Protestants Celebrating Palm Sunday

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I’m sure it has been common for high church Protestants to celebrate Palm Sunday in the past but I noticed on Instagram today that a lot of Methodist, Baptist, Non Denominational churches were handing out palms and celebrating as well. I was brought up southern Baptist and we never did anything beyond maybe (maybe) mentioning the Bible story. Anything more would have been ‘too Catholic’. I’ve been Catholic for 13 years now. Is this a relatively new thing? How widespread is it?
 
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Methodism is liturgical you know, fairly “high church”.

I think it really depends more on the culture of your particular area. If its an area with a large Catholic or Lutheran majority, others are likely to want to be part of the celebration too.

I know many of you Presbyterian churches around here distribute ashes on Ash Wednesday.
 
I’m a member on another forum, and I was also surprised by how many people celebrated Palm Sunday. I thought it was just us, Anglicans, maybe Lutherans and Orthodox- but to see baptists and non-denoms talking about it was pretty shocking.
 
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Protestantism is a very broad movement. The more strictly Calvinist people reject all Catholic Holy Days, including Christmas and Easter. Most Protestants have realized that such ideas won’t sell widely.
 
The ‘feel’ of the service is completely different - or at least it was, when I was Anglican. It is very joyful, lots of Hosannas, whereas the RC Palm Sunday Mass is pretty sad, I find, with the reading of the Passion setting the tone of foreboding and sorrow for what is to come.
 
The Evangelical Church I attend usually has a Palm Sunday sermon. Last year we fasted on Friday’s during Lent with a special emphasis of praying that the Gospel be made known in our city during that time.

I’ve been in Southern Baptist churches that have a procession of children waving Palm Leaves march down the isles at the beginning of the Palm Sunday Service singing Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.

I’ve also been in a Southern Baptist Church that has a Maundy Thursday communion service every year.

It is up to the Pastors/Elders/Deacons to decide how much or how little the church observes Holy Week. I’ve noticed that the more educated Pastors are typically the ones who encourage Holy Week celebrations.
 
lanman87 said:
The Evangelical Church I attend usually has a Palm Sunday sermon. Last year we fasted on Friday’s during Lent with a special emphasis of praying that the Gospel be made known in our city during that time.
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That is incredibly beautiful! ❤️

I was surprised some fifteen years ago the first time I heard that some Christian (non-denom) friends of mine practiced occasional fasting as a means of prayer.

What???

I honestly thought only Catholics practiced fasting and penance of any kind. 😊 Their commitment actually pricked my soul a bit because I realized I took fasting as an obligation I had to fulfill, rather than a gift I could give to God.

Thanks be to God for the ways we help each other along the path to a deeper relationship with Christ!
 
I’m Lutheran, and we had full Palm Sunday yesterday. I missed that, bc of family. At night they performed Bach’s Passion of John, with choir and a baroque instrument orchestra, it was lovely, brought my youngest along.

And sad in a way to see the cross on the high altar swept and occluded.

Lenten fasting or sacrifice is encouraged, but personal and no one will inquire or hassle you about it.
 
You’re not the only one to notice this OP; it does indeed seem that more non-denoms and Baptists have been celebrating or at least recognizing more Catholic feasts/solemnities such as Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday than they used to (along with other denominations that usually recognize these days, such as Anglicans), though in my experience they do not usually attach the same importance to these days that Catholics do.

Some are perhaps coming around to the fact that you can have more than just two feast days a year (Easter and Christmas), but I think the majority of it is that they just want in on the celebration as more and more congregations opt to recognize these days.
 
I’ve seen Palm Sunday services on the sign boards at the local Methodist and Episcopal churches for some time, but this year I saw a sign at a Cumberland Presbyterian Church for Holy Week services on Thursday, Friday and Saturday as well as Easter Sunday. This is the first time I’ve ever seen that.
 
Methodists have always had Lent, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Advent…I grew up with all of that.

We also followed a calendar. I can remember “X Sunday After Pentecost”, “X Sunday of Lent”.

The Methodist church is technically a child of high Anglicanism, so it makes sense that all of that remained. So a lot of our liturgy paralleled that of Catholicism. (I can remember being at Mass with my dad and it wasn’t completely foreign - “oh, I know this” - and vice versa when I started working on confirmation in the Methodist Church - LOL.) It is prima scriptura (Scripture first, but studied and interpreted in context of when and how it was written) not sola scripture, and the church doesn’t really teach hard core sola fide either.

Methodists are taught/believe according to what’s been described as the Wesleyan Quadrangle: Scripture, reason, experience, and tradition.
 
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Wanted to add that where my dad retired was basically a three church town: the high Episcopalians, the Baptists, and the Methodists. There were two small congregations of Quakers. There was a Catholic parish, but I’ve lived in apartments that were bigger than their church (and that’s no exaggeration) and I never went to school there with anyone who was Catholic. I knew no Lutherans there either.

Had the Catholics had a bigger presence, I’d probably already be one. I can see a lot of reasons for why I went Methodist when I start picking apart that church’s teachings and beliefs, no matter how hard my maternal grandma had tried to make me a Baptist.
 
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We even had a local Church of Christ celebrate Palm Sunday… they typically don’t even acknowledge Easter or Christmas within their services as a specific date on the calendar!
 
My husbands non-denominational church is doing the stations of the cross fir holy week. Also I know several non-Catholics who go to an Ash Wednesday mass.
 
I wonder of this is a bit of a transatlantic difference, because, from my British experience, I am surprised that the OP is surprised. Apart from some very strict Presbyterians in Scotland, I have never known a protestant Church NOT celebrate Palm Sunday. This year it coincided, for us anyway, with the Feast of the Annunciation, so we celebrated both in the same service (a year or two back we mediated on Good Friday and celebrated the annunciation in the same service)
 
ConfusedLucy said:
My husbands non-denominational church is doing the stations of the cross fir holy week. Also I know several non-Catholics who go to an Ash Wednesday mass.
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I think you will find that they are not our usual ones, though i.e. not the ones written by St. Alphonsus. I could be wrong, though - would you mind listing them?
 
I’m not too sure as I think it’s the first time they have done them.
 
ConfusedLucy said:
I’m not too sure as I think it’s the first time they have done them.
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I would love to know, as I am Ecumenical Rep for our parish, and it would be really good to have a service that we could invite non-RCs to, knowing that they wouldn’t be offended because the words had already been approved. I’m talking about next year, obviously.
 
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