CWR: When you were a Baptist and looking at the Catholic Church from the outside, what did you think about the papacy?
Stephen K. Ray: A year before I was born my parents became Baptists; they prayed for kids and I was born a year later. My father was taught to be very anti-Catholic. He loved books and I still have many of his old books from the 1950s in my library. I recall one even from my days of tussling with my brothers on the living room carpet. It loomed large on the shelf. It was entitled The Two Babylons and Papal Worship was in the subtitle [The Papal Worship Proved to Be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife]. That particular book is still on my office shelves today.
My father’s passionate Baptist views of Bible and Christianity had a huge impact on my early years, as I loved my father dearly. If he said the Pope was the anti-christ and that Catholics worshipped the Pope instead of Christ, who was I to argue with him? After all, I didn’t know any better and I didn’t know any Catholics.
As I grew older and experienced more of the wide world and other Christian groups, I continued to view Catholicism as a “man-made institution” invented by clever men who twisted Scripture to manipulate gullible people who had never read the Bible for themselves.
I wondered: Why would freedom-loving people in America want to let some old man in Rome tell them what to believe and what to do? Hadn’t we overthrown kings and emperors? Why subject ourselves again to a foreign leader named “the Pope”, who intended to encroach in every area of our lives? We had the Bible and the “Bible alone” and that was enough for us.
CWR: What were some key arguments or facts that changed your views? And how do they inform this particular book?
Ray: Having no interest in the Catholic Church, other than to convert naive Catholics to real, biblical Christianity, several things converged on us at the same time.
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It’s always sad to say goodbye to people after being with them 9 or 10 days. This pilgrimage through Mexico went flawlessly. We emphasized Guadalupe and the Catholic heritage of this land but also the cultural, historical, and fun aspects. We enjoyed the close contact and fellowship with the Mexican people .
