Political Weirdos

Protestants are the secularized majority, and catholics are the weirdo extremists

Protestants have always been flirting with secularization. That's sort of their brand. They take a scope of rationalist scientific inquiry and mix it in with a scope of Christian mysticism, then try to logic their way to Salvation by doing math on scripture. Incidentally, not unlike how a lot of Kabbalist Jews try to force the Talmud through a Renaissance Era series of tubes.

Sometimes you can pop out the back side more zanny than the Catholicism you started with (doggedly insisting in 6000 year old Earth based on doing Biblical genealogy). Sometimes you come out as Prosperity Gospel types who have wrapped the pastiche of Christianity around the machinery of capitalist market enterprise. Sometimes you do Liberation Theology and turn into a far-left socialist radical. But for a lot of Protestants, its just an exercise in Cafeteria Catholicism. Take the bits you like, discard the bits you don't, and rewrite the old scriptures in your own modern image.