, 2016. Nguyễn Xuân Hùng, Tìm hiểu về giáo thuyết, tín lý, đạo đức và lối sống của tín đồ Tin Lành tại Việt Nam (On the doctrine, beliefs, ethics and way of life of Protestants in Vietnam), Religious Studies Review, no. 12, 2017.The photo of the interior of the Ngõ Trạm church in Hà Nội shows exactly these things: a plain cross on the end wall, the pulpit at the front, and the words Tôn vinh Đức Chúa Trời (Glory to God) running along the arch. Outside many churches, the easiest sign to recognise is a plain cross on the gable or the tower.
Source: Nguyễn Xuân Hùng, Nghi lễ và lối sống của tín đồ Tin Lành, trường hợp Hội Thánh Tin Lành Việt Nam (Miền Nam) (Rituals and way of life of Protestants: the case of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South)), Religious Studies Review (Nghiên cứu Tôn giáo), nos. 11 and 12, 2016.
On doctrine, a daily Bible lesson on the website of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South) explains the second commandment: God is the true God and invisible, so to make any image to represent him and worship it is unworthy and an offence against him. When a church building is finished, the congregation holds a service of dedication to offer it to the Triune God.
Source: Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South), httlvn.org, daily Bible lesson: Điều Răn Thứ Hai (The second commandment), 29/6/2020. Evangelical Church of Vietnam (South), httlvn.org, Lễ Cung hiến Nhà thờ Tin Lành Đăk Ma (Dedication of the Đăk Ma Protestant church), 5/10/2026.Vietnamese Protestants use their own terms: Đức Chúa Trời (God), Chúa Giê-xu (Jesus), Kinh Thánh (the Bible), Hội Thánh (the Church), Mục sư (pastor), lễ Báp-têm (baptism), Tiệc Thánh (the Lord's Supper), thờ phượng (worship). The Vietnamese version of this page follows that usage.
IXWhat the library is not sure of
Are you a church member, a pastor or a researcher and have you found something that is not right, or do you have a photo of your own to contribute? Please send it with its source to thayungkhiem@gmail.com. The library will correct the page and credit the contributor.
XPhotos and licences
Every photo on this page comes from Wikimedia Commons, under Public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA licences. Authors and licences are given exactly as on the original file pages, read on 07/10/2026. The photos have only been reduced in size, with no change to their content. Click the name of a photo to go to its original file page. If you are an author and see an incorrect credit, please let the library know so it can be corrected.
XISources
The pages above were read in October 2026. If a page has changed its address, please let the library know so it can be updated.
?Quick Questions
Do Protestants venerate statues of Jesus or Mary
No. Protestants worship God alone and do not bow before the statue or picture of anyone. The Lutheran churches keep pictures and the crucifix, but regard them as aids to memory and teaching, not objects of veneration.
Why does the cross in a Protestant church usually have no figure of Jesus
Most Protestant denominations other than the Lutherans prefer a plain cross. Reformed confessions such as the Second Helvetic Confession and the Westminster Larger Catechism do not accept images of Jesus in the place of worship. Lutheran churches still use the crucifix.
What stands in the place of honour in a Protestant church
The pulpit with the open Bible, because reading and preaching the Bible is the core of worship. Next come the Communion table and the font or baptistery. On the walls there is often a plain cross and Bible verses.
Are all Protestant churches bare, without pictures or statues
No. Reformed, Presbyterian and Baptist churches are usually very simple. Lutheran churches in Germany and the Nordic countries still have altars and altarpieces, and some have statues. One wing of Anglicanism has also decorated its churches richly since the nineteenth century.
What is the Ten Commandments board in a church for
Words are used in place of pictures. In the Netherlands, the Ten Commandments board in some Reformed churches is seen as the Protestant answer to Catholic statues of saints and crucifixes. The Canons of 1604 of the Church of England required the Ten Commandments to be set up at the east end of every church, where the people could most easily read them.
How are Protestant churches in Vietnam furnished
According to Nguyễn Xuân Hùng, the churches are simple in architecture, with no image of Christ on the cross and no Stations of the Cross. On the walls there is only the cross and a few Bible verses hung where they are easy to see.