Plus all the drinking! 
Apparently, Methodists can’t hold a church function without having food. Be it an after the service coffee hour (with cookies and stuff), a pot luck dinner, a bake sale, or some other sort of event.
Episcopalianism contrasted with Catholicism: Gilt without the guilt.
I’m Episcopalian. We’re the American branch of the Church of England, which split from the C. of E. after the American Revolution. We tend to like pomp and circumstance in our liturgy. We tend to be socially liberal. We’re more inclined to take a “Whatever you think is fine unless the Bible expressly forbids it” approach to dogma. We don’t doctrinally believe in transubstantiation (that the bread and wine of communion are actually the body and blood of Christ). We don’t excommunicate or shun anyone. We believe in the “three-legged stool” of Scripture, reason and tradition.
Our church governance is highly democratic: each parish church elects its own vestry (lay governing council), and the vestry selects a rector or priest by vote after choosing from various candidates. We elect our bishops on a regional basis, and indirectly the presiding bishop for the entire country. We look to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the C. of E., as the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, but he can’t give orders the way the Pope can to Catholics. Right now, alas, we’re riven on the issues of gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex relationships (I have no objection to either). We’re also smaller but wealthier than most other flavors of American Protestantism.
I’ve been an Episcopalian all my life, and I love it.
Anybody capable of providing a “Family Tree” or know of any link to a graph-type representation of the history of one group splitting off from another?
For me, charts of this type help to provide perspective. Reference for a quick glance at which groups broke directly from the Roman Catholic Church, which groups broke with groups that had broken with the Roman Catholic Church, which groups trace back to COE, which groups trace back to Martin Luther, which groups started in Europe, which groups started in America, etc., etc., etc.
Is it clear what I’m asking for in terms of a Family Tree type chart? What would be great would be if someone knew of one already in existence somewhere on the net- even if I had the info, I wouldn’t know how to code it for a messageboard post.
Left out of this is the fact that all other forms of Protestantism sort of owe a debt to Luther, because before him, attempts to reform or break away from the Catholic Church ended in execution of heretics and the end of the movement
Some of the differences which can show up between the various sects:
Who’s in charge of the Church? The Pope? The patriarchs (including the Patriarch of Rome, AKA the Pope) collectively? Individual bishops? Individual pastors? The entire people collectively?
What are the requirements to be ordained as a minister (whatever you call them)? Does the church follow the Apostolic Succession (i.e., the Apostles were the original priests, and a priest must be ordained by another priest, in a line extending back to the Apostles)? Are women allowed to be priests? What about married men?
What is necessary for salvation? Are good deeds alone sufficient? How about faith alone? Or is it purely a matter of divine grace, handed out by God as He alone sees fit? Some sort of combination of these?
How is God’s grace granted to humans? Is it through a specific set of sacraments, and if so, how many are there, and what are they?
Specifically, what is the role of the Eucharist? Is it merely a symbolic reminder, or is there a real presence of Christ in it? If there is a real presence of Christ, does it take the form of being of the substance of His body and blood? And is this in addition to, or instead of, the substance of ordinary bread and wine?
What is the role of scripture? Should it be taken literally, or should some parts be taken figuratively? If so, which parts? For that matter, what is scripture? Is Maccabes, for instance, part of the Bible?
Plus many other questions, which I can’t think of offhand.
An Episcopalian is a Presbyterian with a trust fund.
A Presbyterian is a Methodist with a college education.
And a Methodist is a Baptist with shoes.
To this Jew (and others) a significant difference between the many Christian denominations is how they view the concept of the Trinity.
At one extreme there are those denominations which seem very polytheistic (I’ll not name any, so as not to stir up ill will, and I’d probably be mistaken anyway). At the other extreme are those who reject the divinity of Jesus, such as Unitarianism.
Hey, that pretty good- thanks!
I had never heard of Pietism or the Holiness Movement- off now to their Wiki pages.
It doesn’t address anything that traces back to Constantinople. Was there ever anything akin to the Protestant Reformation growing out of the Eastern Orthodox Churches?
Or is there no difference between the various Eastern Churches save for minor differences in tradition amongst the ethnic background of the various adherents- i.e. is the only difference between Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Ukrainian Orthodox, etc. that the Greeks are Greek, the Russians are Russian, the Ukrainians are Ukrainian, etc.?
Unitarianism is not dogmatic. Actually, I think the first paragraph of the Wiki entry is a pretty good “in a nutshell” kind of a sum-up so I’ll quote it.
The religious beliefs of Unitarians vary widely from person to person. Even if there is no single Unitarian who accepts the divinity of Jesus, it still would be inaccurate to say that Unitarians “reject the divinity of Jesus” since Unitarians do not speak en masse on any Theology.
So Unitarians are not very unitary? 
You mean that Wesley couldn’t keep the Methodists in the Anglican fold, right? Because it sounds like you’re saying that Wesley was a Methodist, which I’m pretty sure he never was.
And you (not you Eureka) don’t mess with Methodist potlucks. They’re to die for.
At my Methodist Church, every Sunday they have a bunch of cookies, brownies, and sometimes baklava outside the hall where we have our services. I think it’s the only reason my 7 year old agrees to go to church.
My understanding, confirmed by this cite* is that Wesley was a Methodist, it’s just that what the word Methodist meant at that point is not the same as what it means now.
It is my impression that Wesley spent a lot of his time preaching to people who weren’t really inside the Anglican fold–the Anglicans of his time couldn’t be bothered to reach out to the poor. Both John and Charles–better known for his hymn-writing-- were ordained ministers in the Church of Enland, but were unpopular with the church leadership, because of their evangelism. Methodism really started out as a social movement.
But take all these comments with a grain of salt–rather than as overly authoritative comments, please, I need to deal with stuff in real life, and don’t have time to properly refresh my memory.
*I picked this cite to checkout over wikipedia for reasons which now escape me–maybe I missed the “about” in the URL–now is not a good time for me to go looking for better cites.
Chronos, the differences you raise don’t sound very Protestant. The Pope?
Dangermom, thank you for the correction.
So, at least one thing nice about the Puritans was that they were fairly freeminded and easygoing about sex, certainly relative to what their reputation suggests. They appreciated the pleasures of sex, as long as it was within marriage. Even before marriage, they allowed bundling, in which the dating youths were permitted to share a bed for the night. They did have to remain physically separated, for example by a bundling board. But they also joked about knotholes. They also gave young lovers talking sticks, which were tubes something like a half meter or a meter long. The young man would visit the young lady, and the whole family would be sitting before the fire, say. But the young lovers would hold the stick between them and whisper to one another through it, so that they could have a private conversation. I think that they were more permissive in practice than most modern American parents want to be (though enforcement is admittedly more than an equalizer). They do not deserve being used as an example of absurdly strict sexual mores.
Right, I was trying to answer the slightly broader question of the differences between all Christian denominations. Catholicism can be regarded as just another sect that fits somewhere into that framework. Obviously, for most of the non-Catholic demoninations, the answer to “Who’s in charge?” isn’t “The Pope”.
I was raised New England Congregationalist, with occasional lengthy sojourns to Methodist and Presbyterian churches as my family moved from place to place around the U.S. and they picked closer churches to attend. The services of all three were very similar. I was too young to pick up on theological differences, save that I did note the Presbyterians were heavy on the predestination business while Congregationalists were not.
After I left home, I became an agnostic, flipflopping between the relaxed and militant forms. 
In the midst of one such flipflop, I heard a bit about the doctrine of the Unitarian-Universalists, and I gave them a try. The services of the two different UU churches I tried in the Dallas area were almost identical in form to the services of the CT and IN Congregationalists I recalled from my childhood. The only real difference was the content of the sermons, and they changed the words to some of the songs. It was kind of eerie; I was expecting something totally different.
*** Ponder
The Foursquare Church I attend also has an open communion table (literally - the pastor breaks the bread and pours the “wine”, and then everybody files to the front and helps themselves). I’m not sure if that’s a denominational thing, though, or if it’s just the way my pastor prefers to do it. The Foursquare Church (or, more accurately, “International Church of the Foursquare Gospel”) seems to grant individual pastors a lot of autonomy: stick to the basic doctrine, but otherwise preach what and how you want.
You can’t always tell which church you’re in by the services.
Different congregations of the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian-Universalist churches have wildly different services, ranging from the most traditional to the farthest out.
On the other hand all Lutheran churches have virtually identical liturgies, but the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America have some fairly significant doctrinal differences, to the point where the LCMS does not consider itself to be “in fellowship” with the ELCA.
Not all Presbyterians believe in predestination and I’ve never heard of “irresistible grace.” Spent my first two years in a church related college as a religious education major. I think I would be familiar with the term if it were common to our denomination. Perhaps we use it in another form. I’m a Cumberland Presbyterian. We’ve been around for almost 200 years. There are other divisions within the Presbyterian Church too.
By the way, the “Methodist” Church disappeared in the 1960s. It’s the “United Methodist” Church.
We do baptize babies or adults. A few drops of water on the head is sufficient.
We believe in the priesthood of all believers. That means that at communion, another church member can pass the bread and the wine to you (as in the ending to Places in the Heart.
We believe that you are redeemed by the grace of God through the death of Jesus. And once you are “saved,” you will not be lost again. That doesn’t mean that you won’t be sinful. Everyone fails to be perfect. It just means that your Redeemer doesn’t let go of you.
I personally believe that everyone has been redeemed and there will be a way of “being” beyond death that is different from anything that we have imagined. I also believe there are many ways to find this place of “being” or even “non being.”
But there are also Cumberland Presbyterians who are much more conservative. We are a mixed lot!