The Great Scott O, whom you should follow on Twitter because he is highly regarded by people who could destroy you with a mere caprice, send the Czar his thoughts:

Your Immenseness,

As always, thank you for a well-thought-out exposé of an in-plain-sight secret. Many plot elements have often used the theme that those who make the most noise in objection to something are most likely to succumb (or have succumbed) to that something, at least in their view. I am reminded of a line of Old Will’s: The lady doth protest too much, methinks.†

One thing I found interesting was that in the graph, “Protestant denominations” are indicated with a Nathan Hale (*)‡, and that Mormon and Jehovah’s Witness are not so marked. I’m not sure about Jehovah’s Witnesses, but don’t the Mormons claim to be a Christian faith? Perhaps they are not Protestant because they weren’t founded to protest Catholic teachings. But if that’s true, then it is also true for Baptists, Methodists, and especially the Christian Fundamentalists, who had no beef with Catholics, but rather with the Protestant denominations.

It just shows how applying labels can sometimes be misleading.

Your humble minion,
ScottO

†Hamlet: Act 3, Scene 2

‡After his famous sentiment: I regret that I have but one asterisk for my country.

Humor, eh?

The Czar thought it was silly of the graph’s designers to mention that Lutherans, for example, are Protestants. The odds are good that if you know what a Lutheran even is, you probably know what a Protestant is. It’s not like the hockey boxscores where it helps to remind you the Florida Panthers are in the the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League, where teams are periodically realigned.

But let us guess on your other thoughts.

The Witnesses do not really conform to typical Protestant theory: they pretty much are their own thing, Christian, yes, but formed not from Martin Luther’s 95 bugbears but from what they believe are First Century interpretations of scripture—making them pre-Protestant in attitude, even though they are a 20th Century organization. Indeed, most of their “First Century” approaches are 20th Century assessments, and are not necessarily based in historical fact. Does this make them pre-Catholic? It would be difficult to tell, since the Witnesses utterly reject any other religion as a fundamentally flawed organization: Catholics and Protestants are, to a Witness, just as goofy as a Hare Krishna. Ask a Witness if they are a form of Protestantism, and you will receive a glare more likely than a shrug.

Mormons are a Christian faith, although many of their long-standing opponents disagree with that. Unlike the crabby and whiny Witnesses, they are in the Czar’s experience balanced, happy, and agreeable people. But like the Witnesses, they believe that things got wonky well before the Church was established—indeed, to an extent, Mormons believe Christianity became corrupted moments after the Ascension. This claim is the Czar’s, and not an official Mormon position; but we base this on their rejection of the earliest Church creeds (the “Great Apostasy”).

Both Witnesses and Mormons are termed by religious pigeon holers as “Non-trinitarian,” (that God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not necessarily indistinguishable) rather than Protestant, although the Czar understands that some Mormons consider themselves Protestant to a degree. It is important to note that Mormonism’s Joseph Smith specifically rejected Protestantism as well as Catholicism. So many forms of Christianity are tucked into the Non-trinitarian locker that by rights it ought to be called Miscellaneous, since the Witness’ and Mormons’ explanations of where Jesus fits into the theology are totally different, as they are with other Non-trinitarian faiths like the Pentacostals, Unitarians, and Christadelphians.

Now for the flip side of your question: what makes non-Lutherans such as Methodists, Baptists, καὶ τὰ λοιπά, Protestants since they were not protesting Catholics as much as each other? Pretty much because they all descend in a broken and unbroken line from either Martin Luther’s rejection of Catholicism, or John Calvin’s or Ulrich Zwingli’s or Henry VIII’s. One can easily argue with this simplicity, but Methodists branched off the Anglicans, who themselves spit off the Church of England. The Seventh Day Adventists branched off the Millerites, who split from the Baptists, who in turn split from the Church of England. Fundamentalists split from the Evangelicals, who in turn partially come from the Puritans who were, again, from the Church of England. Presbyterians split from the Calvinists, and the Czar could do this all day because there are hundreds of Protestant offshoots. And indeed, the Czar would not be surprised to hear from some of their followers correcting his history, but remember: the Czar was born in the mid 1200s and was there for all of it.

Whether one agrees with our Protestant family tree or not, the point is that Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses do not consider themselves descendants of any Protestant movement, but consider their spiritual origins to pre-date all of the Protestant faiths and are a correction to confusion among the Apostles themselves as to what Jesus meant in the Christian Operator’s Manual. Heck, to these two faiths, even the Orthodox faiths are late-comers.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.