Can a Baptist be Catholic?: an essay on the Free Church and ecumenism

In this paper I will address the question: Can a Baptist be Catholic? This question may puzzle some Baptists. Why would a Baptist want to be Catholic? Doesn\u27t the Roman Church represent almost the complete opposite ecclesiology? No doubt, there are extreme differences in the way Free Church Baptists and Rome view the Church. However, I will argue that at one important point Roman Catholics and the Free Church share is a common ecclesiological principle, namely that the Church is a visible reality. In addition the Church\u27s catholicity (here meaning a quality of the Church) must be set squarely in terms of this reality. In order to argue for this point I will move through three stages of discussion: 1. In order to set the terms in which the Free Church thinks through her conception of catholicity, I will articulate the distinguishing feature of a Free/Believer\u27s/Baptist ecclesiology. 2. Then I will move on to make the connection between a Free Church conception of the community of faith to the various conceptions of catholicity offered by the episcopal traditions (i.e. Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran) as well as the conception put forward by other Magisterial Reformers (i.e. Calvin, Zwingli). 3. Lastly, a distinct vision of Free Church catholicity will be developed, which I will call Free Catholicity