Contemporary churches in general completely reject the classifications of the different Christian denominations, in other words, there's no difference between Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, etc., "we're all Christians". They largely don't even believe in church organization higher than the individual church/it's never treated like it's a serious thing (imagine taking the Catholic Church and then setting up something that is organizationally the complete opposite). These are the churches that have been growing in membership while traditional denomination churches have declined. These churches however are all Protestant in character. They're not Catholic of course and they're not Orthodox. I'm sure if you went to the pastors, questioned them, and dug into their theology a bit you could say "you're pretty much a Methodist", but that's not what the people in attendance could tell you.
Also, from years of attending Presbyterian, various contemporary, and now a Methodist church, I've never heard a preacher say the word "Protestant". It's a word used to describe whole bandwidths of Christianity that those people themselves never use.
I remember there was a girl in my senior high school class, who went to my Protestant church growing up, who did not know what a "Protestant" was. She pronounced it "pro-teestant" when she was introduced to the word.
We need some level of religious education in public schools. The fact that educators even refuse to touch the topic is an embarrassment.
I guess I don't really understand why this has relevancy in K-12 schools.
Any western civilization education should include the Reformation for its impact on secular European (and therefore American as well) thought and life.
