Jeff,
I grew up and was baptized in a very conservative, even fundamentalist, Southern Baptist church. At about age twenty, I began to question and examine the things I had been taught and to explore other belief systems. I was attracted to Quakerism and even considered myself a Quaker for about ten years, although I never formally joined--one reason being that there were no Quaker churches or meetings near me. Actually, I disengaged myself from organized religion for quite some time and stopped going to church. When I started back, after a certain traumatic event, I didn't really know where to go. I visited Baptist, Quaker (Memphis, TN had a meeting by then), charismatic, Presbyterian, Methodist, Nazarene, and Episcopal churches. I really liked Episcopal worship, and I attended there for several years, not always regularly; I developed a close friendship with an Episcoapl priest who wrote songs, played the guitar,a nd sang, as I did. But he eventually moved on, and so did I. I had a difficult time with the strong sacramentalism, especially in regard to baptism, that the Episcopal Church espoused. I then looked seriously at the United Methodist Church; I liked some things about it a lot, but other things not so much--the polity, for instance. And I found later, to my amazement, that they were starting to emphasize sacramentalism more and more--at the expense of evangelicalism, in my opinion.
So, I came back to the beginning--full circle, so to speak, and returned to the Baptists, although I had acquired some beliefs along the way that had been strongly influenced by my contact with other traditions, especially the Quakers and, somewhat, the Anglicans and Methodists.
I think the reason I'm not happy is that I don't really know where I fit in; I feel like my views are mostly Baptist, but then I have these other views that may not be Baptist, and I don't know what the answer is to my situation--my predicament.
I have a college education which included a minor in religion/theology and philosophy. And I've privately studied theology and church history for more than twenty-five years--it's been my passion.
Got to run for now...
