The term “denomination” was innovated in the late seventeenth century by groups of Christians in England who dissented from the established Church of England but considered themselves loyal to the British state and recognized the monarch as having rights with respect to the Church of England. In 1702 Presbyterian, Baptist, and Congregationalist clergy formed “the body of the Dissenting Ministers of the Three Denominations in and about the City of London.” The term was introduced to counter the pejorative term “sect,” which in popular usage not only carried a sense of deviant or undesirable practices but also, as “sectaries,” implied political radicalism. “Denomination” is now used in pluralist societies for the forms of organized religious expression that generally support the established social order and are mutually tolerant of each other's practices.