Not at all boring and exactly what I was trying to say briefly about the Roman Catholic Church and christening vs. baptism. Thank you! NYHuguenot@aol.com wrote: All, Baptism and the Lord's Supper are sacraments in the Reformed churches. The word itself has a relation to mystery. Since the person participating in these ceremonies is joined to Christ through His Spirit, a process we do not understand yet is a reality. Another connection is to an oath. In Baptism, the child in a Reformed church is given a sign visible to all present that it is a covenant child. It is customary for the congregation to vow to do all that is necessary to support the child toward a profession of faith in Christ. The same with the Lord's Supper. In eating and drinking the elements the partaker is joined to Christ through the Spirit. Reformed do not believe in a physical presence in the elements, the argument being that as a human he can only occupy one place in time and space. As well, He sits at the right hand of the Father and in Acts the apostles are told that He will return the same way he left, in a cloud and will only be on earth at that time. I am sorry if this bored some but there seem to be a few ideas floating around the letters that are speculative and i thought I would explain. Edward Otte, There is a shrinking of Presbyterian churches but only in one denomination, the PCUSA which has lost 2 million members since 1967 when it abandoned the Westminster Confession Of Faith in favor of a collection of Confessions, many of which contradict each other. The extreme liberal and social liberalism in it has caused many to leave, most notably into the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, formed in the 1930s and the Presbyterian Church in America which left in 1973. The number of Presbyterians remains about the same. The PCA started in 1973 with 40, 000 members and no property and today numbers about 350,000 souls. Both of these denominations are traditionalist in that they hold to the doctrines of the Reformed faith and do not ordain women and are High Calvinist. The shrinkage is present in all the mainline churches but movement is to the conservative and traditional churches. There is also a large movement to the nondenominational churches that are modeled after Willowcreek in Illinois. There is an even larger movement into Charismatic and Pentecostal church as well. For an explanation of why people are joining these last three types you try a book by Nayhan O Hatch, The Democratization Of American Christianity. It shows that churches in the period immediately after the American Revolution under the influence of Kantian rejection of old tutors in favor of being one's own tutor has led to a theological smorgasbord based on one's own concepts and total rejection of the past. Bob ************************************** AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to DUTCH-COLONIES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message