There are thousands of protestant sects. Just about any generalization you make about them is going to be wrong. Many of them teach that the secular world is sinful and to be avoided.
I do agree with you, but sadly many Christians do ignore the fact Jesus hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors, and generally mocked the "perfect" moral police (for their hypocrisy).
But individual Christians are like every other human, imperfect.
Some quick googling turned up this page, which most Evangelical Christians I know would nod along with, and many arguments from it I have heard directly from them:
That's talking about being set apart in behavior, not physical / social isolation.
Moderation is a pretty consistent thing throughout the Bible.
Just as an example, that page mentions "drunkenness", which is explicitly bad. At the same time, it's perfectly okay to have a glass of wine or a drink now and then as long as you're not getting drunk.
Granted that comes with some caveats, mostly boiling down to good judgement and self control. You don't want to make someone stumble, such as encouraging people to do things that they may struggle with (whether it's alcohol, meat or anything else).
"Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall." - 1 Corinthians 8:13
If you have a friend who wants to have a tough conversation over a beer...by all means it's the right choice to go have that beer to talk to that friend. 1 Corinthians 9:19-22 makes that pretty clear.
"Though I am free of obligation to anyone, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), to win those under the law. To those without the law I became like one without the law (though I am not outside the law of God but am under the law of Christ), to win those without the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men, so that by all possible means I might save some."
There are a lot of things that people have "heard in church" or have been pushed as part of church culture that are either misunderstood or not biblical at all. There are far too many people who nod along rather than reading the Bible on their own.
I always try to drill into people, you cannot be mislead if you've read.
By far the largest denominations do not teach that.
I am sure 0.0001% of the world's 1 billion protostants like the handful of westbro baptists nut cases might believe that. You can find extremists in every religion.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) is a pretty big denomination.
On the bright side, they are gradually adopting more progressive views - black people are no longer cursed by God (as of 2013), and drinking soda is no longer forbidden (as of 2017, at least on BYU's campus). Tea and coffee are still haram, however.
The LDS Church doesn’t teach to retreat from the world but rather teaches that some of the natural tendencies of people are self destructive and should not to be indulged in.
Now to correct some of your bright side points:
- The church never held as a belief that black people were cursed. There were some leaders that did not have the authority to speak authoritatively about doctrine that expressed that belief. [1]
- Drinking soda has never been forbidden. You may be thinking of caffeine, though that was never explicitly forbidden but BYU did act like it was.
- Tea and coffee. Yes, we avoid drinking these and also alcohol.
"In the following year, Smith taught that the curse of Ham came from God, and that blacks were cursed with servitude.[83] He warned those who tried to interfere with slavery that God could do his own work.[84] Without reversing his opinion on the curse of Ham, Smith started expressing more anti-slavery positions starting in 1842.[85]:18[86]:18–19 After Smith's death, leaders of the LDS Church continued to teach that black Africans were under the curse of Ham and that those who tried to abolish slavery were going against the decrees of God, although the day would come when the curse would be nullified through the saving powers of Jesus Christ.[87] In addition, based on his interpretation of the Book of Abraham, Brigham Young believed that, as a result of this curse, negroes were banned from the Mormon priesthood.[88]"
>and drinking soda is no longer forbidden (as of 2017, at least on BYU's campus). Tea and coffee are still haram, however.
Wow, that's really backwards. Tea and coffee are known to be healthy in moderation (especially green tea), while soda is basically poison and is a major contributor to making Americans fat. There's literally nothing healthy about soda.
In the mid 19th century people were becoming aware of the addictiveness of caffeine in the light of the emerging science of modern chemistry.[1] Joseph Smith took that trending concern and ran with it.
I don't know if Smith personally knew about caffeine as a specific component, but I think that was the background context--the mainstreaming of chemistry kick-started another cultural cycle of prescriptive living. The trend ultimately grew into the widely popular Clean Living movement in the latter part the 19th century, so Smith was way ahead of his time. See also Seventh Day Adventism and John Kellogg.
I don't mean to belittle the disciplines of the LDS church by putting them under a microscope. I just find the history interesting. Religious disciplines are obviously products of their environment, but that doesn't mean that's all they are. Anyhow, there's still good reason to avoid caffeine, depending on your priorities and concerns.
[1] Doing some Googling to confirm my memory and that I'm not completely talking out my a--, it seems caffeine was first isolated in 1819. The Clean Living movement (which I didn't remember by name until Googling), was later than I seemed to remember.
That's very interesting of course, and explains the history, however it's been well over a century now since this stuff, so people should know better about relative safety of different foods and not just stick to what John Kellogg said. We see here that the Mormons are now OKing soda, which wasn't around in the 1800s, despite us now knowing just how horribly unhealthy it is, yet they don't want to reverse their stance on tea, which has been used for many centuries starting in Asia and later spread to every corner of the planet, and isn't really associated with any significant health problems (in fact, green tea is consumed in large quantities in Japan, which has the highest life expectancy in the world).
There are about as many Mormons as there are Southern Baptists, which most consider "a pretty big denomination" of Protestantism. To my knowledge, BYU has not re-banned caffeinated soda. Regarding the Curse of Ham:
"In 1931, Joseph Fielding Smith wrote on the same topic in The Way to Perfection: Short Discourses on Gospel Themes, generating controversy within and without Mormonism. For evidence that modern blacks were descended from Cain, Smith wrote that "it is generally believed that" Cain's curse was continued through his descendants and through Ham's wife. Smith states that "some of the brethren who were associate with Joseph Smith have declared that he taught this doctrine." In 1978, when the church ended the ban on the priesthood, Bruce R. McConkie taught that the ancient curse of Cain and Ham was no longer in effect.[9]:117
General authorities in the LDS church favored Smith's explanation until 2013, when an LDS Church-published online essay "disavowed" the idea that black skin is the sign of a curse."
I’m not saying some don’t, but doing so requires participants who don’t read the Bible on their own at all. It’s kinda like open source that way.