Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Response to Lighthouse Baptist Church (Newark, DE) Street Evangelists, Part 11 of 24

This is the eleventh part of a 24-part series of responses to a street evangelist I met from Lighthouse Baptist Church (Newark, DE). Please click here to see the first post, which contains a set of links by topic to all the posts in the series.

11.  The Issue of Leavened vs. Unleavened Bread.  When asked about this, I said that we use unleavened bread.  We do so because that is what Jesus used at the Last Supper.  Also, the very idea of “breaking bread” supports the notion that the early Christians favored unleavened bread, since this was the type of bread that “broke.”  Thus, using leavened bread is a practice (a small-t tradition) that we follow in the Western wing of the Catholic Church.  A handful of Eastern Catholics, and many Orthodox Christians, use leavened bread.  Here is an article that goes into the subject in a bit more detail.

All that being said, I just don't see how this issue constitutes legitimate grounds for division between Christians.  Can anyone add further insight to this problem?

(Woo hoo for a short answer!)

2 comments:

Restless Pilgrim said...

"When asked about this, I said that we use leavened bread"

I think you meant to write UNleavened bread.

As far as I can tell, Christians first started using leavened bread to make the point that what they were celebrating was not simply an Old Covenant meal.

Ready said...

Thanks for the correction, David! I indeed meant unleavened bread and am correcting the original post.