Raised Southern Baptist. Joined the Church four years ago, receiving First Communion at the same Mass as did my son. We even had matching suits.
As a child, my faith as a Southern Baptist waxed and waned, largely to the extent that my parents’ involvement in their church did. When my parents were active and eager to attend church and Sunday school, so was I. Like a child, mostly I just accepted what I was taught on faith. These were adults, including my parents; therefore, they knew more and better than I did.
In high school, my parents gradually stopped attending church, largely due to the perceived hypocrisy of others. It was the old, “The church is full of hypocrites. I don’t need them. I can worship God at home.” Since they stopped going to church, so did I. I still read the Bible every now and then. I would still attend church once in a while with friends, especially if that friend was a pretty girl.
At seventeen, I joined the Army. Removed from the context of home and friends, going to church just somehow became irrelevant. I would attend church if home during the holidays or going to some special event like a wedding, but otherwise God and worship sort of faded from my life. I still read a bit of theology, philosophy, and an increasingly large amount of history that touched on Christianity.
I left the Army about eight years later to get married to Katrina, who is a cradle Catholic. The first years of our marriage were a gradual return to the Baptist church. Faith was important to her; therefore, it ought to be important to me. I also enrolled at the University of St. Thomas and started to study Catholic philosophy, theology, and history in earnest. I even bought books for courses I wasn’t taking.
Perhaps the first thing I realized was that very little of what I’d been told while a child about Catholics or early Church history was accurate. Some of it was downright false. This was especially true regarding Marian doctrine. Years before I converted, I came to realize that Catholic Marian doctrine is a true, good, and beautiful complement to biblical Christology. I was undoubtedly the only Baptist Sunday school teacher at my church who prayed the Rosary and defended Marian teachings.
I credit my eventual conversion to a few things:
- The constant prayers of my wife, my father- and mother-in-law, and one of my wife’s aunts for my conversion.
- The intercession of the Blessed Virgin.
- A growing realization on my part that I have a very real, unavoidable moral obligation to raise my children Catholic.
- The slow realization that, while being Southern Baptist didn’t mean I was not Christian, it did mean I was part of an incomplete Christianity.
So, after about ten years of study and reflection, I was received into the Church. I have no regrets, nor any doubts that I made the wrong decision.
– Mark L. Chance.
