Wimpy bishops allow papal supremacy?

It depends on the church and its constitution. As the name implies, independent Baptist churches are independent one of another, and thus there is a lot of variance between them. Our constitution states that one cannot be a voting memeber until he reaches the age of 18. Thus, even if a person is saved and baptized at the age of 10 or 12, we would not consider him a full-fledged member until he reaches the age of 18, when he is able to vote.

Even so that still would not take into account the hundreds of infants (if not thousands) and all the children and others that do not make a profession of faith).
DHK

 

So you can't even really call yourself a Baptist until you are 18? That's what what you said would imply, since no census would count them as one.

 

For that reason try leaving off the word "church" and using only "Baptist" in the search engine.

You mean to say that you have never heard of Bob Jones (BJU)in the press?

No, not really. I looked at a number of sites that quoted statistics from Australia, the Netherlands, Scotland, England, and a few other countries. No, I am not surprised at the moral decay at all. You're right. It doesn't surprise me. What does, is the people that try to defend it.

If the decay in America is getting bad, then the decay in other countries is worse. America is the one nation that was founded on Judeo-Christian ehics. The moral law of the Old Testament became the basis of its judicial system. Can we expect third world Catholic nations rampant with corruption to have a higher standard in their religion than their American counterparts do?

The origin and point of this argument is the continual and baseless statements made by certain Catholics on this board concerning the great influx of former Protestants coming back to the Catholic Church; the implication of which is the Protestant churches are all in trouble and declining while the Catholic Church is pulling members from all the Protestant churches and is as healthy as ever.
My message is "Put up or shut up."
I hear a lot of Catholic propaganda how so many Protestants are leaving the fold for Catholicism (all unsubsstantiated--except for one or two who have become apostate and Catholic apologists). They were probably never saved in the first place. But to infer or state that there are great numbers of Protestants leaving Protestant churches and going back to Catholicism is just a heap of lies, and I for one am tired of hearing it. I can post site after site that show just the opposite. Catholics are leaving the the Catholic church, in many places by the droves. The Catholic Church is in trouble; it is in decline. Some Catholics need to take off their blinders and their rose colored glasses and look at the real picture.

I think I could get more than 200. But even 200 sites can give a tremendous amount of information about the condition of the Catholic Church. It is not such a rosy picture as some would like to paint it.
DHK

 

Like I said, every church is independent, i.e., different. Not every church will have the same constitution as ours, and thus will count their members the same way. The one thing that they will have in common is this. You cannot be counted as a member in any Baptist Church unless you are first saved, and secondly baptized. That one condition in itself eliminates a whole lot of people from the census when compared to the Catholics.
DHK