Baptists and anti-Catholicism

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betsybug354 said:
One of my best friends is Baptist, the daughter of former Catholics who left the church when she was only 5 years old. According to her, they left because the Baptists had a Vacation Bible School that was very appealing to her children, while their rural Catholic church didn’t offer much for kids. Anyway, today my friend and her husband wander from Protestant church to Protestant church looking for one that “feels right.” I know that one doctrine they feel very strongly about is believer’s baptism by immersion, so even though our kids attend Lutheran school together, she has ruled out joining the Lutheran church because of our practice of infant baptism by sprinkling. If you want to enlighten Baptists, I’d suggest starting
with the subject of baptism.
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You might want to share with your friend the prophecy in Ezekial 36: 24-28 speaking of the coming of the Messiah and the restoration of Israel. "for I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will SPRINKlE CLEAN WATER upon you and you shall be clean from all your unclean ness, and from your idols I will cleanse you.a new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. You shall dwell in the land which I gave your fathers; and you shall be my people and I will be your God.

According to this passage…sprinkling with clean water has the same effect as immersion baptism…1. We are made part of his family/covenant 2. Our sins are forgiven 3. We receive the Holy Spirit. Sounds good to me:)
 
I don’t know from where the Baptist vitriol hails. I’ve know to offer clarification and correction, and once I was told a person would pray for me to come put of"that demon religion," to read the Bible, and nor.follow the popes.
 
Miserissima said:
I don’t know from where the Baptist vitriol hails. I’ve know to offer clarification and correction, and once I was told a person would pray for me to come put of"that demon religion," to read the Bible, and nor.follow the popes.
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Having been raised Baptist and converted later to Orthodoxy (after swimming through various fundamentalist and mainstream churches), I can tell you that some of it comes from such as Jack Chick Tracts and the Mystery Babylon pamplet. When we converted to Orthodoxy, I called my husband’s oldest friend (Catholic…and would have been our sponsor if the Orthodox Church allowed it…his words) and both apologised and thanked him for how he bore with us when we were rabid baptist teenagers. He would just say, “that’s interesting, not true, if you have questions ask, and no, I don’t want to come to youth group, I’ll see you after,” then hug us and meet up with us later. He did take me to my first two masses (one was at his church and if I had been in a better place, I would have converted. The second mass, I was really interested, but the priest in the town we were living…literally living two doors over from the church…treated my husband and I like **** when we we tried to talk to him on the way out the door).

Anyhow, being on this side of it, I get snubbed here in the south for crossing myself and being “Catholic” (I’m Orthodox, but the Protestants here rarely know the difference and it doesn’t matter, the issues are the same).
 
white_sheep said:
Hmm, well it seems to me, while we clearly differ on beliefs of what is happening, that Catholics fulfill all the demands of Protestants and then go on to do about a thousand times more of it.

That all seems to be satisfied by one or two basic prayers that many Catholics say every day. That is, the Apostle’s Creed and an Act of Contrition.
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You would think that, but no. :eek:

The problem is that these are “rote” prayers that are said without any “real feeling” and are not prayers “from the heart.”

Baptists/Anti-Catholics can come up with all kinds of reasons to dislike Catholics and the Church.
 
andrewstx said:
I would have tuned him out as well. A sermon full of lies aimed at one young girl! :mad:
I would have walked out instantly. That ‘praycher’ should have paid more attention at Jim Bobs bible school, for we Orthodox for certain do not worship ‘idols’ or pictures of ‘dead people’. I bet that same preacher has plenty of pictures of his ‘dead’ relatives.

I think the departed are alive in Christ!
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She couldn’t walk out. She was with the people we were living with and she and I would have been lectured over her “bad behaviour”. We did the best we could while there.
 
I live in Georgia, and have done so all my life. So I have lived alongside Baptists for a very long time. My own thoughts on this thread are the the spectrum of belief about Catholics in the Baptist Church is very wide. Baptists are not the most Anti-Catholic type of Protestant, but it often lingers in baptist Churches, especially more rural ones.

In any case, the stereotypes about Baptists that you hear are very often not true. Baptists are often very kind, Christ loving, and very intelligent people.
 
TRH1292 said:
I live in Georgia, and have done so all my life. So I have lived alongside Baptists for a very long time. My own thoughts on this thread are the the spectrum of belief about Catholics in the Baptist Church is very wide. Baptists are not the most Anti-Catholic type of Protestant, but it often lingers in baptist Churches, especially more rural ones.

In any case, the stereotypes about Baptists that you hear are very often not true. Baptists are often very kind, Christ loving, and very intelligent people.
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They can be, yes, absolutely. It also depends upon “what kind” of baptist we are referring to. Southern Baptists are a bit more open. Independent Fundamentalist Baptists range from being more closed in to being more hardcore and judgmental to even being involved in cultish side groups (Gothard for example).
 
MommaduckofMany said:
They can be, yes, absolutely. It also depends upon “what kind” of baptist we are referring to. Southern Baptists are a bit more open. Independent Fundamentalist Baptists range from being more closed in to being more hardcore and judgmental to even being involved in cultish side groups (Gothard for example).
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Former IFB here, in my younger days. Many cradle Catholics, who have never been in these types of churches, are blissfully unaware of how cultish they can be.
 
JustaServant said:
Former IFB here, in my younger days. Many cradle Catholics, who have never been in these types of churches, are blissfully unaware of how cultish they can be.
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Sometimes I wish I were blissfully unaware, but for our older children, they know and understand and it will keep them away from such as young adults.
 
MommaduckofMany said:
Not true. We had to live with a Baptist family for several months. This family had not been happy about our conversion. My daughter visited their church once to be with another friend…the pastor was preaching on one subject, saw my daughter and suddenly changed the entire sermon to such as “not worshipping idols and pictures of dead people” etc. Yeah, daughter picked up on it fast, rolled her eyes, and tuned him out the rest of the service.
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I experienced something along those lines back in the late 80’s. I had never been to a Baptist service and I was curious, so we (my wife was Baptist at the time) went to her childhood church. For some reason my mother-in-law felt it necessary to tell the pastor (who was greeting people at the door) that I was Catholic. The pastor greeted my wife and she went in; the pastor asked if he could have a word with me. He took me aside and told me that because I was Catholic and not a Christan I couldn’t enter. The “punch line” was that it was “bring a friend day”.
 
Wildgraywolf said:
I experienced something along those lines back in the late 80’s. I had never been to a Baptist service and I was curious, so we (my wife was Baptist at the time) went to her childhood church. For some reason my mother-in-law felt it necessary to tell the pastor (who was greeting people at the door) that I was Catholic. The pastor greeted my wife and she went in; the pastor asked if he could have a word with me. He took me aside and told me that because I was Catholic and not a Christan I couldn’t enter. The “punch line” was that it was “bring a friend day”.
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Yep, you get treated better if you aren’t a Christian than if you are Catholic.

A friend of mine had what happened to you happen to him. It was his own childhood baptist church and it was a day that many relatives would be there and he was back in town visiting. Pastor turned him away at the door because he became “high church” (Episcopalian).
 
Wildgraywolf said:
I experienced something along those lines back in the late 80’s. I had never been to a Baptist service and I was curious, so we (my wife was Baptist at the time) went to her childhood church. For some reason my mother-in-law felt it necessary to tell the pastor (who was greeting people at the door) that I was Catholic. The pastor greeted my wife and she went in; the pastor asked if he could have a word with me. He took me aside and told me that because I was Catholic and not a Christan I couldn’t enter. The “punch line” was that it was “bring a friend day”.
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I’m curious - how did your wife get past these childhood beliefs? My husband has been struggling for years. Other than baptisms, he doesn’t set foot in the Lutheran church the kids, grandkids and I belong to. He complains about the statues, the bowing, the kneeling, etc. He complains that it’s “too Catholic.” I am thankful he doesn’t hinder me in practicing my faith, and I am pretty sure he wouldn’t hinder my conversion to the RCC or the Orthodox church should that come up because they are all “too Catholic.”

What changed her mind? I pray for the intervention of the HS and keep St. Monica’s example before me but it does get old.
 
Stilldreamn said:
I’m curious - how did your wife get past these childhood beliefs? My husband has been struggling for years. Other than baptisms, he doesn’t set foot in the Lutheran church the kids, grandkids and I belong to. He complains about the statues, the bowing, the kneeling, etc. He complains that it’s “too Catholic.” I am thankful he doesn’t hinder me in practicing my faith, and I am pretty sure he wouldn’t hinder my conversion to the RCC or the Orthodox church should that come up because they are all “too Catholic.”

What changed her mind? I pray for the intervention of the HS and keep St. Monica’s example before me but it does get old.
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Good question… I don’t think she ever fully embraced those ideas. I’ll ask her tonight and post a better reply.
 
rfournier103 said:
I have wondered for some time why Baptists seem to have such a serious hair across their behinds in regards to Catholicism.

Has the Church done something to these people that I’m not aware of? I just don’t get it.
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This has not been my experience at all.

Of course there are some serious doctrinal difficulties around their lack of recognition of us as baptised Christians. Baptists do not accept valid baptism as being anything other than full immersal baptism as a teenager/adult. This will obviously cause problems with us accepting the validity of their baptism while they don’t accept the validity of ours.

But despite this I have found Baptists to be decent people and I have experienced no animosity. The baptist Church local to the school I teach at were very welcoming when I took a class of children to visit them as part of our RE topic of learning more about other Christian denominations. Their minister was very respectful of our Catholic beliefs, and he and his staff treated us very hospitably and without trying to evangelise us in any way.

Maybe it is different in the USA, but in the UK (at least in England and Wales) most Christian denominations do all tend to get along reasonably hospitably and respectfully.
 
Brendan_64 said:
This has not been my experience at all.

Of course there are some serious doctrinal difficulties around their lack of recognition of us as baptised Christians. Baptists do not accept valid baptism as being anything other than full immersal baptism as a teenager/adult. This will obviously cause problems with us accepting the validity of their baptism while they don’t accept the validity of ours.

But despite this I have found Baptists to be decent people and I have experienced no animosity. The baptist Church local to the school I teach at were very welcoming when I took a class of children to visit them as part of our RE topic of learning more about other Christian denominations. Their minister was very respectful of our Catholic beliefs, and he and his staff treated us very hospitably and without trying to evangelise us in any way.
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May I ask what area you live in, what type of environment, and what type of baptist?
 
DarkLight said:
This is definitely true. Most Catholics don’t have the conversion experience they think is necessary for salvation.
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Because most Catholics do not realize conversion is a life time experience,not a one time experience like so many OSAS churches believe.
 
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