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Blaim my general ignorance of protestant denominations, I'm always getting the Congregationalists, the Episcopalians, and the Presbyterians, flipped around in my head.
Don't worry, it's very confusing for everybody. But it did make us sit up and open our eyes when you put in the Piskies as lining up with Texas. California, I could see, if California was squaring up to the federal government over something; as good liberal footsoldiers TEC would have statements of support and flags and protests and blessings for the rebels before you could blink.
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All three of those are liberal Protestant groups with membership that couldn’t get older if they tried.
The largest segment of conservative Protestantism are evangelicals(mostly Baptist with a large pentecostal minority), with confessional Lutherans and continuing anglicans vying for a very distant second and groups like churches of Christ and orthodox Presbyterians being practically tiny. The supermajority of socially conservative Christians and Christian adjacent believers in the US are evangelical, catholic, or restorationist(mostly mormon). Non-evangelical conservative Protestantism and Orthodoxy(to the point where sociological surveys usually don’t bother distinguishing mass attending orthodox from Catholics) are rounding errors nationally although some of them are concentrated enough to be regionally important.
Well, I wouldn't either, if the orthodox in question are attending the sacrifice of the mass and not the divine liturgy! (this is tongue in cheek)
Maybe it's just my local area, but conservative Presbyterians seem bigger than Lutherans or the continuing Anglicans. Though I do get the sense they're much older than even the Lutherans or Anglicans, who seem to have at least a few younger members and families.
I think Presbyterians just have a hard time distinguishing themselves from the Reformed Baptists, especially given their generally low/moderate sacramental theology. My sense is that conservative Christians who get themselves interested in some Calvin just stay where they are and see their Calvinism as a theological spin on their existing denominational affiliation (heck, around here even the continuing Anglicans are calvinists, much to my chagrin). I actually think Calvinism is kind of the evangelical Protestant version of being a trad -- male, intellectual, a little stuck up. And I say this as someone who was really attracted to Calvinism before I realized I had to find a place where the eucharistic theology was unapologetically realist and baptism was regeneration ipso facto -- so you can infer from that what you will about me.
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