Sophie and I are presently with my sister near Bradford and Leeds, and we prepare to go over to my father’s house the other side of the country. My sister and brother-in-law are Baptists (my sister married a Baptist). Yesterday evening, we went to church.
Culture shock! There were about 50 people in a smallish building called the Leeds Reformed Baptist Church. The service consisted of a number of “revival” type hymns with quite nice tunes. There were two long readings from the Book of Samuel and a long sermon giving a detailed commentary. Essentially, it was about the Israelites wanting a king, but not in accordance with God’s providence. The pastor insisted heavily on the notion of preferring an authority other than that of God. Strangely, he saw the parallels in our own lives in our own time, but forgot the elephant in the room – the many times Christians look for authorities like totalitarian governments and forget about God. The reflections rolled through my mind, together with the fact that fundamentalist Protestants often lean heavily on the Old Testament. They don’t have the symbolic and allegorical vision of the Fathers, but rather see it as a text that gives exact instructions for us. Yet, we eat pork, don’t observe the Sabbath and the sacrifice of the Temple and observe circumcision, etc. In the Patristic tradition, the Old Testament is a prefiguring of the salvific mystery of Christ. This notion is absent or seriously weakened in the churches of the Reformation.
There was then a Lord’s Supper, with stacked brass plates and trays on the little communion table, with some collection bags wedged between the two. There wasn’t even a cross on the wall, just a space for projected texts for the hymns. We are told that we could all receive the “elements”. The pastor simply looked towards the brass tray containing bread buns and said the words of institution, took the first bun and broke it in two. Then some six people took the brass trays and distributed the bread. Naturally the thoughts raced through my mind. This community does not have the Apostolic priesthood, and to receive something, even something that is only bread and wine would negate everything I believe in about the Catholic Eucharist. So neither my wife nor I “received”. The pastor said the words of institution over the little individual glasses of wine in the special brass trays. Then the trays were passed around the congregation. What was left was stacked up again on the communion table.
Indeed, this was a prayerful Christian community, with which one can be aware of a certain degree of communion through love of the Scriptures and of Jesus Christ true God and true man. There, there was no doubt, but partaking of their sacrament would be to negate the Priesthood as understood by Catholics (in and out of communion with Rome) and the Orthodox. That thought was very strong in my mind. Another strong word was senseless – it would not make any sense.
I suppose the Orthodox and Roman Catholics see Anglicans or Anglo-Catholics in the same way, with or without orders from valid lines of Apostolic succession. There is always someone to the left and someone to the right!
Another absence is the notion of liturgical seasons, let alone feasts. This was the first Sunday of Lent, and they didn’t even have the Gospel of the Three Temptations. How strange! We are indeed worlds apart, yet in a certain communion of faith in and love of God.
And so, we go to my father’s home, to grief and sorrow, yet with the hope of Christ’s promises of life and the Resurrection.
The Blue Flower 
Fr. Anthony, I think your reflections here point out the great value there is in actually worshipping with a serious faith community. Regardless of any other consideration, they are fellow Christians attempting as best they can to worship in spirit and truth. We can only start to appreciate them once we start to appreciate what they have and do. If only all churches were prayerful, loved the Word of God (including the difficult sayings and those that offend modern & secular thought), worship our Lord, and remembered Christ’s eucharist?
As for–“I suppose the Orthodox and Roman Catholics see Anglicans or Anglo-Catholics in the same way, with or without orders from valid lines of Apostolic succession. “–I can’t imagine that of anyone who takes the time to worship with them or get to know them as fellow Christians. Our communion may be impaired, but there is still a real connection. (Though here I’m talking of the non-modernist, non-liberal parishes. My local ACA church may be small and have a graying congregation, but these same people are in the pews each Sunday (and many Wednesdays)attempting to be faithful to what they know and love.)
Pingback: Fr. Chadwick and his wife visit a Baptist Church | Foolishness to the world
This brings back memories, Fr. Anthony. I enjoyed very much my ten years at a Bible-believing, seeker-friendly Baptist church that welcomed me despite my having a lot of heretical baggage. I met wonderful, loving Christians there who taught me a lot about Jesus Christ and more than that revealed Him to me by their witness. And I remember the sense of peace that can only come from Christ when we had our Baptist style communion and all simultaneously ate our little morsel of white bread, or drank grape juice from a little glass. I still feel close to them as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
In the Congregational Church (USA) of my youth, we once had an elderly ‘interim’ minister, Dr. Potter, who presided over our quarterly communion service by reciting the entire Anaphora from the 1928 American BCP from memory. Everyone loved it, and of course he never said from whence he had got it! And we did have those little cubes of white bread and the little shot glasses of grape juice. It led me to realize the ‘real presence’….
You brought back memories here!
Rdr. James Morgan
Two Orthodox and one former Anglican who is now Catholic leave positive comments about the Baptists. There is more of an informal sort of Church unity out there than we care to admit. I agree with them, as I too wouldn’t have the faith that I have now if it had not been for some caring Southern Baptists who were there for me when I was a lost teenager.
Church unity is above all through the informal aspects of praying together and being aware of that complete or partial communion that binds us all together by our Baptism and our faith in Christ. I definitely saw with the Baptists an attempt at living some kind of sacramental life, even though they don’t have the Apostolic Priesthood and their liturgical dimension is so stunted and atrophied. The experience was precious to me.
I atended a Church of Scotland service last Winter in a small village community in Dumfrieshire. The Communion Service was similar to what you decribe Fr Anthony, in this instance ‘bread and small cups of grape juice’ were used. In all honesty I received the elements in the spirit of an ‘agape’ meal, being the closest I could come to fellowship with this congregation. Surprisingly I felt ‘at one’ with them in Christ’s love for all people, and I was remided of our common unity, in and through our Baptism in the Trinity.
I was a Pentecostal pastor for a quarter-century. What drew me to them from a rapidly self-destructing Episcopal Church was precisely the intensity of their ‘sacramental’ practice. They only did Communion (always with the washing of feet) quarterly, but when they did — well, it was beautiful in its own way. Eventually I had to return to Anglicanism — there is so much missing in that environment, as well as so much misunderstanding of basic things — but I am thankful for every day of those years. My catholicism is far richer for having been there.
What a nice way to put it. I wonder if I’ll say the same 20 years from now of my background in Roman Catholicism…