A Baptist Christian a contradiction of terms

I was a Cathollic for 20 years, but never a Christian.
I was a Christian for two years, and not a member of any church.
Two years after I was saved I was baptized and became a member of a Baptist Church.
Now I am a Baptist and a Christian, and not ashamed of either. Christian identifies me with Christ, that I am a follower of Him. Baptist identifies me with a specific body of doctrine which I believe in opposition to the other denominations that surround me. It tells others what kind of Christian I am, though the way that I live ought to tell them that even more than a name.

 

I am a Primitive Baptist.

He was John's older brother.:laugh:

 

Seriously now, I would think all of us here would identify ourselves as Christians. I try to follow Christ to the best of my ability. I identify myself as a Baptist (as a more defined subgroup of the 2 or 3 billion people in the world who also identify themselves as Christians) because I agree with the basic accepted principles which define a Baptist as a Christian on issues such as church government, baptism, Communion, etc. I identify myself as a Primitive Baptist (as a more defined subgroup of the roughly 200 or 300 million people in the world who also identify themselves as Baptists) because I agree with the basic accepted principles which define a Primitive Baptist as a Baptist and a Christian on issues such as election, predestination, simple worship style/practice, etc.

We are not called Baptists after John the Baptist. For anyone to claim that he is the reason we are called such is a fallacy.

We are called Baptists because, as has been said before, and evidently ignored, because we are a group of Christians whose ancestors in the faith included a group known as the Ana-Baptists (or, re-baptizers). Would it make you feel better if we all started referring to ourselves as Baptizers? The practice of immersing a new believer in baptism does, or used to anyway, make us rather distinct from a majority of Christians.

Tell me, if we are all using the name "such-and-such Christian Church" just how am I, or you, or anyone else going to find one where we believe the whole truth is being preached? That is the reason for the different names. Without even knowing what church you belong to, I think I can safely say that I would not agree with what your church preaches on many doctrinal issues. Having the different names makes us recognizable to folks who believe in the same basic doctrines that we hold to.

I suppose if there were only a handful of churches throughout the world, such as you have been pointing out, it would be more than fine if we all identified ourselves as Christians and nothing else. But, how many millions of churches are there in the world now? Could you honestly say something about, for example, "The church at Houston" and expect anyone to know which of the few thousand churches here you are referring to?

Just as in a family, we all carry the last nae of our father, yet we are made distinct from our brothers and sisters with first and middle (and sometimes more) names. As children of God, we are all Christians, but to distinguish the beliefs held by this Christian from a fellow Christian, I use the distinctive name of Primitive Baptist.

It is not about following some man rather than Christ. It is about identifying our historic and more definitively held beliefs from our brethren.

I can tell someone I'm a Primitive Baptist on this board, and almost all will have a basic understanding of my beliefs on doctrine, including the given that I am a follower of Christ. You tell someone here that you will only identify yourself as a Christian, and no one will know anything about your beliefs, other than you say you follow Christ. You should realize this as you have already been questioned about whether you are even in a church at all. Is that really what you want people to think about you?

I suppose I could go around everywhere and introduce myself only as Reed, or Mr. Reed, but that won't distinguish me from any other Reed on the planet. With only that, people would introduce their own way to distinguish me from other Reeds. "Well, if it isn't the tall, fat, red-headed Reed." Personally, I like James Reed better.