An interesting aspect of Baptists is seen in the lack of sacraments. If you type in the word sacraments on the search engine of the ABCUSA website, there are no results. What they do have that are the closest thing to sacraments are the two Ordinances: Believer’s Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It is maintained that it is the faith of the individual that saves and supplies God’s grace and not the going through of the sacraments that supplies God’s grace to people.
The Lord’s Supper for Baptist and the Eucharist for Catholics are similar. They both involve are sharing of bread and wine with all the people in the congregation. However, there are some key differences. Baptists do not believe that the bread and wine are the body of Christ but rather that it is a time to remember Christ’s atonement, and a time of renewal of personal commitment. For Catholics, they believe that the bread becomes the actual body of Christ and the Wine becomes the actual blood of Christ. This is called the transubstantiation, and it is a key element of the Catholic faith.
Another difference is that, for Catholics, the sacrament of communion is examined every Sunday, and for Baptists, the Lord’s Supper it is a monthly or quarterly occurrence. Also, sometimes in Baptist traditions, the wine (or often grape juice) and the bread are taken in unison among all members of the faith. Another interesting note, is that among many protest faiths, there are lots of different names for the same, or similar things, this is no mistake. As they are protestant, they want to separate themselves from the mainstream and even other protestant faiths. So that is why they call it the Lord’s Supper because the Catholics call it the Eucharist. The names in and of themselves are symbols.
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