Trying to figure out which one I align more with, Orthodox or Protestant.
If anyone of sufficient knowledge can point out the salient differences.
Much obliged!
God bless~
Let's try to parse this with some questions.
First of all, do you believe in God? You don't have to define God or be very specific. Let's make it as general as possible: do you believe that there exists an omnipotent,omnipresent, eternal and omniscient force/being anywhere in the universe or beyond?
If No, then you can be a Liberal Quaker, a branch of Protestantism, as certain of their Meetings do accept atheists and agnostics.
If Yes, do you believe that Jesus of Nazareth was literally the biological son of that God?
If No, then you might consider Judaism or Islam. Or you can stick with the Liberal Quakers (but to be a Quaker you must be a pacifist - they are unsure about the nature of God, but they are sure that pacifism is an absolute necessity to be a Quaker)
If Yes, then you're a Christian of some sort.
Now then, we need to talk a bit about what you think the nature of the relationship between Jesus and his Father is.
Do you think that the fact that Jesus' Father is God Almighty means that Jesus is also divine, and can properly be called "God" in his own right (even if Jesus is lesser in power)?
If no, then you are an Arian Christian, one who believes in the sonship of Jesus, and thus Jesus' special status as son of God, but you do not believe that divine parentage makes Jesus himself divine. The Arians of old died out, but there is a current Protestant Christian Church that is Arian in its doctrine, and that is the Jehovah's Witnesses. So, if you believe in the divine parentage of Jesus, but you don't believe that Jesus is actually divine himself, then you can be a Jehovah's Witness.
If yes, then you're a mainstream Christian in that regard.
Stepping back a moment, I asked before if you thought that God was omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and eternal. Eternal means "for all time". Do you think that there may have been a time when God was not yet those things, either during time or perhaps before time? In other words, do you believe that God may not have started out with those features, but that he now has them, and that possessed of those features, he fathered a son, Jesus Christ?
If you believe that, then you can be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - a Mormon.
If not, then you're still a plain vanilla mainstream Christian.
Now then, when speaking of God so far, we have a Father and a Son, and because you've come this far down the questionnaire, you believe that God's Son, Jesus, was divine. Stop for a moment and consider the NATURE of that divinity. We've left the Arians, who believe that Jesus is God's son but not himself divine ("God"), further up the list. Among this group that is left, everybody believes that Jesus is divine. But what does that MEAN? He was a man, who walked the earth, and yet he was divine.
Some possibilities: He was indeed divine, fully and completely, and therefore every aspect of his humanity was, in essence, a mask of the divine, a husk God put on to conceal his glory while he walked the earth AS a man, but not REALLY human. His suffering and death were essentially choices and appearances, but of course he was always REALLY God, and therefore his suffering was an appearance, an example to the faithful, completely optional at each phase, and at no point did he REALLY die, because he's God, the one, the only. Jesus, the human form, was essentially a pseudopod of God, not REALLY a man. Jesus was all God, all the time, and never really human. If this is what makes sense to you, then you are a Monophysite - you believe that Jesus had one nature, and it was divine. This believe qualifies you for the Nestorian Church or the Church of the East.
If, on the other hand, you think, "No, Jesus was really human, not just a simulacrum of a human" - that Jesus was fully human, but also fully divine - at the same time - that he had two natures (such as the man who wept and was weak, human, but the man who walked on water, divine) - then you remain within mainstream Christianity, either Protestant, Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox.
But if you think "Hold on there! Two natures? That sounds schizophrenic! That sounds as though there are two personalities within Jesus, a divine one and a human one - and I don't think that can work like that. Jesus was one man, a divine man, and his divinity and humanity were not two separate things but one single thing, one personality, bound into one person, two sources - divine and human - but bound inextricably together into one. If you believe this, you are a Miaphysite, and can be a member of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, such as the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt, or the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
If you read these three possibilities and say "I don't know." "I don't know, and I have no way of knowing." Or even "I don't know, and I don't care" - well, then you don't fit into ANY Christian Church. You can join any of them, but all of them believe one of those variants above...except of course the Quakers. As long as you're a pacifist you can believe anything you want and join the Liberal Quakers (Conservative Quakers generally require a belief in God). So, you'll be in a Church, but without having the same beliefs as the theology of the religion teaches. This is generally not an issue, because there are not normally quizzes given to determine what (or if) one believes on these issues. Nevertheless, you should know that these issues were important enough to have caused the Ecumenical Councils of old to meet to try to resolve them, and to anathematize the losing minority in the debates.
Now that we're past the dualism/monophysitism/miaphysite divide, we come to the next question, which has to do with the concept of the Trinity. Mainstream Orthodox, Protestant and Catholic religion believes in some fashion in a Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Non-Trinitarians, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Unitarian Universalists, do not. So, if you do not believe in the Trinity, then those are your main Christian options. If you do believe in the Trinity, Mainstream Protestantism, Catholicism, and both types of Orthodoxy (Eastern and Oriental) are available to you.
The dividing line here is the question of the "procession of the Holy Spirit". Does the Holy Spirit "proceed" from the Father and the Son (the Catholic and Protestant view), or from the Father alone (the view of both Orthodoxies). This was THE primary theological point of division between the Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox that led to the Great Schism of 1054, which divided the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches (each say that the other broke away).
What if, as in the case of the "-phyisitisms" previously named, you don't know, don't think there's a way to know, or don't care. Well, as before, you can join just about any Church, but unlike the "physitisms", which are not items of conversation, most Protestant, and all Catholic and Orthodox churches, have a creed they recite, in which the Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox affirmatively asserts, out loud "I believe..." and then recites a Trinitarian belief statement.
So, if you don't really believe it, but want to join any of the mainstream Protestant Churches, or any of the Orthodox or Catholic Churches, you will have to affirm, many times over and over again, that you believe something you don't really believe.
This is the last big "nature of God" division point. If you believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, you can be most kinds of Protestant and you can be a Catholic, but you cannot be an Orthodox of either the Eastern or Oriental variety. Likewise, if you assert that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, and not the Son, you can be an Oriental or Eastern Orthodox, but you can't be most forms of Protestant (at least not honestly), and you are not a Catholic. If you don't know, don't care, and aren't willing to pretend you do, you can still be a Liberal Quaker, as they don't care either - as long as you're a pacifist.
At this point, we've come to the fundamental questions that let you decide whether you're Protestant/Catholic or Orthodox (procession of the Holy Spirit) and, if Orthodox, whether Eastern (dualist) or Oriental (miaphysite).
The procession of the Holy Spirit is the question that divides West from East. The Church split in two over this, so it's a serious matter, and is central to the creeds of West and East. Miaphysitism versus dualism was once a burning issue, but today it's an Orthodox intramural thing, and a thing that keeps the Orthodox apart just as the procession of the Holy Spirit keeps the Orthodox apart from Protestants and Catholics.
And of course, you can always believe anything you want to and be a Liberal )or Beanite) Quaker, as long as you're a pacifist.