I hear both Catholics and Protestants referred to as 'christians.' However, I view them as two very distinct religions with more differences than similiarities.

However, I think there are may spiritual and new-age religions that have many similiarities such as the Bahai faith, Eckankar, Buddism, Hinduism, etc. Buddism and Hinduism are completely separated but they have many similarities with some of the new-age religions.

>>Everyone is always stating that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the U.S., but the statistics on this site show Deity(Deist) as having a 717% growth. I don't even know what that is!
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>That's for 10 years - equivalent to ca. 23% per year.
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>Islam is growing faster in absolute numbers (from half a million to a million) - but the growth in absolute numbers of Christianity is still larger. In this latter case, however, I would suspect it is mainly a population growth within the community, rather than new adherents.
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>Here in Bolivia, people tend to separate Protestants and Catholics as two (or more) different "religions" - the Web site you mentions groups them as Christians. I would also rather consider Christianity as a single religion, but with several sub-divisions.