A Taxanomy for Protestants

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'Emergent' is the word that churches like BRTD's often use for themselves, although that's kind of buzzword-y and could potentially refer to some churches in the other quadrants as well. But I can't really think of anything better. Is that okay for now?

This is a really good idea for a project, by the way, and I hope you can finesse and differentiate it more as time goes on. I'm willing to help in any way you think I might be helpful.

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As for JCL, I don't recall him going into detail about his views on liturgy and church governance, so I can't speak much on that.

JCL is Assemblies of God.

Al, what sorts of positions would you define as characterizing zero on each axis?

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I suppose, not being a Protestant, and rather high Catholic, I must be at +17 or something like that.

Nah, that's reserved for the Tridentine-only folks.

Where would Anglicans with a weird fixation on the Sarum Rite go?

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I suppose, not being a Protestant, and rather high Catholic, I must be at +17 or something like that.

Nah, that's reserved for the Tridentine-only folks.

Where would Anglicans with a weird fixation on the Sarum Rite go?

Perhaps they could make it an even 20 if they hold to all the other rules the Tridentine folks follow and not just adopt a very extraordinary form of the Mass. Like, for instance, do the Sarum Rite folks still fast every day of Lent?

It's in my experience a pretty eclectic mix of High Church but not extremely High types, a lot of whom are interested to themselves varying degrees of hippie-ness in medieval English mystics like Julian of Norwich and the Cloud of Unknowing author, and the sort of more-Catholic-than-the-Pope Anglican who would probably be Old Catholic except he (almost always he) perceives them as in some or another way too liberal (whereas Anglicanism in his parish or his area isn't). I could see it anywhere from 8 or 9 for the first type to somewhere around 16 or 17 as an almost direct Anglican equivalent of the Tridentine folks for the second, sloping to the right as it rises. I've never known an Anglican who fasted every day of Lent, specifically, no.

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I could see it going on either too, but my first instinct was left/right, which is why I didn't think to take it into account on the Sarum Rite question.

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I'm not going to bother putting everyone's name up on the chart, but this is how R&P Christians would rank, from most progressive to most conservative.

opebo > BRTD > Progressive Realist > Harry > TDAS04 > Ernest/True Federalist > Scott > ilikeverin > Nathan > General Mung Beans > Jbrase > Simfan34 > GaussLaw > DC Al Fine > Cassius > TJ in Wisco > Never Convinced > BushOklahoma > JCL > jmfcst

I thought I'd include opebo and jmfcst for good measure.

I think Harry might be to the left of Progressive Realist. I know you really dislike jmfcst but putting him to the right of JCL strikes me as a calumny. Otherwise this looks good to me.

I'm still hoping Al explains how he'd define the zero values on these axes.

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This is really interesting DC. However, how are you defining theologically 'conservative' and 'liberal'? Is it to do primarily with one's attitude to scripture (I don't know, the most conservative position might be accepting the Bible as entirely composed of liteal truths, the most liberal entriely rejecting the historicity of the Bible), how scripture informs one's politics, or a bit of both?

Mostly one's attitude towards theological issues. I don't really want to get political here. It will be mostly stuff like creationism, female clergy etc.

Yeah, theological issues that are or can be politicized but are not, themselves, political issues seems like a wise set of choices to me as well.

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This is still a first draft. I hadn't really thought out what (0, 0) is. I guess that's part of the problem; we think of everything relatively in Protestantism.

What's the average United Methodist like? That church seems pretty centrist, so perhaps that's a good starting point.
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If you're including liberal/Unitarian Christian sects, why not Unitarian Universalism?  That church is about as big tent as you could get, though I'm not sure if that's what you had in mind.

Not that UMC would be a bad choice, though.  PC(USA) might be a good candidate, as well.
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I don't think UU's would be a good centre position. Do a majority of Unitarians even think of themselves as Christians?
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Probably not. UUs would be a terrible center position--they're big tent within their own context but that context overall is further left than pretty much anything else that we've been discussed so far.

UMC is probably well suited to be at the center from left-to-right, but it is fairly hierarchical in governance so it might be a bit above the center.

This was my thought as well. UCC might be a better choice for the vertical center since it's congregationalist but not completely decentralized, but by the same token it would be rather to the left.

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I'm not going to bother putting everyone's name up on the chart, but this is how R&P Christians would rank, from most progressive to most conservative.

opebo > BRTD > Progressive Realist > Harry > TDAS04 > Ernest/True Federalist > Scott > ilikeverin > Nathan > General Mung Beans > Jbrase > Simfan34 > GaussLaw > DC Al Fine > Cassius > TJ in Wisco > Never Convinced > BushOklahoma > JCL > jmfcst

I thought I'd include opebo and jmfcst for good measure.

I think Harry might be to the left of Progressive Realist. I know you really dislike jmfcst but putting him to the right of JCL strikes me as a calumny. Otherwise this looks good to me.

I'm still hoping Al explains how he'd define the zero values on these axes.

Why would you put me to the right of jmfcst?

Like Scott said, I don't remember jmfcst as having been into claiming that Christian orthodoxy necessarily implied American-style political rightism to the extent that you are, although he obviously perceived a correlation. As a matter of fact, I think jmfcst would probably be a better exemplar for the midpoint of the bottom right quadrant in Al's original graph than you are. Since he's not here any more, maybe Never Convinced would do.

Yeah, thinking about it now, the UU's would be a bad example.  The UCC, on the other hand, is probably one of the most liberal Trinitarian denominations if not the most liberal Trinitarian denomination in America.  It may have once been rooted in Reformed theology, but it moved past that a long time ago.

I'm saying it's overall intermediate between High and Low Church, not it's overall moderate. I don't think either is true of the UUA, which I'd position as slightly above BRTD's church, but only slightly, and further left than literally anything else that's been discussed in this thread.

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'Charismatic' would put you lower on this spectrum, not further right or left. You're welcome to name specific theological positions that you think put you to the right of Progressive Realist and Harry if you want.

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My denomination would probably be more in line with DC, but my personal views would be somewhat less conservative and high church.

What's Seventh-Day Adventist worship and church governance like? For some reason I find the idea that could be described as High Church surprising.

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'Charismatic' would put you lower on this spectrum, not further right or left. You're welcome to name specific theological positions that you think put you to the right of Progressive Realist and Harry if you want.

Neither one seems like a pretty staunch Trinitarian, and certainly open to things like the physical resurrection of Jesus.

Point taken. I'd agree that you'd probably go to their right, then.

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Treating the Trinity as a purely left-right issue could lead to some weird placements of groups like Oneness Pentecostals, although I'd imagine that they'd give the 'conservative' answer to enough of the other questions to still be far to the right.

Beginning and end of life issues, perhaps?

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So I'm starting to make up a quiz for the compass. Anyone ideas for questions?

Here's what I have so far:
Left-Right
Literal resurrection
Female clergy
YEC vs. Evolution
Trinity
Belief in God period
Marriage
Divorce

High-Low
Infant vs Believer's Baptism
Preferred form of church government
Communion (probably 2-3 q's related to this)

How about theories of atonement, or Eucharist theology?

Theories of atonement can get pretty abstracted from most people's day-to-day spirituality and religious practice and a lot of the mainline churches to the best of my knowledge don't really have a single clearly defined one but they still might be worth taking into account. Eucharistic theology definitely would.

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How do TULIP, prayer to saints, and the role of Mary fit on the left/right spectrum? If anything shouldn't they be on the high church/low church spectrum?

No.  As Del Tachi said, the low-right spectrum should represent what you believe whereas the high church-low church spectrum should represent how those beliefs are expressed.*  For example, you and Nathan are, I would assume, very similar in terms of church worship and therefore would make good neighbors at the top of the spectrum.  What puts you most at odds are your different approaches to belief.

But TJ and I are in theological agreement on all those things, and on the latter two I have no idea which would be the more stereotypically 'conservative' position. I think Del Tachi's metric there is too simplistic. The implied idea that worship that is 'extremely conservative and traditionalist' is ipso facto High in particular strikes me as odd.

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How do TULIP, prayer to saints, and the role of Mary fit on the left/right spectrum? If anything shouldn't they be on the high church/low church spectrum?

No.  As Del Tachi said, the low-right spectrum should represent what you believe whereas the high church-low church spectrum should represent how those beliefs are expressed.*  For example, you and Nathan are, I would assume, very similar in terms of church worship and therefore would make good neighbors at the top of the spectrum.  What puts you most at odds are your different approaches to belief.

But TJ and I are in theological agreement on all those things, and on the latter two I have no idea which would be the more stereotypically 'conservative' position. I think Del Tachi's metric there is too simplistic. The implied idea that worship that is 'extremely conservative and traditionalist' is ipso facto High in particular strikes me as odd.

Yet to define it any other way would be counterproductive to developing a comprehensive spectrum.  By using things like liturgical calendars and believer's baptism as a "litmus test" for carrying the name of a "high" church you've immediately denied the majority of American Protestants the same.  Very elitist indeed.  The scale that your proposing would probably place the Churches of Christ and Pentecostal snake charmers in the same spot on the chart

'High Church' isn't generally seen as inherently complimentary, nor is 'Low Church' a derogation. It's not 'elitist' to 'deny' the former description to non-liturgical Protestants, although it may have been three hundred years ago when these terms were first used.

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How do TULIP, prayer to saints, and the role of Mary fit on the left/right spectrum? If anything shouldn't they be on the high church/low church spectrum?

No.  As Del Tachi said, the low-right spectrum should represent what you believe whereas the high church-low church spectrum should represent how those beliefs are expressed.*  For example, you and Nathan are, I would assume, very similar in terms of church worship and therefore would make good neighbors at the top of the spectrum.  What puts you most at odds are your different approaches to belief.

But TJ and I are in theological agreement on all those things, and on the latter two I have no idea which would be the more stereotypically 'conservative' position. I think Del Tachi's metric there is too simplistic. The implied idea that worship that is 'extremely conservative and traditionalist' is ipso facto High in particular strikes me as odd.

Yet to define it any other way would be counterproductive to developing a comprehensive spectrum.  By using things like liturgical calendars and believer's baptism as a "litmus test" for carrying the name of a "high" church you've immediately denied the majority of American Protestants the same.  Very elitist indeed.  The scale that your proposing would probably place the Churches of Christ and Pentecostal snake charmers in the same spot on the chart

Aren't things like liturgical calendars and believers' baptism the exact sort of things that determine whether a group is "high church" or "low church"? If you want to make sure snake charmers are differentiated, you could always add a question on snake charming

But how on earth do liturgical calendars fit into how conservative or liberal a denomination is? If it doesn't go on the high/low axis, how can you include that sort of thing at all?

My point is that regarding issues surrounding the use of a liturgy or communion as central to the understanding of which denominations are "high church" versus "low church" is going to result in some very strange results that most people would probably reject, and that would only make sense because divisions surrounding these issues go beyond simply the aesthetics of the worship and actually represent doctrinal differences that I believe can be understood on a conservative-to-liberal contiuum.   

As a member of the Churches of Christ, my congregation does not observe the liturgical calendar.  However, that's not simply because we don't like the aesthetic that it produces but rather because we reject the idea of a liturgy on doctrinal grounds.  I don't think that a doctrinal belief such as that one can be used to classify us as "low church" because at that point it fails to be a useful distinction.  While the idea of "high" versus "low" church is not inherently elitist, it is severely out-of-step and a bit closeminded to immediately regulate non-liturgical Protestants to the "low church" category when, for many of them, its a doctrinal rather than stylistic choice. 

The idea that distinguishing between High Church and Low Church is exclusively about stylistic choices and doesn't or shouldn't mean anything in terms of doctrine would itself be exceedingly unfamiliar to many people. And even if we did agree to redefine those terms so that they relate solely to style, how does treating Marian doctrine as a question of 'liberal' versus 'conservative' make a jot more sense? If anything it makes far less. Use of the liturgical calendar could be coherently described as a 'liberal' versus 'conservative' issue? Really? Eucharistic theology? Is memorialism 'liberal' while real presence is 'conservative', or is it the other way around, and why? Even if we could answer a question like that, how does it produce results that anybody would find useful? Actual political ideologies barely even make sense when treated as parts of one-dimensional left-right spectra, so how in the world are theology and religious doctrine supposed to? TJ is entirely correct that these sorts of questions are in fact precisely how the distinction between High Church and Low Church, which does have doctrinal implications and always has, has traditionally been defined. Even if you don't like the answers to whether these things are 'High Church' or 'Low Church', you can answer these questions that way, whereas with whether they're 'liberal' or 'conservative' you really, really can't. Not in the same way that you can for ordaining or not ordaining women or confessing or rejecting a physical understanding of the Resurrection, at least. If you don't like that then your real problem is with the existence of the High/Low dichotomy in general, not just our interpretation of it.

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Harry definitely belongs to the left of both BRTD and Progressive Realist. (Check the 'Holy Spirit' thread.)

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Are you planning to offer more than two options on any of these? For instance, does accepting some of the points of TULIP but not others count for anything? Or supporting the ordination of celibate clergy who identify as gay but not clergy in same-sex partnerships, or some other such combination?

Seconding Cassius on prayers for the dead.

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How does TULIP fit into the left/right spectrum? Is free will a left wing or right wing position?

Within the context of Protestantism free will is generally thought of as 'liberal'.

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Protestants who pray to the Virgin or (even more so!) creep to the Cross are probably near the top of the spectrum anyway.