I was born Catholic, but always felt there was something "wrong" with them. For one, I didn't understand why they still went for infant baptism, when in the Bible, it is clearly written many times that Baptism was a choice made by professing believers. How can a baby profess that he believes? Among others things was the fact that Catholics pray to random saints for different types of blessings. Like saint Christopher, and even the virgin Mary. Yet in the Bible, it is never stated that those "saints" have any power over the living or that they can grant blessings. Jesus is our only way to the Father. Not Mary, not Peter, not John... Only Jesus Christ: John 14: 6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. [...]" Finally, add to all of this the way that, in the churches I went to at least, the prayers we'd recite were always the same, in the exact same order... all of which felt mechanical. Not heartfelt one bit. In my book, something was definitely wrong with how they did things, so I was never compelled to seek God through my contact with them.
Basically, I felt they didn't follow Jesus' teachings the way I understood them.
The woman I love is Baptist and I've learned through my contact with her and her family that Baptists' understanding of Jesus' teachings are exactly as I envisioned it. And they don't have any of those things I had problems with with the Catholics way of seeing things. Yet at first I still wasn't a believer. I just had knowledge of what Christian beliefs were, without believing in any of them.
Something eventually happened to me, of which I will keep to myself. But I was finally "born again".
If you ask me, I will just answer that I'm a Christian. But if you ask what church I attend to, I will tell you I'm a Baptist Christian.
Here is a nice quote from a book, giving an evocative insight about what Baptist Christians are:
Even the briefest glance at early Baptist writings confirms that they sought to draw their teachings directly from Scripture. Other movements may have provided a framework for their understanding, but Baptists never consciously sought to pattern their teaching from these sources. Instead, they consciously and conscientiously sought to draw every teaching and practice from Scripture. Perhaps [John] Shakespeare is too partisan, but he made his point when he wrote that one could wipe out all the religious groups of the seventeenth century, leave an open Bible, and “there would be Baptists tomorrow.”
– H. Leon MacBeth. Four Centuries of Baptist Witness, p. 63
