Mainline Protestant in the context of "Black church"

The United Methodist Church (UMC) is a worldwide mainline Protestant Christian denomination based in Africa, The Philippines, Europe, and the United States claiming 10 million members, and is a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a leader in evangelicalism. The present denomination was founded in 1968 in Dallas by union of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, and is shaped by the voluntary separation of 25% of the United States churches leading up to the delayed 2020 General Conference held in 2024. The UMC traces its roots back to the revival movement of John and Charles Wesley in England, as well as the Great Awakening in the United States. As such, the church's theological orientation is decidedly Wesleyan. It embraces liturgical worship, holiness, and evangelical elements. According to its Book of Discipline, "The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world."

The United Methodist Church has a connectional polity, a typical feature of a number of Methodist denominations. It is organized into conferences. The highest level is called the General Conference and is the only organization which may speak officially for the UMC. The church is a member of the World Council of Churches, the World Methodist Council, and other religious associations.

The Episcopal Church (TEC), also known as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (PECUSA), is a member of the worldwide Anglican Communion, based in the United States. It is a mainline Protestant denomination and is divided into nine provinces. The current presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church is Sean W. Rowe.

In 2024, The Church of England Yearbook reported 2.4 million total members. In 2023, the Episcopal Church had 1,547,779 active baptized members. In 2011, it was the 14th largest denomination in the United States. In 2020, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives, The Episcopal Church was the 12th-largest denomination as measured by number of congregations. It was the 9th-largest Protestant denomination as measured by adherents in 2025 according to Pew Research. In 2025, Pew Research estimated that 0.9 percent of the adult population in the United States, or about 2.4 million people, self-identify as adherents of the Episcopal Church. A total of 1% of US adults, or 2.6 million people, self-identify as mainline Episcopalians/Anglicans. The church has seen a sharp decline in membership and Sunday attendance since the 1960s, particularly in the Northeast and Upper Midwest.

The Christian right are Christian political factions characterized by their strong support of socially conservative and traditionalist policies. Christian conservatives seek to influence politics and public policy with their interpretation of the teachings of Christianity.

In the United States, the Christian right (otherwise known as the New Christian Right or the Religious Right) is an informal coalition which was formed around a core of conservative Evangelical Protestants and conservative Roman Catholics. The Christian right draws additional support from politically conservative mainline Protestants, Orthodox Jews, and Mormons. The movement in American politics became a dominant feature of U.S. conservatism from the late 1970s onwards. The Christian right gained powerful influence within the Republican Party during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Its influence draws from grassroots activism as well as from focus on social issues and the ability to motivate the electorate around those issues.

Biblical literalism or biblicism is a term used differently by different authors concerning biblical interpretation.

The term can refer to the historical-grammatical method, a hermeneutic technique that strives to uncover the meaning of the text by taking into account not just the grammatical words, but also the syntactical aspects, the cultural and historical background, and the literary genre. It emphasizes the referential aspect of the words in the text without denying the relevance of literary aspects, genre, or figures of speech within the text (e.g., parable, allegory, simile, or metaphor). It does not necessarily lead to complete agreement upon one single interpretation of any given passage. This Christian fundamentalist and evangelical hermeneutical approach to scripture is used extensively by fundamentalist Christians, in contrast to the historical-critical method of mainstream Judaism, Catholicism or Mainline Protestantism.

The American Baptist Churches USA, abbreviated as ABCUSA, is a mainline Protestant denomination in the United States, and part of the Baptist tradition. The American Baptist Churches is the reorganization from 1907 of the Triennial Convention, established in 1814. It is rooted in the early English and Welsh Baptist settlers in America, especially with the foundation of Rhode Island Colony, tracing its history to the First Baptist Church in America, established by Roger Williams in 1638. The Triennial Convention became the Northern Baptist Convention in 1907, which was renamed as the American Baptist Convention from 1950 to 1972. The ABCUSA headquarters is located in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. The American Baptist Churches cooperates with the Baptist World Alliance, the Baptist Joint Committee, and the World Council of Churches.

Although the denomination is considered mainline Protestant, one of the Seven Sisters of American Protestantism, varying theological and missional emphases may be found among its congregations, including evangelical, conservative, and charismatic orientations. In 2025, Pew Research Center published the Religious Landscape Survey, estimating that 1 percent of US adults, or 2.6 million people, self-identify as adherents of the American Baptist Churches USA.

The Reformed Church in America (RCA) is a mainline Reformed Protestant denomination in Canada and the United States. It has about 82,865 members. From its beginning in 1628 until 1819, it was the North American branch of the Dutch Reformed Church. In 2024, Pew Research estimated that approximately 0.1% of the US adult population, or about 260,000 people, self-identifies with the Reformed Church in America.

The RCA is a founding member of the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches (WCC), Christian Churches Together, and the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC). Some parts of the denomination belong to the National Association of Evangelicals, the Canadian Council of Churches, and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. The denomination is in full communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), and United Church of Christ and is a denominational partner of the Christian Reformed Church in North America.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian restorationist Christian denomination and the largest denomination in the Latter Day Saint movement. Founded during the Second Great Awakening, the church is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and has established congregations and built temples worldwide. According to the church, as of 2024, it has over 17.5 million members, of which over 6.8 million live in the U.S. The church also reports over 109,000 volunteer missionaries and over 200 dedicated temples.

Church theology is restorationist and nontrinitarian; the church is a Christian denomination and includes a belief in the doctrine of salvation through Jesus Christ and his substitutionary atonement on behalf of mankind. It is often included in the lists of larger Christian denominations, though most Catholics, Orthodox Christians and evangelicals, and some Mainline Protestants have considered the LDS Church to be distinct and separate from mainstream Christianity. The church has an open canon of four scriptural texts: the Holy Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants (D&C), and the Pearl of Great Price. Other than the Bible, the majority of the church canon consists of material believed by the church's members to have been revealed by God to Joseph Smith, including texts described as lost parts of the Bible, and other works believed to have been written by ancient prophets, including the Book of Mormon. Members adhere to church laws of sexual purity, health, fasting, and Sabbath observance, and contribute ten percent of their income to the church in tithing. The church teaches ordinances through which adherents make covenants with God, including baptism, endowment, and celestial marriage.

Religion in North America began with the religions and spiritual practices of Native Americans. Later, religion also played a role in the founding of some colonies, as many colonists, such as the Puritans, came to escape religious persecution. Historians debate how much influence religion, specifically Christianity and more specifically Protestantism, had on the American Revolution. Many of the Founding Fathers were active in a local Protestant church; some of them had deist sentiments, such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington. Some researchers and authors have referred to the United States as a "Protestant nation" or "founded on Protestant principles," specifically emphasizing its Calvinist heritage. Others stress the secular character of the American Revolution and note the secular character of the nation's founding documents.

Protestantism in the United States, as the largest and dominant form of religion in the country, has been profoundly influential to the history and culture of the United States. African Americans were very active in forming their own Protestant churches, most of them Baptist or Methodist, and giving their ministers both moral and political leadership roles. The group often known as "White Anglo-Saxon Protestants" have dominated American society, culture, and politics for most of the history of the United States, while the so-called "Protestant work ethic" has long held influence over American society, politics, and work culture. In the late 19th and early 20th century, most major American Protestant denominations started overseas missionary activity. The "Mainline Protestant" denominations promoted the "Social Gospel" in the early 20th century, calling on Americans to reform their society; the demand for prohibition of liquor was especially strong. After 1970, the mainline Protestant denominations (such as Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians) lost membership and influence. The more conservative Protestant evangelical, fundamentalist, and charismatic denominations (such as the Southern Baptists) grew rapidly until the 1990s and helped form the Religious Right in politics.

The Jesus movement was an evangelical Protestant movement that began on the West Coast of the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s and primarily spread throughout North America, Europe, Central America, Australia and New Zealand, before it subsided in the late 1980s. Members of the movement were called Jesus people or Jesus freaks.

Its predecessor, the charismatic movement, had already been in full swing for about a decade. It involved mainline Protestants and Catholics who testified to having supernatural experiences similar to those recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, especially speaking in tongues. The two movements similarly believed that they were calling the church back to a more biblically accurate version of Christianity. Furthermore, they believed that these changes would result in the restoration of spiritual gifts to the church.