Saved by Grace or by Works

Cleo Malone Hurst being Baptized

on what I'm hoping was a warm day in 1942

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father,

and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

                                                                                  - Matthew 28:19

     I have ecuminical family roots. My mother's parents were Baptist (Grandma) and Undeclared Independent (Gran).  My father's parents were Roman Catholic (they were also "Northern" but that's too much of a digression to deal with right now). My mother was raised in the Baptist church then baptized as a Presbyterian in her early twenties before finally becoming Catholic on Easter Sunday 1988. My mother's sisters grew up and became Lutherans and Methodists and my cousin, David, is a Methodist minister. We are a multi-denominational family and as a result I feel at home at just about any kind of religious service from Mass to a Tent Revival.  Although Grandma and I had many discussions about faith we never really talked about "religion" - Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Undeclared Believer - just different avenues to the same end. My oldest child, Owen, summed up my family's approach to religion pretty well when he attended Vacation Bible School at a local Methodist Church last summer.  After his first day at VBS he was so excited to tell me that "the Methodists use the same Bible that we [Catholics] do!"