My experience has been that Baptists have two main practical considerations that separate them from many others: (1) baptism is by immersion only, no sprinkling a little water on the head; and (2) communion is taken with grape juice, no wine.
Having been raised in an Assembly of God church I can tell you that I was terrified as a kid to go to the Sunday evening service (yes we went to church twice on Sundays) because of the not-uncommon speaking in tongues.
The “family tree” link isn’t very helpful to me. Like someone else posted, I’d never heard of some of those branches, yet others are not mentioned. For example, the Evangelicals. And I don’t even know what an Evangelical really is.
Once, many years ago I remember telling someone I was an Evangelical. My father overheard me and told me that no, I was a Pentacostal, not Evangelical. And he said it in a tone of voice that clearly indicated he was deeply offended with the mis-categorization.
All of this confusion is partially why today I find myself straddling the fence between being an agnostic and an atheist.
Algernon writes:
> All of this confusion is partially why today I find myself straddling the fence
> between being an agnostic and an atheist.
Son, you can’t forever straddle the fence on this. You have to choose! Get down on your knees and pray to . . . um, nobody . . . for guidance in your choice.
I think that’s because “Evangelical” is a descriptive term, rather than a specific denomination or branch of protestantism. Kind of like how, in the USA, “conservative” and “liberal” are descriptive terms while “Republican” and “Democrat” are political parties that one can officially be a member of.
As do Methodists- alcohol is forbidden on church grounds. Probably a left-over bit from our temperance past! 
As an Episcopalian, I can’t even go into another Episcopal church and not think it bizarre, quite often. There’s quite a spectrum.
Both of these are just a matter of different parishes (or whatever the corresponding term is), not different sects. This weekend, I went to a different Catholic church than usual for me, and I didn’t recognize any of the songs, and the trappings of the two buildings were as different as could be: My usual church is a big masonry structure, with a high arched ceiling with paintings on it and stained-glass windows, and long wooden pews with kneelers, while the one I went to yesterday is a wood-frame, brick walls building with a flat ceiling about 20 feet up with exposed rafters, and the seating was all metal-and-resin stackable chairs. Both are Catholic, and have all the same essential elements of the liturgy.
So is there a standard set of denominations that those-in-the-know would describe as Evangelical?
I’m not being snarky. I truly want my ignorance fought.
Good question—which is made harder to answer by the fact that many Evangelical churches are independent congregations rather than being affilated with a denomination (or at least they don’t promote themselves as being the local branch of such-and-such a denomination). But here is a list of denominations which are members of the National Association of Evangelicals.
Evangelicalism is sometimes contrasted with the “mainline Protestant” denominations, which tend to be members of the National Council of Churches, so here, by way of contrast, is a list of those denomainations.
In my life I’ve attended three different denominations that consider themselves Evangelical: Calvary Chapel, Church of the Nazarene, and Foursquare.
Here is a typical definition I read in a research report. First, the definition of “Born-Again Christians”:
Born-again Christians — people who said they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today, and who also indicated they believe that when they die they will go to heaven because they have confessed their sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior.
Evangelicals — people who meet the born-again criteria plus seven other conditions. Those include (1) saying their faith is very important to their life today; (2) believing they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs about Jesus Christ with non-Christians; (3) believing Satan exists; (4) believing that eternal salvation is possible only through grace, not works; (5) believing that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; (6) asserting that the Bible is accurate in all that it teaches; and (7) describing God as the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today. Being classified as an evangelical is not dependent on church attendance or the denominational affiliation of the church attended.
(from unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity … and Why it Matters by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, 2007)
There is also a strong Evangelical movement in most (if not all) mainline denominations.
[historical pedantry]While today’s Baptists are theological descendants of the Anabaptists of the radical Reformation, most of them are probably not “anabaptists” any more. The term Anabaptist was applied to them by the Catholic and first-wave Reformation churches, because they were doing something regarded as a heresy; i.e., baptizing adult converts, even though said converts were already baptized at infancy. The sacramental theology of baptism is one thing that the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Anglican churches pretty much agree on, in that it is indelible and definitely only happens once in a person’s life. Now, barring converts, most Baptists were probably raised in the church and so were only baptized once, as a teen or young adult.[/historical pedantry]
Okay, one more point on baptism. If an adult convert to the Roman Catholic Church was already baptised in another church, then they may or may not be baptized as part of the conversion process. If the baptism followed the Trinitarian formula (as is the case in the vast majority of Christian churches), then no baptism is required. If there may have been a defect in the baptism, however, then the candidate will be conditionally baptized: “If you are not yet baptized, I baptize you in the name of the Father…” So, from a strict definition, that would make the convert an anabaptist, right?
I’ve never heard “anabaptist” used with the literal meaning of “an individual who re-baptizes.” An Anabaptist is a member of a sect that was formed as part of the Radical Reformation and which rejects the legitimacy of infant baptism. Modern Anabaptist sects are the Mennonite and Amish, as well as Bretheren and Hutterites.
Baptists are often called the descendants of the Anabaptists, but their movement was founded seperately in by English Calvinists (Puritans) who were influenced by the Anabaptists on the Continent.
Ah. Thank you all for your excellent answers and helpful links regarding my question on Evangelicals.
And, based on Thudlow’s link to the list of Evangelical denominations, I was right and my father was wrong. The Assemblies Of God church is Evangelical.
My other, unrelated, reaction is: “Holy crap. There sure are a lot of denominations!”
I’ve heard Assemblies people adamantly state that they are NOT Pentacostal. Nevertheless, I’d say AoG probably has more in common with other Pentacostal denominations than with other Evangelical denominations. It’s kind of like asking if Britain or Turkey is part of Europe. It depends on where you draw the lines. I wouldn’t depend on membership in an organization to decide if a church is evangelical.
BTW, the Evangelical in Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA - the largest Lutheran denomination in the US) is an older use of the word, which refers to protestants of the Lutheran branch analogous to Reformed for the Calvinist branch. (Protestant is a bit historically inaccurate in its modern usage, but it was the only term that more or less encompassed all three branches of the Reformation.)
Correct, and as stated upthread, Baptists do not baptize infants or young children. We believe that it is a decision for a person to make once they have reached an age where they can decide for themselves.
We do, however, have a “Baby Dedication” ceremony which consists of professing in front of the church that you will raise the child in a Christian home, and you ask the congregation’s help, at which point the congregation agrees.
We also do both of these in the Foursquare Church.
When I was a little kid we were Methodists. At some point my mother got into a feud with somebody in the Methodist church–or perhaps the whole church–and we moved across the street to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Not being much interested in theology, I couldn’t tell you much difference in what the two believe. The Methodist church we attended was fairly High Church in that people were sprinkled, not dunked, and communion on Christmas Eve was real wine. In the Christian church people being baptised were dunked. If they had been dunked in some other church (say, Baptist) they could convert, but if they had only been sprinkled (Methodist) they had to be dunked.
The Christian church never had real wine. It was always grape juice.
The music was better at the Methodist church, until the organist moved over to the Christian church. She stayed a Methodist, but playing the organ was her job. There were still more people with better voice in the Methodist choir.
Let’s see…a lot of my family were Methodists, and some of them went to churches that didn’t believe in dancing. The one I went to didn’t care and hosted dances. (Keep the teens off the street.)
The sermons were about the same. So was the food. The Methodists and Christians used to come out every few years with competing church cookbooks. Yum!
I went to things at both youth groups as a teenager. In the summer the Methodists took us (via church bus) to a home for the retarded and we did volunteer work there for a week. The Christians took us (via church bus) to a migrant camp in Texas where we painted the houses the workers stayed in. There were also more traditional church camps. The roofs leaked at the Christian camp and the Methodists had a boat for water skiing. At the Christian camp we were sent off into the wilderness to have a religious experience (that’s what they said: “Go and have a religious experience, get on out of here now.”) The Methodists didn’t do anything weird like that.
In high school a friend and I went on a spiritual quest. We investigated lots of churches. My friend thought the Presbyterians were closest to the Disciples of Christ. It seemed to me that either the Lutherans or the Episcopalians were the closest to the Methodists, at least the church I was familiar with. My friend went the other way and ended up a Pentecostal. I ended up an atheist.
Where does Charismatics church fit in?
I was a from a Brethren church, though I am not sure if it could be defined as a faction. The biggest difference from other denominations are that there are no pastors or “full-time workers” in the church. Everything is ran by the laymen, from elders to deacons, from the preacher (which is rotated every week) to those in missions. The one I am from is particularly influenced by the teaching of Watchman Nee.
Could anyone provide more information on this branch of Christianity?