This article was first
published in The Catholic Herald
Evangelical Catholics
By
Dwight Longenecker
Rome Sweet Home is the funny title of
an amazing autobiography. Setting aside the awful
pun, Rome Sweet Home is the story of how
a rabid anti-Catholic American Presbyterian pastor
and his wife eventually found their spiritual home
in the Catholic church. Scott Hahn was educated
at the conservative, evangelical Gordon-Conwell
Theological Seminary in Massachussets. While there
he and his friends signed up to a full-blooded
anti-Catholic form of Protestantism.
But
in his attempt to disprove the Catholic faith Scott
studied a bit too much. When he read Catholic Apologetic
works he found he couldn't really answer them.
When he read the Apostolic Fathers the problem
got worse. He was astounded to find that from the
earliest times the Church was clearly Catholic.
Like Newman he found there was no trace in the
early church of what he would recognise as the
distinguishing marks of Evangelical Protestantism.
So
at great personal cost, Scott 'came home to Rome'.
Before long a lot of his former classmates were
coming too. Gerry Matatics, Marcus Grodi, and many
others came from their positions as evangelical
pastors, Bible teachers, professors and seminarians.
They came into the Catholic church with great experience
and gifts, and in the United States they are having
a surprising impact. They have brought a new dimension
into the Catholic Church: Catholic orthodoxy combined
with evangelical zeal. American evangelicals have
a lot of 'get up and go' and in true American evangelical
style these converts got up and went to the Catholic
church.
Once
there they have not hesitated to accomplish great
things. Scott Hahn now has an international Bible
teaching ministry. Through his tapes, books and
lectures he reaches thousands--helping Catholics
understand the Bible better and helping Evangelicals
understand Catholics better. Another convert, Jeff
Cavins, works with Hahn to promote an internet
Bible study service for individuals and parishes. Patrick
Madrid publishes a modern, relevant magazine of
Catholic Apologetics and Evangelism called Envoy.
Tim Rylands edits This Rock magazine--a
glossy, expertly-designed journal of Catholic apologetics.
In a country where Protestant groups are virulently
anti-Catholic these publications help defend and
explain the Catholic position.
To
provide support for the new wave of converts, Marcus
Grodi has established the Coming Home Network--
an organisation, which like the St Barnabas Society
in this country, offers pastoral and financial
help to others on the Path to Rome. The Coming
Home Network helps converts who have sacrificed
their livelihood to find jobs. It organises retreats,
publishes a quarterly journal of apologetics and
puts enquirers in contact with other converts who
have already made the difficult journey from evangelicalism
to the fullness of the Catholic faith.
This
wave of evangelical converts in the USA have been
welcomed into the church with some bewilderment.
Liberal Catholics are inclined to distrust them
because they consider the converts fundamentalist.
At the same time traditionalist Catholics are suspicious
of the former evangelicals' innate Protestantism.
They fit most happily with the charismatic Catholics,
but they too are wary because the evangelical converts
aren't especially keen on the Protestant-type worship
which charismatic Catholics like. Marcus Grodi
explains why: 'When I was a Protestant minister
I spent all my time coming up with new forms of
worship which would satisfy my "customers." I
don't want that anymore. Now that I'm a Catholic
I don't want a Catholic form of Protestantism,
I want the tried and true rites and forms of Catholic
worship.'
This
makes the new convert sound like a Catholic fogey
or even a Tridentine Mass groupie. But they don't
fit into that pigeon-hole either. Its true, that
the convert from Evangelicalism doesn't want the
groovy worship of Father Folkmass and Sister Sandals,
but neither does he want smells, bells and Gregorian
chant all the time. He never knew the pre-Vatican
II church so he doesn't hearken after some Catholic
golden age of the 1950s. Neither has he ever been
a poncey Anglo-Catholic who pines for the smoke
and lace he has given up in becoming a Catholic.
The convert from evangelicalism simply wants the
timeless Mass expressed in a reverent, yet modern
idiom. He also wants the orthodox, apostolic faith
taught in a modern, relevant and dynamic style.
In other words, he just wants to be Catholic.
The
evangelical Catholic converts in the United States
are undoubtedly having a large impact; but is it
just a blip or could it be the wave of the future?
Signs in this country indicate that the same may
be about to happen here. At the St Barnabas Society
we are noticing an increase in convert clergy from
Protestant and Evangelical backgrounds. People
are crossing the Tiber from the Salvation Army,
Anglican Evangelicalism, Church of Scotland and
Methodism.
Signs
of a new evangelical Catholicism in France also
exist in the new religious communities. The Community
of the Beatitudes is a religious order founded
by a former Protestant pastor. It combines traditional
Catholic teaching and worship with evangelical
preaching, teaching and social outreach. The Taizé community
has for years now been building a new form of Christian
community which embraces the strengths of both
Evangelicalism and Catholicism. Youth 2000, Iona
Community and the World Youth Day exhibit similar
cross overs in style and content.
The
reasons for the emergence of this new harmony within
Christianity are manifold. On the one hand, wider
experiences in education, travel and ecumenism
have broken down many of the cultural, ethnic and
geographical boundaries between the denominations.
A few generations ago the Polish, Italian and Irish
immigrants in England and the USA kept their ethnic
and Catholic identities distinct. But now they
are increasingly subsumed into their adopted countries
and their religion is no longer completely bound
with their ethnic identity. In the same way the
traditional Protestantism of the English, Germans
and Scots is not so bound up with their national
identities.
Theological
and liturgical post-modernism has allowed people
to pick and choose what they believe and how they
worship. While subjective relativism is the negative
side, the positive aspect of this phenomenon is
that people on both sides of the Evangelical-Catholic
divide are now less frightened of other forms of
worship and are happy to experiment and be open
to beliefs and worship practices which would have
horrified their parents and grandparents. So in
this country Catholics are keen proponents of the
evangelical Alpha course while the trendy
evangelical Christianity magazine has articles
on Benedictine retreats, Ignatian spirituality
and Catholic apologetics. Catholics have embraced
Protestant hymns and evangelical jargon while the
evangelical Premier radio station has commissioned
a series of programmes which explain the Catholic
faith according to the Bible.
Meanwhile
in the United States, Baptists, Presbyterians and
Methodists are discovering Advent and Lent, liturgy,
candles and stations of the cross. As they are
led into Catholicism by the outward forms they
are discovering the intrinsic unity of the Catholic
faith, or as a Baptist pastor put it when he disocvered
that the Ash Wednesday ashes were made from burning
the Palm Sunday crosses--'Whoa! this Catholic stuff
all seems to be connected!'
There
are certainly superficial reasons for the new links
between Evangelicalism and Catholicism, but former
Anglican bishop of London Fr.Graham Leonard--who
was himself brought up in an Evangelical home--analysed
a deeper foundation for the new alliance in Christendom. The
real divide within the church is no longer between
Protestant and Catholic, but '...between those
on the one hand who believe that the Christian
Gospel is revealed by God; is to be heard and received,
and that its purpose is to enable men and women
to obey God in love and through them for creation
itself to be redeemed. On the other hand are those
who believe that it can and should be modified
and adapted to the cultural and intellectual attitudes
and demands of successive generations and indeed
originates in them.' In other words, Evangelicals
and Catholics will increasingly converge because
they are the only ones who believe in a revealed
religion rather than a relative religion. Ian Ker
points out how the most famous former Evangelical--Cardinal
Newman, also recognised the 'reality' of both the
Evangelical and Catholic positions. In contrast
he thought that Liberalism had abandoned the historic
faith, and Anglo-Catholicism was 'unreal'.
The
Holy Father has hinted at a new age of Christendom
which is about to dawn, and other Christian leaders
have suggested that the age of reform is coming
to a close. The Evangelical Catholics are a sign
of a new kind of church which may emerge from the
painful age of reform we have gone through in the
last five hundred years. A new kind of unified
Christendom may be sprouting in parallel to the
plodding efforts of professional ecumenists. This
unified church will be deeply rooted in the past
while grappling with the complex problems of the
future. It will be Evangelical and fully Catholic
at the same time. And if Evangelical can be a synonym
for 'Apostolic' then it will be a church which
is truly One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic.
Dwight Longenecker is a District Organiser for the St Barnabas
Society. His book of conversion stories called
'Path to Rome' is published on 18 November by
Gracewing.
