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The defining characteristics of Protestantism as a whole are the Five Solas, which were nicely detailed in another post.
The types of Protestants you’re least likely to talk to (because they don’t evangelize much) are the ones that are most similar to Catholics- the Lutherans, Anglicans, other mainline denominations. Mainline has a range of meanings, but the churches most quickly associated with the term are the ones that broke away directly from Rome, although the term can also be used in reference to every major grouping of trinitarian churches in the US regardless of history or characteristics. This, I think, is a mostly useless way of using the term. Mainline in the Catholic-similarity sense used to be what most of the United States was, but now those churches have declined quite a bit and Americans now mostly belong to Protestant churches that didn’t break directly from Rome. Although some people want to call them mainline just because they’re accepted as Christians by other Christians and now they account for most of the United States’ Christianity. Again though, I think that’s a silly way to use the term. When used this way, it only remains useful as long as there are no population shifts over time.
At any rate. The types of Protestants that are most likely to evangelize you are as follows. Mostly in the southern United States, you have your Baptists. They might not properly know what a sacrament is, but there are ordinances- just two of them, though. The concept of a hierarchical leadership that has teaching authority makes absolutely no sense to them. Baptism does not save you or regenerate you, you’re typically expected to be saved by means of an “altar call” (which typically does not include an actual altar) and that entails a sermon that’s given to a crowd of people, an invitation, and then you decide you’re going to pray and give your life to Jesus and ask Him into your heart. You go talk to someone, they talk you though a prayer and a decision, and then you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Then hopefully other people follow up with you and you start attending church regularly.
There’s a very, very similar type of Protestant Christian from the US that’s mostly from the northern part. These people will very often go by the term non-denominational or Evangelical, and this is my background, personally. These groups of Protestants have been accused of essentially being Baptist but with a different name on the door, which appears to be done in hopes of having a broader appeal to a wide variety of Christians who might not be inclined to show up to an actual Baptist church. And to that criticism, I will say…it’s pretty much correct. The one difference I’ll point out is that among these folks, there is more of a Reformed influence that places just a bit less emphasis on the decision making process of the person becoming a Christian and a bit more emphasis on the sovereign will of God and in His decision to save someone (and here, “save” means to regenerate, cause one to pass from death to life, become a Christian, and of course to be guaranteed eternal life from that moment on). There’s also a tiny bit more of a tendency for these types of people to set aside restorationist ideas (as if the Catholic Church got off the right path and now American Protestants are putting Christianity back on the right path where it originally was) and there’s a bit more of an awareness of Christian history going back more than 500 years. It’s also worth noting that Southern Baptist seminaries provide free education to qualifying people who want to become pastors, and Evangelical/non-denominational people, generally from a bit further north, frequently and very often do get their training that way, and then they start out at a Baptist church for a certain number of years as part of the deal. Because of this, there’s been a cross-pollination of ideas and it’s had some minor but noticeable effects in the way that Southern Baptist leadership has more recently been approaching its ideas about evangelism and salvation.
The other main type of Protestant is Pentecostal or charismatic, and there can be a lot of overlap between them and other more-formal groupings of Christians. Some Catholics are actually charismatic, as a matter of fact if you look at Hispanic Catholics living in the US, their charismatic parishes do the best in terms of growth and retention of their members while the non-charismatic ones are not doing nearly as well. Something to keep an eye on. Among Protestants though, some charismatic churches are non-denominational. Some belong to a denomination of some kind. The charismatic movement was born in the state where the presidential primaries just kicked off- Iowa. It’s spread all over though, and more than any other type of Protestant, the charismatic (or Pentecostal) ones are most likely to evangelize you. With these Protestants (or Catholics for that matter), there’s varying levels of greater emphasis on miracles, healing, signs and wonders, gifts of the Spirit. That sort of thing. There’s a big range of how much it’s talked about or emphasized, and it just depends on the person. Of the small number of Protestants in the Philippines, quite a lot of them are Pentecostal/charismatic, right? I’m guessing.
Continued in just a second.
