My Conversion Story

“To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” – John Henry Cardinal Newman

So many people have asked me about my conversion story so here it is. I was raised Southern Baptist. We did not attend church much as a kid, my mom would occasionally send me and my sister to the usual vacation bible school and we went to church some Wednesdays because the van came and picked us up and dropped us off. At about age 8 or 9, my father got invited to the other Baptist church which was right around the corner and was one in which most of the family attended. We went every Wednesday and every Sunday. I got what the Baptist referred to as “saved” at age 11. I remember this event well. It was 3-day revival. If you have never experienced a Southern Baptist revival in Mississippi, you need to go to one. It gets intense. Its usually 3 days of intense preaching. It is what some refer to as Hell-fire and brim stone preaching. I remember being so moved by the Holy Spirit that I felt that I could no longer sit in that pew. I had to go down that aisle to the preacher where he guided me into making my decision to invite God into my heart and follow him. I was Baptized the following Sunday. From that point on, I was engulfed in the religion. I went every time the doors were open up until I was married and in the military. In my early twenties, I had stopped going to church regularly. I was what some referred to as back sliding into a life of sin. My faith admittedly was weakened. I am not sure if this was due to the culture in which I lived or if it was due to some other reason. At age 23, I did a tour serving in Iraq under Operation New Dawn. I do know that by the time I had got back to the States, I had stopped going to church all together and would only go to any type of service if it was a funeral. I think the first time that I remember being consciously aware of my faith issues was in 2014. I was 26 years old and was dating my current wife, Brittany. She had invited me to go to a Methodist Church service one time that her late husband’s family went to. Out of the love I had for her and the respect I had for her and her late husband, I agreed. I don’t recall the service or the preaching. I do recall that toward the end of the service, they had the lord’s supper. I refused to partake because it did not feel right to me. My knowledge of the Lord’s supper at that time was that of a Baptist. It was symbolic so I should have been able to go up and receive but for some reason, I could not. It could possibly be that I knew my faith was almost nonexistent. I was still a theist and I still believed in the Christian religion, but I was almost bordering on Agnostic views. In the year 2019, me and my wife took an anniversary trip to Savannah Ga. We chose this destination for its beauty and its history. We toured the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist. It was a Catholic Church that had its first cornerstone laid in 1799-1800. It went through several upgrades, a fire, and more upgrades to the building it is today. While me and my wife was inside the Church, we were mesmerized by its beauty. I recalled feeling a warmness and an almost calling or an invite from unknown forces to explore. I of course did not mention this feeling to my wife as though she might think I had gone crazy. I knew very little about Catholicism and what I did know came from Hollywood movies and gossip from the media. Months went by and I had slowly started thinking about my faith or lack thereof. I, having the Socratic method like mind, was always asking myself questions. The first question that arose was “Out of all the denominations in my area, why was I Baptist?” Well, the answer to that was “My family in the local community was Baptist.” So that made me naturally think that if my family would have been Methodist or Pentecostal, I too would have been that. What was the difference between all these different churches? Obviously, it was a difference in interpretation of Scripture. Ask a certain question to any Pastor of several denominations and one will get different answers. That led me to research the Baptist church. My research led me to the man who started the Baptist Denomination. John Smyth was an ordained Anglican priest. “Soon after his ordination, his zeal landed him in prison for refusal to conform to the teachings and practices of the Church of England. He was an outspoken man who was quick to challenge others about their beliefs but was just as quick to change his own positions as his own personal theology changed. Smyth continually battled the Church of England until it became obvious that he could no longer stay in fellowship with this church. Thus, he finally broke totally from them and became a ‘Separatist’” (Traffanstedt). He took his new beliefs and went to Holland to start the Baptist Denomination. This research then led me to find out about the Church of England and where its roots begin. “The Church of England was among the churches that broke with Rome. The catalyst for this decision was the refusal of the Pope to annul the marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, but also a Tudor nationalist belief that authority over the English Church properly belonged to the English monarchy” (History). King Henry basically didn’t agree with the catholic church’s teachings, separating from papal authority and placing himself as the head of the church. “It resulted in a Church that consciously retained a large amount of continuity with the Church of the Patristic and Medieval periods in terms of its use of the catholic creeds, its pattern of ministry, its buildings and aspects of its liturgy, but which also embodied Protestant insights in its theology and in the overall shape of its liturgical practice.” (History). This led me to research the origins of the Protestant reformation. I stumbled upon Martin Luther who challenged the Catholic Church when he nailed his 95 theses to a door. Whether or not he actually nailed them to a church door is unimportant. Martin Luther was a Catholic priest that spoke out against the abuses of the Church. He wasn’t the first, but he was the loudest because the invention of the printing press allowed his work to spread far and fast. This research led me to the theory of sola scriptura. I ended up rejecting sola scriptura or the bible alone theory. When I rejected it, ultimately rejecting Protestantism, I had nowhere else to go except Catholic and Orthodox. That is when things got scary for me. Scary because it was new to me. It went against everything I had been taught. What did I know about Catholic or Orthodox? Nothing beyond what Hollywood movies, the news and rumors I had heard among those in the protestant section of the religion. What would my friends think? What would my wife think? What would my family think? Was I crazy? These were the questions that ran through my mind? The main difference that separates Catholic and Orthodox is Orthodox don’t accept the office of the pope. In my opinion all the churches in the Orthodox section are divided politically and culturally and cannot agree on who has the authority beyond scripture and tradition. Because of this, they cannot form councils to infallibly define something when there are disputes. That left me with Catholicism. It turns out, everything I knew or heard about Catholicism was either a myth, a lie, or a half-truth. Most coming from rumors passed on generation after generation by those originally favoring the King of England in the original colonies. I had told my wife about wanting to go to a Catholic Mass. There was a Catholic Church in the nearest big city. She was skeptical but agreed to go with me. We went once or twice and loved it. It was different but the most impressionable difference on me was how it was done. As a Baptist, it was typical to walk in and some people would notice you coming in. There would be people talking, cracking jokes and fellowshipping with one another before church started. When I walked into the Catholic Church, it was all silence. Nobody was talking or gossiping. They were either sitting their quietly or they were kneeling in prayer. I didn’t see any eyes on me at all. I am not knocking the Baptist way I was used to, however as someone that can have social anxiety, the Catholic way was more appeasing. My wife and I eventually talked about converting. She was hesitant at first due to the rumors she was familiar with from news and from some people she knew who were ex-catholic. She eventually agreed to go through the process of converting with me. Since converting, I say that me and my wife have grown closer together in our marriage but also have grown to be better parents. We are now enriched in this 2000 plus year religion that we find to be wholesome.

The End

Side note: A lot of the history in this story is edited down for time. There are of course multiple perspectives and narratives that I did not use in telling it.

Works Cited

“History of the Church of England | The Church of England.” Welcome to the Church of England’s official website | The Church of England. Web. 1 Jul 2022. <http://www.churchofengland.org/news-and-media/media-centre/history-church-england>.

Traffanstedt, Chris. “Short Biography of John Smyth, Baptists.” The Reformed Reader commited to historic baptist and reformed beliefs. Web. 1 Jul 2022. <http://www.reformedreader.org/smyth.htm>.

Marriage. A contract or covenant?

I have heard that the divorce rate is around 50%. We probably all know someone that has had at least one divorce. So much so, that it is quite common to hear that a couple ‘didn’t last’. We hear of couples 50 plus years ago, having marriages that lasted a long time. In today’s time we hear of marriages lasting only a few years. One could assume that the change is because of women’s rights or because women were deemed lower status and therefore could not just leave their husbands. However, I would argue that the change is because the value that society has placed upon marriage in the last half of the 20^th century. So, what is a marriage. Let’s go to the beginning. In genesis, there is the creation outline. God made man, and then God made woman from man and for man. Then we are told “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen.24 RSVSCE). So, we have man and woman together as one flesh. This is the marriage from the beginning. In time, humans have deviated and have started to divorce one another for whatever reasons. In the Gospels, the Pharisees questioned Jesus about marriage and divorce.

“And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, ‘Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?’He answered, ‘Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one’? So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (Matt.19:3-6 RSVSCE).

Jesus made it clear that a marriage is an inseparable union. So how did we get to where we are today? I believe it is a mix of moral corruption in society and an influx of the nonreligious steering away from religion. I personally believe that King Henry VIII flight from Catholicism and into Protestantism as the Head of the Church of England over his divorce was the start of decadence. This decadence has progressed into America. Today’s consensus is that marriage is just a piece of paper. A contract, if you will that can be dissolved as simple as going down to the courthouse and filling out paperwork. It probably does not help that most of the Christianity in America is protestant which has a loose idea of marriage. There are also more people leaning toward nonreligious more every day. The idea of the hookup culture in today’s movies, and media also plays a role in the degradation of the concept of marriage. We, as a society, especially Christians, have to get back to the true concept of marriage. Whether you’re a Catholic or one of the Protestant denominations, we must get back to the true concept of marriage. Two people, male and female, giving their free consent in love to form one union sealed by God himself that can never be broken by man.

Thoughts on a Facebook Post and R.I.P.

“Tell people the truth if you love them. Everybody does not go to heaven. Everybody is not resting in peace. A lot of folks are in hell because they did not repent and accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior when they were alive. The Bible says there is no Peace for the wicket. (Isaiah 48:22) Yes Hell is Real and people go there every day. ‘He is in a better place now.’ That statement does not apply to everybody who died.We can REST IN PEACE when we die, if we: REPENT and turn back to God.Accept Jesus Christ as our personal LORD and SAVIOR. BELIEVE on His DEATH on the cross and on HIS RESURRECTION.Be ye saved while we are still alive.Now is the time for salvation.” – Unknown

I was scrolling Facebook when this came across my timeline. It was posted with the above photo. I thought it was interesting. As I was reading it, it seems as if the author of the post is confused about the intent behind the “Rest in Peace”. We all have seen this statement chiseled on tombstones and said out loud when someone departs from this world, but where does this statement come from? What does it mean? Does it mean that we are simply saying that the deceased person is resting in peace or going to heaven; or does it mean something entirely different. Let’s explore this further.

The saying “Rest in Peace” or R.I.P comes from the Latin “Requiescat in pace”. It comes from a prayer for the dead and used in the requiem masses in the Catholic faith. The full prayer is “Eternal rest, grant unto him/her (them), O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him/her (them). May he/she (they) rest in peace. Amen.”

This does not mean that we are saying that those who die are automatically going to heaven, but rather we are saying that we hope that they are in heaven or are in purgatory on their way to heaven. Prayers offered for the dead in the religion goes back to the old testament. “Therefore he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin” (2 macc 12:45 RSVCE). The Catechism of the Catholic church tells us that “From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God. The Church also commends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead: Let us help and commemorate them. If Job’s sons were purified by their father’s sacrifice, why would we doubt that our offerings for the dead bring them some consolation? Let us not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them” (1032).

Over the years, the meaning has often been lost and reduced to a simple R.I.P probably from means of tradition or the societal norm, especially among a lot of the protestant denominations in the Christian religion that do not believe in purgatory or prayers for the dead and that also want to avoid any Catholic beliefs.