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[First published in the Baptist Times, 10 April 2008]
Just don't mention the Virgin Mary .....
At the early morning prayer group, Rod said he wouldn't be here on Wednesday because he'd been asked to give his testimony.
Nobody questioned him, so I didn't like to. Was he testifying in court as a witness or as the defendant? He didn't appear to have criminal tendencies.
As a Catholic coming to a Baptist church, I was prepared to make adjustments, but the language barrier was unexpected.
I'd already had a shock at the Sunday service when one of the leaders (and there seemed to be so many!) said from the platform, ‘Now let's worship,' and everyone rudely ignored the invitation; instead they sprang to their feet and sang ‘Shine Jesus Shine!'
I'd thought we would fall to our knees, or at least fall silent. ‘Worship' in Catholic language is adoration, as in periods of wordless contemplation.
Contemplative prayer didn't seem to be Baptist tradition. There were reflection services, but rather short and restless. Silence was perceived as nothing happening.
I wasn't sure how representative this church was of Baptist churches generally: about half the congregation had come from other denominations; others labelled themselves as evangelical. I'd worked out that ‘evangelical' wasn't a denomination but for a while thought it was a synonym for ‘charismatic', which caused a Methodist/Baptist friend to convulse with laughter. ‘Don't tell the minister that: in his last church the evangelicals and charismatics were at war with each other!'
As well as words having different meanings, there were phrases I couldn't fathom. ‘When did you become a Christian?' was a common question (though when the questioner heard I was Catholic, it sometimes changed to, ‘When are you going to become a Christian?'!)
Most Catholics don't talk easily about their faith. Catholic culture is introvert and the relationship with God is intimate and private. Being asked for details of it, by someone you've only just met, is like being asked about the intimate side of your marriage. I was horrified when someone said, ‘We'll get you to give your testimony at the women's service,' as though it was the cabaret at a party.
Also, ‘becoming a Christian' is seen as a process, not a moment, and that process is lifelong - eternal-life-long. Catholics don't put much faith in death; they continue to pray for people who have died. I don't pray for my friends who have died to rest in peace - they're not that type - but I pray for them to go from strength to strength and from happiness to happiness in their eternal journey with Jesus Christ.
So I would say I became a Christian by being born into the human race Jesus died for, am becoming one throughout my life, and will still be learning to be one when I die.
This answer was interpreted by some church members as a sign that I had no experience of Jesus as ‘my personal saviour' at all and had not yet begun. Several people suggested that I might like to be baptized. I was in a Baptist church, after all.
I explained I'd been baptized as a child and freely reaffirmed it as an adult. And I'd undergone total immersion in water at Lourdes, the French shrine, as a symbol of dying to sin and rising in Christ. I didn't feel the need to be baptized one more time.
Younger church members couldn't see why changing churches was such a big deal. Nor could God, I believe. Every time I prayed anxiously, the answer was, ‘Don't make it complicated. Go where you find me easily.'
Sometimes I found him more easily at Mass, sometimes at Baptist services.
Older Christians understood the disorienting effect of changing church ‘families' and were supportive through feelings of disloyalty, but many assumed my culture shock was in coming from a ‘dead' church with formal worship into a ‘live' contemporary church, and this was very far from the reality.
I'd been part of Catholic charismatic renewal for 17 years by 2001 when I first came to Emmanuel church, and the songs and style of praying were very similar to the Catholic meetings.
But the focal point of every Mass is communion: all the singing, praying, Bible readings and teaching are preparation for receiving Jesus physically and spiritually. So a Sunday service without communion left me feeling it hadn't begun yet. And the sermons were so long!
I loved the avoidance of formality, the lack of distance between minister and people, and among people.
I loved the huge hubbub of noise at the beginning and end of every service, as people ‘fellowshipped' (and what on earth did that word mean?!) with each other. They didn't rush off after the service but worked hard at getting to know, love and encourage one another and welcome newcomers.
I loved the flexible form of service, with people going up to talk about a project, draw attention to some cause or share some experience.
Most of all, I loved the people.
Sometimes, though, I felt, ‘Are we ever going to pray?' The Sunday after 9/11 was the first time I saw the congregation sit down and pray in silence.
I respected the desire to break with traditional liturgy, though I sometimes missed the poverty of age-worn words repeated with fresh commitment, and missed the near-anonymous role of the laity - individual personalities submerged into one body, one voice.
I applauded the successful attempts to escape from ‘churchianity', though we slid into other cultures at times: school assembly, stand-up comedy, American televangelism.
Some of the culture shock I experienced came simply from changing size of church. The Catholic churches in London held five or six Sunday services, each attended by hundreds of church members from congregations of two to six thousand.
Many evangelicals I spoke to assumed that, because Sunday Mass attendance is required, Catholics only went because they had to, or from fear of hell, and had no ‘personal relationship with Jesus as their saviour'.
But this disregarded the numbers of people willingly attending Mass not just on Sundays but weekdays, and people going to prayer groups, reflection services, penitential services and devotions such as the rosary or Stations of the Cross (forms of meditation on the life of Jesus), Benediction or adoration. And there were always people who had popped into church after shopping or on their way home from work, to pray privately.
So why did I leave the Catholic Church, when I loved and do love so much of it?
I'm not a ‘disaffected Catholic': I have no problem with the theology, though I lost patience with some of the emphasis - too many homilies on church history or the lives of not-very-interesting minor saints - at the expense of nitty-gritty help to make it through next week without losing touch with Jesus Christ.
Years earlier I had felt, after praying, that every church has its weaknesses and denomination wasn't important enough to change; I'd accept the starting point God had given me and let him use it for good. But over the last decade, I'd been finding church services harder and harder to get through. Something within me was shouting, ‘Move!' - whether at the church or at myself, I wasn't sure.
I'd belonged to a thriving prayer group which drew in people from local housing estates, from the streets, rehab clinics, disabled people's homes, travellers' sites .... it was fantastic - till a new priest took over the parish and, in his words, ‘put a stop to all that.'
I went to the first Baptist service with a neighbour, and for five years continued going to both Baptist and Catholic churches, before finally choosing to become a member of our local Baptist church in London. The first communion service I attended, after making that choice, felt very heavy. ‘Lord,' I prayed, ‘I can't take on another family history!'
He showed me it wasn't ‘another family' and most of the history was shared. Catholics and Baptists were branches of one tree, growing from the same trunk. I'd grown up with the trunk. Now all I had to take on was the bit where it branched.
I knew none of the Baptist saints - Spurgeon, Wycliffe, Smith Wigglesworth ... And people didn't want to know mine - Julian of Norwich, Therese of Lisieux, Padre Pio, Mother Teresa. And why the electrified silence when I mentioned the Virgin Mary?
Some people even saw praying to her as idolatry, a major reason why Catholics were Christian, okay, but less Christian than the real ones!
To Catholics, Mary is no goddess but someone God made great and ‘full of grace' because she gave God a free hand in her life. She's a role model and intercessor, not a substitute for Jesus. I'd ask her to pray for me, as I'd ask the person sitting next to me in church, especially if their faith was stronger than mine at the time.
Church history is riddled with abuses, past and present, trunk and branches. I'm more familiar with the Catholic ones - abuses of power and wealth, and arrogance: professing to be ‘the one true church' while claiming the trunk and disowning the branches.
I'm gradually becoming familiar with abuses in other churches: claims to be ‘the only Bible-believing church' or the only one preaching the gospel or the most ‘dynamic' or ‘radical' in the area.
We're not as divided as we think we are, either in sin or in anointing by God.
Most of our differences are cultural - perceptual, not theological. The only religious gulf I had to cross was receiving communion in a church that believes the eucharist is not ‘live' but a symbolic ritual of memorial. To me, memorials are for dead people. Jesus is live.
I heard a senior member of Emmanuel teach: ‘Of course we don't believe the bread and wine actually are Jesus' body and blood; that would be ridiculous! The Catholics believe that!'
Of course it's ridiculous to believe that Jesus actually becomes bread and wine, food that becomes our flesh and feeds our spirit - as ridiculous as believing that God could be so earthy as to take the form of a human cell in some ordinary woman's womb and be born in a no-hope town.
And yet - Baptist and Catholic, evangelical, charismatic, Christians of every name, form and shade of meaning - we worship a God who in humility makes himself ridiculous, to save us from our ridiculous separateness.
The least we can do is join him.
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Clare Nonhebel is author of six novels and five non-fiction books. The latest, ‘Finding Oasis', is available as an e-book from her website clarenonhebel.com. She is currently working on a novel about New Age and Christianity.
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