Mainline Protestant
A grouping of historic US Protestant denominations with connectional polity.
Mainline Protestant is a grouping of historic US Protestant denominations distinguished from evangelical and non-denominational Protestantism by historic confessional documents and connectional polity. The principal Mainline denominations include the United Methodist Church (UMC) and the Global Methodist Church (GMC), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), the Presbyterian Church (USA) (PCUSA) and the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the American Baptist Churches USA (ABCUSA), the Disciples of Christ, and the United Church of Christ. Within the Mainline, denominations split on contested questions including same-sex marriage and women's ordination; this site names the splits at the page level without privileging either body (PROJECT-KNOWLEDGE.md Decision 9).