Robin Hardy Online

Any writer purporting to dispense Christian truths is going to be asked to provide a religious résumé. When I submitted an article to the magazine of a prominent evangelistic association, I was required to produce proof of membership in an approved denomination before the article was published. So, since you asked, here is my tortured history:

 I was raised Southern Baptist. My mother taught a women's Sunday School class in a Southern Baptist church, and I taught classes ranging from toddlers to adults in several Southern Baptist churches. From my formative years as a Baptist, I will be eternally grateful for the Baptist Hymnal. [this one] Every Sunday, without fail, we opened that book and sang some of the greatest hymns in Christendom: great in their poetry, in their depth, their faith, their music—hymns celebrating the profound mysteries of the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the life of the redeemed, the hope of heaven. I now have treasured in my memory hundreds of hymns that surface time and again to provide supernatural encouragement and blessing.

 The downside of being Baptist, as I discovered when beginning to teach adult classes, is their spin on "once saved always saved"--whatever that actually means. The assumption seemed to be that once you "walked the aisle," you went to heaven no matter what you did after that. (See "What Is Salvation?") Having taken that as unexamined truth, I was therefore vastly surprised when I opened my Bible for myself and read passages like Hebrews 6. But the Baptists are accommodating when you want to teach your Sunday School class directly from the Bible, so I was able to hammer my class members with the new and surprising concept of obedience. The old Baptist preacher W.W. Melton was a mighty defender to me during that time.

 Then, over the years (I am now an old curmudgeon of 50) the Baptists began to change their approach. It became less about the Bible and more about numbers. Less about redemption and more about personal success. Less about reverence and more about entertainment. The Baptist Hymnal was tossed out in favor of kindergarten-level choruses with which we pat ourselves on the back, telling God we love Him, we think He's the greatest, we're glad He's on our side, etc. etc. We even tell Him that we fall down and worship Him when we don't. 

 Here's what happened the last time I walked into a Baptist church: I saw women wearing very short skirts and halter tops. The guy in the pew ahead of me was slurping a soft drink. When the "worship" team got up to perform, I watched their lead female singer jiggle on stage in a tight tube top. Then the Senior Pastor (a nice-looking man in his thirties) showed a video clip of himself frolicking in swim trunks at poolside. Somehow, this was tied into the theme of "Jumping On In" or something. I don't remember cracking a Bible during that Sunday morning visit.

 This is worship? This is what we go to church for? Not me.

 Then, as I was forced into researching historical Christianity for my Annals of Lystra, I made a rude discovery: Christianity did not disappear from the face of the earth between the time of the Apostle Paul and the founding of the Southern Baptist Convention in the United States in the late 1800s. On the contrary, a breathtaking pageant of historical Christian heroism, faith, and sacrifice began to unveil itself to me.

 While playing in this newly discovered wealth, I began to experience deep resentment against my Christian education (including that at my Baptist alma mater): How DARE you hide from me Origin and Finnian and Clovis and Joan of Arc, Justin Martyr, Thomas More and G.K. Chesterton? The Christian history that teased me from the pages of the Baptist Hymnal sprang out in glorious Technicolor from . . . Catholic publications.

 Ah, the dreaded C word, the home of Antichrist (as everyone who's read Left Behind™ knows). And I made another devastating discovery: Christianity survived the attacks of Satan in history AS the Catholic Church. (An eye-opening resource: William R. Cannon's History of Christianity in the Middle Ages.) Even today, while Baptists run pell-mell after the latest church-growth fads, and other Protestant denominations debate which Scriptural principles they can safely defy, Catholics are the ones holding the line on faith and morality in daily life. And if you want the best intellectual, historical, faith-based reading around, go to Ignatius Press.

 No, I have not become Catholic. I have a lot of trouble with the "Mother of God" moniker. But I have lost all patience with people who think Catholics are not Christian—Catholics don't think everyone who is not Catholic is going to hell (despite what you may have heard otherwise). The above discoveries have made me wary of any denomination that sets itself up as the one and only way. I greatly fear getting entangled with a group that, as Jesus said, "honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men" (Matt. 15:8-10).

 So, I am still looking. Thanks for asking.

copyright 2005 Robin Hardy

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Bonus question: Which church leader recently said, "We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires"? Who also called Jesus Christ "the only Lord of all"? See the answer here.