>>Re: Silly comment: all Protestants are Heretics. What about those belonging to Christiandom preceeding the Roman Catholic Church? For those of us without some extra-Biblical teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, the claim is groundless.<<
Definition: Protestant
Any Christian belonging to a sect or denomination descending from those that seceded from the Roman Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation. Originally it referred to those who adhered to the doctrine of Martin Luther and who protested in 1529 against the decree of the Diet of Spires commanding submission to the authority of Rome. The word comes from roots meaning to testify or witness in public. The term does not include those churches who broke with Rome either before or after the Reformation. It thus excludes the Orthodox from whom Rome split in 1054 and the Old Catholics who split in 1870. Most Anglicans reject the term, although it was used by the "Protestant Episcopal Church" in the United States, which broke off from the Church of England in 1789. Episcopalians today are split on the use of the term.