The "Our Father" and Southern Baptists

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Hi,
it’s been a long time since I’ve been here (the server crash messed me up :o ).
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 don’t know about S. Baptists in particular, but many Evangelicals call this prayer: The Lord’s Prayer, not the “Our Father.” That might have thrown her off. And they don’t pray it every Sunday and Morning and Evening as we Catholics who pray the Liturgy of the Hours (in one form or another do). So, they’re not as familiar with it as liturgical Christians, such as Catholics, Lutherans, and Episcopalians are, who recite it at their services.

Its being in the Bible doesn’t mean all that much to people who believe that only certain verses are really important while any that don’t pertain directly to salvation aren’t as important. They tend to downplay or even ignore passages that don’t serve a definite purpose within their belief system, such as assuring them of salvation or getting others “saved.”
 
rkberlin said:
Hi,
it’s been a long time since I’ve been here (the server crash messed me up :o ).
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
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I was born and raised as Southern Baptist, I haven’t attended worship at an SCB Church since I was 15 (I am 36 now) , I now attend a Congregational Methodist Church.
When I was going to the Southern Baptist we were taught the Our Father in sunday school and we recited it. However from what I can gather there are many who are not learning or reciting it nowadays. Here is a good article concerning it. I will post the article below
cmug.org/pulpit/LordsPrayer.html
WP
 
The way that I had the Lord’s Prayer explained to me when I was Baptist was that it was not meant to be actually prayed. It was only a format that people who did not know how to pray could follow.

Any type of repetitious prayer was severally frowned upon. Even the prayer that Jesus left us
 
One another note.
I see you are from Berlin.
I have four chunks of your “Antifaschistischer Schutzwall” here at my house which I purchased about 15 years back. I suppose it is missed in the Hauptstadt der DDR:)
WP
 
lol, don’t think we miss it all that much, the wall is still in many people’s hearts…I’m just grateful I grew up in West Berlin, the free island in the midst of socialism…
sandmountainsli said:
One another note.
I see you are from Berlin.
I have four chunks of your “Antifaschistischer Schutzwall” here at my house which I purchased about 15 years back. I suppose it is missed in the Hauptstadt der DDR:)
WP
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I heard David Currie speak,he is the author of Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic. His dad is a Baptist pastor. He said that as a Protestant he could never pray this prayer and his dad was given the prayer on a plaque to hang in their house and he refused to hang it and it was not to be prayed. The reason is some protestants are “Once saved always saved” as was Currie’s father’s belief. So, in the Our Father where it says “fogive us our trespasses as we forgive others”. Since they are once saved always saved they do not beleive they have to forgive others to go to heaven. This what he said at a Conference this summer, it was the Applied Biblical Studies conference at Franciscan University in Steubenville. He started out his speech with the Our Father and he said this was the prayer he had never prayed before as a Protestant, someone asked why and that was the explanation he gave.
 
rkberlin said:
Hi,
it’s been a long time since I’ve been here (the server crash messed me up :o ).
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
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The “Our Father” is referred to as “The Lord’s Prayer”. It is not a liturgical prayer, but more of a prayer of contrition and guidance for one’s spiritual life. It is said during high school graduations (it was said by the students at mine) and at events held by predominantly Christian people.

It is the perfect prayer and is the epitome of Christian prayers as it was taught by the Lord Jesus to his disciples. It is certainly an important prayer to them, but not said during church services. Usually prayer in church is more spontaneous and specific to the congregation.

And, of course, if it was said during church services, it would appear too much like Catholicism 🙂

Peace…
 
The following is from the Didache:

Chapter 8. Fasting and Prayer (the Lord’s Prayer). But let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second and fifth day of the week. Rather, fast on the fourth day and the Preparation (Friday). Do not pray like the hypocrites, but rather as the Lord commanded in His Gospel, like this:
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily (needful) bread, and forgive us our debt as we also forgive our debtors. And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one (or, evil); for Thine is the power and the glory for ever…Pray this three times each day.
The estimated range of dating for the Didache: 50-120 C.E.
That puts it pretty close to the time of the Bible being written, and the lives of the Apostles themselves.
I would trust this resource a little more than a church some 2,000 years later to be true to what was intended by Jesus when he gave us the Lords prayer.
 
Well, I don’t recall ever saying the Our Father (Lord’s Prayer) in a Baptist church - if we ever did, it was rarely , but we did when we attended the Methodist church.

I can’t imagine any church objecting to the Our Father. It’s such a beautiful prayer.
 
When I was a Protestant, the only time it was recited was in school before they took prayer out of the schools.

Very interesting question. I find it odd that protestants that are By The Bible Only fail pray a prayer that Christ himself taught.

It’s like they don’t pray it because the Catholics pray it…

And it the “Our Father”(The Lord’s Prayer) is discussed, they say it’s just a guideline for prayer in general. The problem with that is they don’t include all the elements of the prayer itself.
 
JoeyWarren said:
When I was a Protestant, the only time it was recited was in school before they took prayer out of the schools.

Very interesting question. I find it odd that protestants that are By The Bible Only fail pray a prayer that Christ himself taught.

It’s like they don’t pray it because the Catholics pray it…

And it the “Our Father”(The Lord’s Prayer) is discussed, they say it’s just a guideline for prayer in general. The problem with that is they don’t include all the elements of the prayer itself.
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Most Methodists recite it weekly as part of the worship svc. along with the Apostles Creed.
WP
 
sandmountainsli said:
I was born and raised as Southern Baptist, I haven’t attended worship at an SCB Church since I was 15 (I am 36 now) , I now attend a Congregational Methodist Church.
When I was going to the Southern Baptist we were taught the Our Father in sunday school and we recited it. However from what I can gather there are many who are not learning or reciting it nowadays. Here is a good article concerning it. I will post the article below
cmug.org/pulpit/LordsPrayer.html
WP
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Interesting article. It is good that there are Baptists who are advocating for it’s daily recitation and trying to show those who are unaware of the fact that one can recite it daily without it becoming repetitious but in fact coming to mean more and more everyday.

Thanks:thumbsup:

Your sister in Christ,
Maria
 
I was raised Southern Baptist. We were taught that repetitious prayer was vain and that Our Lord was, in the Lord’s Prayer, teaching us *how *to pray, giving us a model or framework for prayer, rather than giving us a prayer that He intended to be recited verbatim or liturgically. Each section was something that we should earnestly pray for and model our own prayers upon each section. I never heard it criticized, though, and we did on occasion recite it, such as at the Lord’s Supper and with other Christians in community worship services. As a whole, they don’t seem to understand why we don’t include “For the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory…” outside of Mass, but even Protestant scholars will say that the embolism was a gloss added to the original text in the Gospel of Mark by a devout scribe.
 
sandmountainsli said:
Most Methodists recite it weekly as part of the worship svc. along with the Apostles Creed.
WP
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👍 Yup!! Here, too!!
MariaG said:
Interesting article. It is good that there are Baptists who are advocating for it’s daily recitation and trying to show those who are unaware of the fact that one can recite it daily without it becoming repetitious but in fact coming to mean more and more everyday.

Thanks:thumbsup:

Your sister in Christ,
Maria
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That is a great article, & I agree with Maria’s post here…The Lord’s Prayer (Our Father) is never just repetition; it reveals new riches every time it is prayed!!
 
JKirkLVNV said:
I was raised Southern Baptist. We were taught that repetitious prayer was vain and that Our Lord was, in the Lord’s Prayer, teaching us *how *to pray, giving us a model or framework for prayer, rather than giving us a prayer that He intended to be recited verbatim or liturgically. Each section was something that we should earnestly pray for and model our own prayers upon each section.
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Double for me, but it wasn’t just a Southern Baptist peculiarity–quite the contrary. I spent most of my childhood in a Pentecostal church, and could count on one hand the times the Lord’s Prayer was uttered–usually in the form of the popular hymn. No one ever taught it to children: it was in the Bible, of course, but it was also formulaic, and was hence regarded as vaguely Pharasaic. I learned of the prayer’s existence from the movies before ever hearing it in church, and was obliged to learn it independently.
 
rkberlin said:
Hi,
it’s been a long time since I’ve been here (the server crash messed me up :o ).
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
Click to expand...
Baptists, and most Evangelicals and fundamentalist Protestants, call this the Lord’s Prayer. Many Baptists will include the ‘doxology’ ('for Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory’). Most will have the passage well-learned if not memorized since it is part of Scripture. (The more-fundamentalist Baptists strongly encourage any sort of Scripture memorization). They will consider it a model for prayer. However, I have heard it argued that if the Lord’s Prayer were EVER a prayer, properly speaking, it was a prayer for Jesus Himself only and never again since then. That is to say, that many Baptists traditionally reject the idea that any sort of prayer that is read, recited, memorized, or repeated is prayer. For Baptists, prayer is understood as ‘conversation with God’; and from their point of view, just as one does not converse with other human beings by reading or reciting memorized or repeated rote formulae, neither is one praying to God if one is doing such things.

I do not happen to share this view but think I am articulating why it is you will find many Baptists averse to recting the Lord’s Prayer. Hope this helps!
 
Della said:
I don’t know about S. Baptists in particular, but many Evangelicals call this prayer: The Lord’s Prayer, not the “Our Father.” That might have thrown her off. And they don’t pray it every Sunday and Morning and Evening as we Catholics who pray the Liturgy of the Hours (in one form or another do). So, they’re not as familiar with it as liturgical Christians, such as Catholics, Lutherans, and Episcopalians are, who recite it at their services.
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In Alcoholics Anonymous, it is indeed known as The Lord’s Prayer, and it opens and/or closes most meetings. The Protestant version is always used. Sometimes the person assigned to lead the closing prayer shouts out “Whose Father?” and the rest take it up from there
 
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.
 
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