Post-Protestant

Post-Protestantism is a movement in the 20th century and 21st century that seeks to distance Christian faith from the influence and traditions of the Roman Catholic church and "her sister churches" (traditional, mainline, liturgical Protestant denominations dating back mostly to the 17th and 18th centuries).

Details

Many of these "post-Protestant" churches refer to themselves simply as "Christian", or nondenominational, but also commonly use the terms "Church of", followed by such words as "God", "Christ", "Jesus", "The Bible", etc. The trend was the natural outgrowth of the evangelical and fundamentalist movements of the earlier 20th century, and partly includes, but is not limited to, British New Church Movement and the Community Church movement, who refer to themselves as being post-Protestant and postdenominational.

Criticism

Critics say that the leaders of these often promote points of view which are anti-intellectual, or at least ahistorical, to the point that they totally deny or are even oblivious to the history of Christian denominations, and the meaning of the word Protestant. They argue that this creates confusion and contributes to a mistaken belief that only churches with the words "Christian", "Christ", or "Jesus" in the name are Christian, and that Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, etc. are something else.