I found this question in another forum and I was curious to see what kinds of responses it would get here –
I am not a Protestant, but I believe that one of the cardinal protestant principles is the laying of great emphasis on the right to private judgment. Over time this has led to the emergence of a very wide variety of views on various doctrines, and this in turn has led to a wide variety of different denominations, all embraced by the term “protestantism”.
I suppose it would be possible to construct a sort of family tree of denominations, showing the descent of existing church organisations through splits, mergers, unions, and so forth. This would probably show that most existing protestant denominations can trace a link back to Luther, Calvin, the Anglican break with Rome or the Swiss and German Anabaptists. But some, I suspect, could trace links to two or more of these, and I’m sure there would be a few denominations not linked to any of them.
Similarly, we could identify doctrines thought to be characteristic of Lutheranism (“Justification by faith alone”), Calvinism (“Predistination”), and so forth, and classify modern denominations by reference to these. But, again, many denominations would hold doctrines characteristic of more than one of these movements, and many denominations would include believers who adhere to certain doctrines, and others who do not necessarily do so. And there would be some denominations who, although they may have come originally from the Roman Catholic Church or from a Protestant church, are so far from the mainstream of Christian doctrine that they would no longer be considered Christian, let alone Protestant.
The identification of these four strands of Protestantism is probably useful in a very broad-brush sense from a historical point of view and from a doctrinal point of view. But it shouldn’t be seen as a rigorous Linnean classification system.
“Eastern Rite Catholics” are Christians who are in communion with the Pope and who accept his authority, but whose liturgy and practices ressemble those of the Orthodox churches rather than those of Latin Catholics. The great majority of Roman Catholics are Latin Catholics; the rest are Eastern Rite Catholics.
It seems that the second part of the OP assumes that every church listed in the Yellow Pages that is not Catholic is Protestant. That is not the case. Protestantism includes only those churches that were formed as a result of a protest against the Roman Catholic Church.
This excludes at least Baptists.
Here’s a link with an explanation as to why Baptists are not Protestants. I don’t know how controversial/accepted this is, but my mother was raised Baptist and swears that she isn’t Protestant. So rather than quote my Mom as a cite in GQ, here ya go:
http://www.biblebaptistchurchgermany.org/BaptNotProt_eng.html
Well, this shows the limitations of labels. The term Protestant was first applied to Lutherans, and Anabaptists are not Lutherans. Obviously, as the link shows, modern Baptists (or at least some of them) still prefer not to be called Protestants, but some of the featurs they point to in support of their argument that they are not Protestants are regarded by others as characteristic of protestantism, e.g. belief in the sufficiency of scripture alone.
Luther publishes his 95 theses in Augsburg in 1517; the Anabaptists first make an organised appearance in Zwickau in 1521. Doctrinally they are different, but they have some things in common, most notably an insistence on the supremacy and sufficiency of the scriptures. Undoubtedly they are part of the same general reform movement which was also to give rise to Calvinism and Anglicanism and, in that sense, to group them together as “Protestant” has some meaning.
My wife is an Anglican, and she assures me that, in Austrialia (where she comes from) Anglicans do not consider themselves Protestant - they use that term for nonconforming denominations, including Baptists. She was quite suprised, on coming to live in Ireland, to find that the Anglican church here explicitly describes itself as Protestant.
“Protestant” is sometimes taken to imply a special antanogism to the Roman Catholic Church, and for that reason some people prefer the term “Reformed”.
Protestant includes both the “first wave” churches which broke off directly from the Roman Catholic Church, and later generations of denominations which are descended from those first wave churches and which still hold to a.) the basic tenets of Western Christianity (i.e., the Trinity, etc.) and b.) to certain basic Protestant distinctives: an emphasis on the Bible as the true source of doctrine, rather than Church tradition; justification by faith; and the priesthood of all believers. These principles are of course subject to a wide variety of interpretations. The first wave of Protestants were the Lutherans, followed by the Calvinists. Calvinist churches whose origins lie in the British Isles are known as Presbyterians, and those whose origins trace back to the European Continent (mainly Germany and the Netherlands) are known as the Reformed Churches. Another offshoot of Calvinism are the Congregationalist churches, which at least initially held Calvinistic beliefs about salvation (election or predestination and so on), but rejected the structure of hierarchical councils known as “Presbyterian” church government (the same basic system is followed, using different terminology, by Continental Reformed churches). Later, rather diverse groups of Anabaptists sprang up, opposing both the Catholic Church and the mainline sects of the Reformation. Finally, the Anglicans (known as Episcopalians in the United States) round out the “first generation” of Protestant denominations; the break between the Church of Rome and the Church of England was initially rather conservative, with the intent merely of establishing a “national Catholic” church not controlled by the Papacy, but the Church of England later adopted broadly Protestant principles. Historically, the Anglican churches have a had an evangelical or Protestant wing on the one hand, and a “High Church” wing on the other which retains more Catholic practices. Many Anglicans see their churches as a “bridge” between Protestant and Catholic Christianity.
From these four original Protestant groups–Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, and Anglicans–there have been further offshoots and new groups. Methodist churches, for example, began as a revivalist movement within the Church of England, but soon split off into independent denominations. From Methodism, the Holiness churches developed, and from that movement came the Pentecostals. There has also been a tendency to non-denominationalism, often as an attempt to unite the fractured Protestant churches around what are seen as the original New Testament core of Christian belief; inevitably, attempts at non-denominational unity seem to produce new denominations alongside the old ones they’re supposed to be uniting, often with rather generic and confusing names (“Christian Church”, “Church of Christ”, etc.). Denominations may also unite as well as divide, sometimes joining together churches from several strains of Protestantism (as in the United Church of Christ, a union of groups from the liberal wings of several strains of Congregationalist and Reformed churches).
Both in their origins and theology, Baptists, therefore, are classified as Protestants; historically, the origins of the Baptist denominations are in the Anabaptist wing of the Reformation and in Congregationalism; doctrinally, they hold all the distinctive Protestant beliefs. Most Baptists self-identify as Protestants, but a handful claim to trace their origins directly back to New Testament churches. There frankly seems little historical evidence for this belief.
Some groups, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons, historically spring from Protestant Christians, but have beliefs sufficiently different from mainline Protestant Churches (or other Christian churches in general) that they can’t really be classified as Protestant any more.
Ooooh, I can’t wait to tell my Mom. This should add fuel to an ongoing debate in our family. 
I have been told by many people who consider themselves Christians that the Mormons should not be classified as Christians at all. Is there anything to this attitude, or can it be chalked up to prejudice?
acsenray:
Seems to me it depends on whether you ask a Mormon on non-Mormon. There are web sites by Christians who have less than complimentary things to say about Mormonism. One site I’ve seen does a fair job of suggesting that at least some key parts of the Book of Mormon are rip-offs of St Paul’s writings and Josephus’. Be that as it may…
IAMAM (…not a Mormon), but I hear tell Mormons believe that one can ascend to a state of Godhood, to be the God of a planet of human beings somewhere else in the universe. That may have been the subject of a thread at one time. It would not be a belief held by Christians.
Whether this is true or not, other Christians will surely notice that Mormon churches (or “temples”) do not have crosses on them.
The Mormons also recoginze the Book of Mormon as “another testament” (a sort of “Newer Testament”?), so they then would have a major, major difference with other Christians there.
One tenet of Mormonism seems to be that there was a sort of Israel (holy and chosen people’s land) in North America in ancient times, and that this civilization disappeared, only to be rediscovered via Joseph Smith’s prophecies (and, some say, by claiming the Native American mounds as relics of this lost culture). Jesus, according to the Mormons, appeared in this place as well as the Holy Land of traditional scripture. This obviously tends to irk the rest of Chrisendom.
I’d be very interested in seeing such a diagramme. I wonder whether anyone has done one.
FWIW, Anabaptists and Baptists are NOT the same thing. Amish, Mennonites, Church of the Bretheren, and Hutterites are about as close to Baptists in doctrine and practice as they are to, say, Pentacostals. There are some doctrinal similarities, but the differences are definitely there. Historically, while some American Baptists claim descendency from Anabaptists, it is generally accepted that most came out of later reform movements and are NOT strictly Anabaptist.
http://www.biblicalstudies.com/bstudy/ecclesiology/baptism.htm
Mormons believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Savior of mankind, whose Atonement redeems mankind. I don’t see how this is a less valid definition of Christianity than, say, belief in the Trinity. We did not branch off of an existing Catholic or Protestant sect but are a seperate tradition within Christianity.
Temples and churches are different things, but the reason we do not use crosses is not because we deny the Crucifixion but because we don’t emphasize it as the central event of Christ’s life.
We accept the accounts of Jesus’ life and atonement that appear in both the Book of Mormon and the New Testament. Although we have major differences from the rest of Christianity, I would still consider myself and other Mormons to be Christian.
Well, this again shows that caution is required, and too much should not be read into the use of any label. The Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses both venerate Christ and see the Christ event as a central (and perhaps the central) event in human history. They consider themselves Christian, and describe themselves as Christians. But - and apologies if I am misrepresenting anyone’s beliefs here - they do not consider that Christ was God, a central belief for most others who describe themselves as Christians. For that reason more “mainstream” Christians often do not consider the Mormons or the Jehovah’s Witnesses to be Christians.
This is not necessarily “prejudice”, acsenray. Muslims venerate Christ, but are not Christian, and nobody considers it prejudiced to say so. Different people can use the term “Christian” to mean different things without necessarily being prejudiced against one another.
Some years ago, I did see a partial version: a poster-sized diagramming of the multiple scisms and (occasional) reconcilliations within and between the presbyterian denominations in Scotland during the 19th and 20th centuries. With a tendency at times towards austerity, the Scots tradition of Calvinism may be unusually prone to fragmentation, but the complexity was impressive, even within this relatively narrow span of time and place.
Is this right, Eran? That one’s news to me.
Well, we believe Christ (the Jehovah of the Old Testament) is a separate being from God the Father and from the Holy Ghost. But we do believe that Christ is God in his own right. Thus, we have the Godhead, instead of the Trinity: three divine beings, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who are united in purpose (the salvation of mankind) but separate in being.
BTW, I did see a chart of the various Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant sects in a (Catholic) religion text book in high school; Jehovah’s Witnesses were on it, but not Mormons.
Huh. I always thought it was because of the graven-image/use of symbols thing. I do know that as a person wearing a cross, I am (apparently) instantly recognizable as not-Mormon – and have had people say as much in both Utah and Idaho.
Many (other) Christian churches do not believe this, and in fact afffirmatively deny it. That’s one of the reasons some people would say Mormons are not Christian. But the next time someone does this, do what I do and ask them who died and left them the judge of who is or is not a Christian.
An excelent source of information (not quite as good as MEBuckner’s post, but still pretty informative) is The Handbook of Denominations by Frank Mead and Samuel S. Hill. It includes brief descriptions of almost every religious group in the US, usually including something of the origins and doctrine of the group, as well as numbers of congregations and members. Churches within large “families” (Methodist, Baptist, Orthodox, etc.) are grouped together with a detailed additional essay about each family.
Don’t know about other chains, but you can pick one up at your local Cokesbury (the United Methodist affiliated bookstore) or at their or any other online book seller.
Also good, especially for statistical information, is the annual *Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches * edited (2002 ed., anyway) by Eileen Lindner. Same sources, plus your public library has a set.
Probably the most useful thing to remember here is that even the most devout “mainstream” Christians have no reason to suppose that God uses, or cares about, terms like “Christian”, “Catholic”, “Protestant”, and so forth. They do not appear in scripture. They are purely human constructs that we use to describe the development of Christ-centred religious belief and practice since the time of Christ. Everybody who uses the term “Christian” is making a judgment about who is, or can be described as, a Christian, but it not a judgment of much importance, and I don’t think anybody should take offence if they are not described as a Christian.
I would imagine that Unitarians would not be logically classified as Protestant. Historically Unitarianism may have come into being as an offshoot of existing Christian (predominantly Protestant) churches, its members being refugees from those denominations, but I think the original premise behind Unitarianism was “one God” (no trinity, i.e., no “Jesus = God”), which would be quite a schism.
Modern Unitarians are not necessarily even theistic, let alone worshippers of God in the Judeo-Christian tradition per se.