The "Our Father" and Southern Baptists

[Le_Cracquere]

Baptists, and fundies in general think that unless prayers are made up as you go along, God dos not listen. Of course the Our Father, or Lord’s Prayer is written ahead of time, so God does not listen according to them.

That is the reason that fundies only let one person pray at a time, while the audience only sits and listens. The fact that fundie prayers all pretty much sound exactly the same and use the same words and phrases over and over, (guard, guide, and direct us, give the preacher a ready recollection as he preaches your divine WORD, we pray for the sick of our numbers, and the word “just”) over and over, never occurs to the fundie. Their prayers are no more “sincere” than written liturgical prayers.

That’s an excellent point, and one that gets lost on those for whom “ritualism” is the paramount sin. Man is a ritual-making creature; it seems tied up with our religious sense. In my experience, as perhaps in yours, when a venerable old ritual is kicked out a church’s door, a newer and generally less graceful one climbs in the window. (Like you, I’ve often had occasion to notice the "Evangelical ‘just.’ " Sometimes I’ve been impertinent and wrong-hearted enough to keep count.)

If a Christian loses sight of the truth that animates a given ritual or formulaic prayer, that’s certainly no good. But when some people see this happen, they commit the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, and conclude that it must be the ritual or formula that did it.

 

[JoeyWarren]

Our “Formulaic” and “Structured” prayers are very much needed. We are told to pray continuously. Without the F & S prayers, praying conntinuously for one hour straight would be difficult even for the more adept spontaneous prayer.

IE; Ask a Protestant to pray out loud for 1 hour straight. The protestant will falter after 15 minutes.

Ask a Catholic to do the same, the Catholic will either break out a Rosary or the The Prayers of the Hours and oblidge and succeed the majority of the time.

So I would then ask whom is better equipped to handle the spiritual warfare of prayer?

 

[Jana1976]

Hi,
it’s been a long time since I’ve been here (the server crash messed me up ).
I was wondering when my Southern Baptist friend gave me a look of sheer “say what?” when I mentioned the Our Father prayer. She didn’t know what I meant. So I started reciting it, and then she went, “oh, ok, is that a prayer?” Don’t Southern Baptists pray this also? It’s in the Bible, after all, and they usually seem to take everything right out of the Bible (or so they claim). This is a very active lady, her husband is a missionary, so she knows about her faith and praying. Any Southern Baptist-or former- who can enlighten me here? Thanks, God bless

I was raise in a Southern Baptist Church, and we used this prayer often. We just called it “The Lord’s Prayer.” We were taught that it was Jesus’ example of how to pray. Most Southern Baptists that I know, when hearing it, as soon as they hear “Our Father, Who art in Heaven…” they say “Oh… I know that one… that’s The Lord’s Prayer.” I don’t know how she could have missed out on it, other than the name “The Our Father” as oppossed to the name “The Lord’s Prayer”. Did you tell her what it contained? I learned this in Sunday School from a very early age. My grandparents were originally Primative Baptists who became Weslyeans, and I attended church w/ them until about 3rd or 4th grade, when my Daddy joined the Southern Baptist church, and I attended there into adulthood.