"Christian" overtakes "Protestant" label among younger Christians
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  "Christian" overtakes "Protestant" label among younger Christians
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Author Topic: "Christian" overtakes "Protestant" label among younger Christians  (Read 1400 times)
afleitch
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« Reply #25 on: January 12, 2022, 06:28:18 PM »

This is funny to me because many people here (west coast of Scotland) would be more likely to identify as Protestant than think of themselves as Presbyterian or even Christian, for obvious, uh, sectarian reasons.

The trend in the US must be very much because Catholicism became destigmatised in wider American society and as WASPs lost cultural hegemony.

In a similar vein many people will still call themselves Catholic despite not setting foot in a church for decades.
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Statilius the Epicurean
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« Reply #26 on: January 12, 2022, 11:42:54 PM »

I also think it's important to remember the US has not had any real sort of religious sectarianism for like well over 50 years now. Comparing it to Europe isn't even apples to oranges, more something like apples to steak. Europeans acting surprised that religious identity in the US doesn't work exactly like it does in their country (not specifically referring to anything in this thread) has always perplexed me, it'd be like someone from a country with proportional representation being surprised that a country with a FPTP electoral system doesn't have proportional numbers of seats to percentage of votes cast like in their country.

You seem unusually triggered by this thread.
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« Reply #27 on: January 12, 2022, 11:47:09 PM »

I also think it's important to remember the US has not had any real sort of religious sectarianism for like well over 50 years now. Comparing it to Europe isn't even apples to oranges, more something like apples to steak. Europeans acting surprised that religious identity in the US doesn't work exactly like it does in their country (not specifically referring to anything in this thread) has always perplexed me, it'd be like someone from a country with proportional representation being surprised that a country with a FPTP electoral system doesn't have proportional numbers of seats to percentage of votes cast like in their country.

You seem unusually triggered by this thread.
Not triggered nor do I really care about the topic much (as I noted it's hardly new and there's plenty of reasons), like I said this has more to do with the forum in general than this thread in particular.

Mind you if polled that's exactly how I'd answer: As "Christian" rather than "Protestant".
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Statilius the Epicurean
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« Reply #28 on: January 13, 2022, 12:09:46 AM »

Sorry. The above was a bit trollish and uncalled for. I apologise.
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Frodo
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« Reply #29 on: January 13, 2022, 12:59:20 AM »

This is funny to me because many people here (west coast of Scotland) would be more likely to identify as Protestant than think of themselves as Presbyterian or even Christian, for obvious, uh, sectarian reasons.

The trend in the US must be very much because Catholicism became destigmatised in wider American society and as WASPs lost cultural hegemony.

Catholics would answer they're Catholics because Catholicism is very much its own thing when it comes to worship and the Church over time has created a Catholic religious identity. The closest to them would probably be Lutherans and Episcopalians (the Anglican Church under its more common U.S. name). Protestantism in contrast all the denominations have borrowed from one another and the differences have gotten muddled and less important, in part due to a strong disbelief in church organization centralization. I grew up a Presbyterian, and yeah, there's things in a Presbyterian worship service that other churches don't do, but they're minor and it's not like we're wholly off the reservation from standard Protestant practice.

When the Roman Catholic Church was the only game in town, so to speak, did medieval/Renaissance-era Europeans (I'm including the British isles) always see themselves as 'Catholics' or simply 'Christians'?   Or has that only been the case since the Protestant Reformation? 
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afleitch
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« Reply #30 on: January 13, 2022, 03:48:51 AM »



Here's Catholics included.



And everyone else.

Really interesting how fast religious identification is unraveling with each new cohort. There's not a great deal of Gen Z data in other surveys (often lumped in with millennials) and here there is a very surprising shift amongst Gen Z in saying 'athiest/agnostic' rather than just 'None'.
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RFayette
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« Reply #31 on: January 13, 2022, 08:27:23 AM »

This is like asking if you live in America, Europe, or the Earth.  It doesn’t tell you much other than which label comes most easily to people.
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Del Tachi
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« Reply #32 on: January 17, 2022, 01:57:17 PM »

This makes complete sense.  American religion is much more influenced by frontier Restorationism or mid-century Jesusism than it is what some dead German guy nailed to a wall nearly 500 years ago.  American religious movements have largely rejected denominational labels in favor of ecumenism.

Posters who want to die on the hill that “Protestant” identity is something worth protecting can go back to their established churches an ocean away

You act like Mainline Protestants have been some historic minority and oddity in America’s history, rather than a clear majority for the vast majority of it and not that much smaller than Evangelicals now … if the whackier branches of Christianity want to have their fun, go ahead, but it seems rather strange and classless to insinuate normal older churches are somehow “less American.”  Frankly, it wreaks of a South-centric view.

lol, you're just perpetuating the myth that America is some uniquely *Protestant* country, a pseudo-history invented by Yankee WASPs in the 19th century to marginalize newer Irish and Italian immigrant stock.  The 13 British colonies (to say nothing of Spanish Florida or French Louisiana, lol) were always pretty diverse, never monolithically Protestant settlements.

And the other history you're trying to employ as a smear against American religion isn't even right, lol.  Six of the "seven sisters" of Mainline Protestantism weren't founded until the 20th century, and the only one that wasn't (the Episcopal Church, founded 1785) was the one most dominant in the South, lol.  

You're the one classlessly deriding the quintessential inventions of American Christianity:  evangelicalism, fundamentalism, Restorationist theology, Pentecostalism, the Holiness movement, etc.  This is the shape Christianity takes when you have a settler/pioneer population living far away from established European hierarchies.  You can join the bishops and cardinals of Old Europe in turning your nose up at it if you wish, but don't masquerade as the protector of legitimate "American" Christianiaty in doing so LOL
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Bismarck
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« Reply #33 on: January 17, 2022, 06:17:21 PM »

This makes complete sense.  American religion is much more influenced by frontier Restorationism or mid-century Jesusism than it is what some dead German guy nailed to a wall nearly 500 years ago.  American religious movements have largely rejected denominational labels in favor of ecumenism.

Posters who want to die on the hill that “Protestant” identity is something worth protecting can go back to their established churches an ocean away

I attend a restorationist (disciples of Christ) church and my pastor certainly has talked about Protestantism although we are a very ecumenical denomination and have nothing against Catholicism.
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LabourJersey
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« Reply #34 on: January 18, 2022, 07:02:13 PM »

This makes complete sense.  American religion is much more influenced by frontier Restorationism or mid-century Jesusism than it is what some dead German guy nailed to a wall nearly 500 years ago.  American religious movements have largely rejected denominational labels in favor of ecumenism.

Posters who want to die on the hill that “Protestant” identity is something worth protecting can go back to their established churches an ocean away

You act like Mainline Protestants have been some historic minority and oddity in America’s history, rather than a clear majority for the vast majority of it and not that much smaller than Evangelicals now … if the whackier branches of Christianity want to have their fun, go ahead, but it seems rather strange and classless to insinuate normal older churches are somehow “less American.”  Frankly, it wreaks of a South-centric view.

lol, you're just perpetuating the myth that America is some uniquely *Protestant* country, a pseudo-history invented by Yankee WASPs in the 19th century to marginalize newer Irish and Italian immigrant stock.  The 13 British colonies (to say nothing of Spanish Florida or French Louisiana, lol) were always pretty diverse, never monolithically Protestant settlements.

And the other history you're trying to employ as a smear against American religion isn't even right, lol.  Six of the "seven sisters" of Mainline Protestantism weren't founded until the 20th century, and the only one that wasn't (the Episcopal Church, founded 1785) was the one most dominant in the South, lol.  

You're the one classlessly deriding the quintessential inventions of American Christianity:  evangelicalism, fundamentalism, Restorationist theology, Pentecostalism, the Holiness movement, etc.  This is the shape Christianity takes when you have a settler/pioneer population living far away from established European hierarchies.  You can join the bishops and cardinals of Old Europe in turning your nose up at it if you wish, but don't masquerade as the protector of legitimate "American" Christianiaty in doing so LOL

I don't think the founding dates of the very specific Protestant denominations really help illuminate anything historically.

For instance the mainline Presbyterian denomination, PCUSA, was founded in 1983 because older denominations merged. But the Presbyterian church has been in this country since the 17th century. Likewise with Methodists: regardless of whenever the UMC was "founded" Methodism has existed in the American religious tradition since the 1730s.

America was not uniquely Protestant or only Protestant, but it was majorly Protestant for a long stretch of its history
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Nathan
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« Reply #35 on: January 18, 2022, 07:53:16 PM »
« Edited: January 18, 2022, 09:30:44 PM by Butlerian Jihad »

This makes complete sense.  American religion is much more influenced by frontier Restorationism or mid-century Jesusism than it is what some dead German guy nailed to a wall nearly 500 years ago.  American religious movements have largely rejected denominational labels in favor of ecumenism.

Posters who want to die on the hill that “Protestant” identity is something worth protecting can go back to their established churches an ocean away

You act like Mainline Protestants have been some historic minority and oddity in America’s history, rather than a clear majority for the vast majority of it and not that much smaller than Evangelicals now … if the whackier branches of Christianity want to have their fun, go ahead, but it seems rather strange and classless to insinuate normal older churches are somehow “less American.”  Frankly, it wreaks of a South-centric view.

lol, you're just perpetuating the myth that America is some uniquely *Protestant* country, a pseudo-history invented by Yankee WASPs in the 19th century to marginalize newer Irish and Italian immigrant stock.  The 13 British colonies (to say nothing of Spanish Florida or French Louisiana, lol) were always pretty diverse, never monolithically Protestant settlements.

And the other history you're trying to employ as a smear against American religion isn't even right, lol.  Six of the "seven sisters" of Mainline Protestantism weren't founded until the 20th century, and the only one that wasn't (the Episcopal Church, founded 1785) was the one most dominant in the South, lol. 

You're the one classlessly deriding the quintessential inventions of American Christianity:  evangelicalism, fundamentalism, Restorationist theology, Pentecostalism, the Holiness movement, etc.  This is the shape Christianity takes when you have a settler/pioneer population living far away from established European hierarchies.  You can join the bishops and cardinals of Old Europe in turning your nose up at it if you wish, but don't masquerade as the protector of legitimate "American" Christianiaty in doing so LOL

I don't think the founding dates of the very specific Protestant denominations really help illuminate anything historically.

For instance the mainline Presbyterian denomination, PCUSA, was founded in 1983 because older denominations merged. But the Presbyterian church has been in this country since the 17th century. Likewise with Methodists: regardless of whenever the UMC was "founded" Methodism has existed in the American religious tradition since the 1730s.

America was not uniquely Protestant or only Protestant, but it was majorly Protestant for a long stretch of its history

Methodism would have been perceived as Evangelical in "style" by most people in nineteenth-century America despite its relatively tightly structured theology and ecclesiology. The firm distinction between Mainline and Evangelical denominations is relatively recent and has always been at least as much political as theological.
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Statilius the Epicurean
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« Reply #36 on: January 18, 2022, 08:40:00 PM »

This is like asking if you live in America, Europe, or the Earth.  It doesn’t tell you much other than which label comes most easily to people.

Your answer to that question would tell you a lot, in fact. Identifying as "European" or "British" or "Scottish" or even "citizen of the world" is generally a major indicator of one's sociopolitical identity.
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Buffalo Mayor Young Kim
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« Reply #37 on: January 20, 2022, 05:01:52 PM »

Saying you are ‘just Christian’ is exactly the same as saying you are Protestant and being insulting about it.
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