One thing that's annoyed me over the years is how the media divide's Protestants on the Evangelical-Mainline scale. This binary scale creates some weird bedfellows. Anglican breakaways and Pentecostals are both "Evangelicals". Likewise BRTD and Bishop Schori are both in the mainline camp despite significant differences.
I decided to do a little side project to properly differentiate between groups.
Here is the political compass chart. The left-right axis refers to theological liberalism and conservatism. The up-down axis is the high church/low church scale, dealing with liturgy, governance and the like.
The top left and bottom right quadrants are pretty easy to name. I called them Mainline and Evangelical since those quadrants are usually what you think of when you hear those terms.
I call the top right quadrant Confessional since most of the churches in that quadrant still hold to one of the historic confessions of Faith (Augsburg, Westminster etc.)
The only one I'm having trouble with is the bottom left quadrant (i.e. BRTDland). Does anyone have a suggestion for a name? Any other questions or comments?
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?
