Do Baptists believe in the rapture?

It depends which Baptists. The Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Faith and Message 2000 affirms a personal, visible return and says nothing about a rapture, a tribulation or a millennium, so a pre-tribulation rapture is common in Southern Baptist churches but not required. The General Association of Regular Baptist Churches requires it in its articles of faith. Reformed Baptists holding the 1689 Confession generally do not teach it at all.

Do Catholics believe in the rapture?

No. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches one visible return, and says at paragraph 675 that the Church must pass through a final trial before it. Paragraph 676 rejects millenarianism. A separate pre-tribulation removal of the Church is not Catholic teaching.

Do Lutherans believe in the rapture?

Not as a separate event. Article XVII of the Augsburg Confession of 1530 condemns the view that the godly will take possession of the kingdom of the world before the resurrection, and the LCMS and WELS reject millennialism outright. Lifeway Research found in 2016 that 60 percent of Lutheran pastors say the rapture is not literal and 71 percent are amillennial.

Which churches officially require belief in a pre-tribulation rapture?

Comparatively few. The Assemblies of God, the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) and Calvary Chapel all build it into their doctrinal statements. Independent Fundamental Baptist churches usually require it in their own constitutions. Most other bodies either reject it or leave it open.

What did the Lifeway survey find?

In a telephone survey of 1,000 US Protestant senior pastors conducted 8 to 22 January 2016, Lifeway Research found 36 percent held a pre-tribulation rapture, 25 percent said the rapture is not literal, 18 percent held a post-tribulation rapture, and 4 percent each held mid-tribulation and pre-wrath positions.

Does Your Church Believe in the Rapture? A Denomination by Denomination Answer

If you grew up hearing about the rapture in church, it is easy to assume every church teaches it. If you never heard about it until a film or a novel, it is easy to assume nobody does. Both assumptions are wrong, and the truth is more interesting than either.

Here is the short answer. Almost every Christian tradition teaches that believers will be gathered to Christ when he returns. What divides them is whether that gathering is a separate event happening years before the second coming. A specific and identifiable family of churches teaches that it is. Most of the rest teach that it is the second coming. And in a surprising number of churches on both sides, the position is what is usually preached rather than what the church officially requires anyone to believe, which is a distinction almost nobody makes and which matters a great deal if you are trying to work out where you stand.

What the numbers say before the table does

Lifeway Research ran a telephone survey of 1,000 US Protestant senior pastors between 8 and 22 January 2016. It remains the clearest snapshot available of what pulpits actually teach.

Thirty-six percent held a pre-tribulation rapture, the version most familiar from popular culture. Twenty-five percent said the rapture is not literal at all. Eighteen percent held a post-tribulation rapture, and 4 percent each held a mid-tribulation and a pre-wrath position. On the millennium, 48 percent were premillennial, 31 percent amillennial and 11 percent postmillennial.

The denominational splits in the same survey are sharper than the totals. Sixty percent of Lutheran pastors, 49 percent of Presbyterian and Reformed pastors and 48 percent of Methodist pastors said the rapture is not literal. Among Baptists that figure was 6 percent, and among Pentecostals less than 1 percent. Seventy-one percent of Lutheran pastors were amillennial; 84 percent of Pentecostals and 75 percent of Baptists were premillennial.

So the popular version of the rapture is a strong minority position among American Protestant pastors, and it is concentrated almost entirely in Baptist, Pentecostal and independent evangelical churches.

Two columns, not one

Most articles on this subject give you a position per denomination and stop. That hides the thing you most need to know, which is whether the position is binding.

A confessional requirement means the teaching sits in a document that officers, ministers or member churches formally subscribe to. Disagreeing with it has consequences. Typically taught means it is what you will usually hear from the pulpit, and nothing in the church's constitution obliges anyone to hold it. The gap between those two things is where most family arguments about the end times actually live.

Tradition	Position on the rapture	Binding, or just typical?
Roman Catholic	One visible return. The Catechism says at 675 that the Church must pass through a final trial before it, and rejects millenarianism at 676. No separate rapture.	Binding teaching
Eastern Orthodox	One return. Chiliasm was condemned at the Second Ecumenical Council in 381, and the creedal clause "whose kingdom shall have no end" was added against it. No rapture.	Binding by council and creed
Lutheran (LCMS, WELS)	Amillennial. Augsburg Confession XVII condemns the view that the godly take possession of the kingdom of the world before the resurrection. The LCMS rejects every form of millennialism by name.	Confessional requirement for clergy
Lutheran (ELCA)	Same confessions, amillennial in practice, eschatological detail not policed.	Confessional in principle, not enforced
Anglican / Episcopal	One return, as in the creeds and the Book of Common Prayer. The 1553 article against millenarians was dropped when the Thirty-Nine Articles were settled in 1563, so the Articles are silent on the millennium.	No stated millennial position; no rapture doctrine
Presbyterian (PCA, OPC)	Westminster Confession: one second coming, one general resurrection, one judgment. Amillennial majority, postmillennial minority, historic premillennialism permitted, dispensational pre-tribulationism not.	Confessional. Ministers subscribe
Presbyterian (PCUSA)	Same confessional heritage. A predecessor body declared dispensationalism out of accord with the Confession in 1944.	Confessional heritage, loosely applied today
Reformed (CRC, URCNA)	Three Forms of Unity, amillennial. The Christian Reformed Church acted against Harry Bultema between 1918 and 1920, declaring the premillennialism of his book Maranatha contrary to its confessions.	Confessional, and historically enforced
Southern Baptist	Baptist Faith and Message 2000, Article X, affirms a personal and visible return and mentions no rapture, tribulation or millennium. Pre-tribulationism is common in the pews.	Typically taught, not required
Independent Fundamental Baptist	Pre-tribulation and dispensational, close to universal.	Required by each church's own constitution; there is no denomination to require it
GARBC	Pre-tribulation rapture before a seven-year tribulation, stated explicitly.	Required by the association's articles of faith
Reformed Baptist (1689)	The 1689 Confession has one resurrection and one judgment, with no millennium and no rapture. Mostly amillennial, some postmillennial.	Confessional
Assemblies of God	Fundamental Truth 13 makes the rapture the imminent, blessed hope; Truth 14 follows with a thousand-year reign. Pre-tribulation.	Required of credentialed ministers
Church of God (Cleveland, TN)	Premillennial second coming in two phases: first to raise the righteous dead and catch away the living saints, then to reign a thousand years.	Stated in the Declaration of Faith
Foursquare	Premillennial in heritage. The Declaration of Faith calls the second coming personal and imminent without fixing rapture timing or spelling out a millennium.	Typically taught, loosely defined
Calvary Chapel	Pre-tribulation rapture, treated as a movement distinctive rather than an option.	Effectively required of pastors
Vineyard	Inaugurated eschatology, the kingdom already here and not yet complete. No rapture position.	No position
Evangelical Free	Removed "premillennial" from the statement of faith in June 2019 by a 79 percent vote, replacing it with "glorious".	No longer required
Christian and Missionary Alliance	The statement of faith still calls the return imminent, personal, visible and premillennial. The 2025 General Council kept that wording while confirming other millennial views do not disqualify anyone from ministry.	Required in the statement, softened in practice
Church of the Nazarene	Article XV affirms the return and believers being caught up to meet the Lord, and deliberately declines to fix a millennial or tribulation scheme.	Deliberately open
United Methodist	Doctrinal standards affirm that Christ will come again to judge. No teaching on rapture, tribulation or millennium at all.	No position; members are free
Seventh-day Adventist	Fundamental Belief 25: the coming is literal, personal, visible and worldwide. Historicist, applying the day-year principle, with the 1,260 days read as the years 538 to 1798. A secret rapture is rejected.	Binding fundamental belief
Plymouth Brethren	Where the pre-tribulation rapture was systematised, by John Nelson Darby in the 1830s. Standard teaching.	Standard, but there is no central body to require it
Churches of Christ	Amillennial in the mainstream, after the controversy between R. H. Boll and Foy E. Wallace Jr from 1915 into the 1930s.	Strongly typical; the movement holds no creed
Mennonite	Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective (1995), Article 24: Christ comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead. No rapture scheme.	Confessional silence on the rapture

What the table shows

Three patterns are worth naming.

First, the oldest and most confessional churches are the most united. Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian and Anglican bodies all landed on a single return centuries before the pre-tribulation rapture existed as a worked-out idea, and their documents say so.

Second, the churches that require a pre-tribulation rapture are almost all young. The Assemblies of God dates from 1914, the GARBC from 1932, the Church of God's Declaration of Faith from 1910, Calvary Chapel from the 1960s. Where the teaching is binding, it was written into a document by people who had already accepted it, rather than inherited from the Reformation or earlier.

Third, and most useful to you personally: several of the largest bodies deliberately leave it open. The Southern Baptist Convention, the Church of the Nazarene and the United Methodist Church each decline to legislate the point. If you are in one of those churches and you have been told the rapture is simply what your church believes, what you have actually been told is what your pastor believes.

Which raises the question you probably came here with. If your own tradition permits several answers, the useful next step is not to find out which one you are supposed to give. It is to see all of them laid out at once, with the reasoning attached, and work out which one you actually find persuasive.