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Is the Reformation Over?
By Dwight Longenecker
In 1873 at a meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in New York, a delegate from Canada voiced an opinion that would have been shared by all the delegates: ‘The most formidable foe of living Christianity’ he said, ‘is not Deism or Atheism or any form of infidelity, but the nominally Christian Church of Rome.’
Brought up in an American evangelical home in the 1960s, this was one of our basic assumptions. Our church zealously supported missionaries, and we were always keen to hear of their work in South America, France or Italy where the people’s hearts and minds were ‘darkened by the false gospel of the Catholic Church.’ When I went to college at the fundamentalist Bob Jones University we heard regular imprecations against the Pope—who was the ‘archpriest of Satan.’
Within the last thirty years, however, a remarkable new rapprochement has developed between Evangelicals and Catholics in the United States. A fascinating new book by Evangelical scholar Mark Noll called, Is the Reformation Over? charts the growing co-operation and convergence between mainstream Evangelicalism and the Catholic Church in the United States. It is absolutely vital to keep an eye on these developments simply because America, (love her or loathe her) pioneers new developments which echo world wide. Ecumenists wake up! The growth points in Christianity are Catholoicism and Evangelicalism. What we are seeing in the USA is actually the cutting edge of ecumenism for the twenty first century.
Sometimes this new friendliness between Catholics and Evangelicals is perceived as a nothing more than as conservative political phenomenon. Commentators say Catholics and Evangelicals jump into the same bed because they have a shared agenda on issues like abortion, marriage, homosexuality, feminism and secularisation. This is true, but to see the new friendship as merely political opportunism misses the deeper alliance of faith that exists between the two Christian factions.
The alliance is opening up because of several social and religious trends. The first is the decline of cultural Catholicism. When I was growing up in the USA, if your family was Polish or Irish or Italian or Hispanic you were Catholic. If not you were Protestant. Now these families are simply American. If they are Catholic they are committed Catholics. The cultural Catholics in America have deserted the church to join either the Evangelical church or the country club.
Mass numbers and vocations have fallen in America, but the Catholics who do go to church are far more likely to be paid up, enthusiastic church members. They are individually committed to Christ, want to bring up their families in a dynamic and orthodox faith and want their religion to make a difference. This entrepreneurial and enthusiastic form of Catholicism is far closer to traditional Evangelicalism, with its individualistic emphasis than the older forms of cultural Catholicism.
A third element is the influence of the second Vatican Council. To put it simply, the Vatican Council brought the best elements of the Evangelical tradition into the Catholic Church. The new Catechism is an example: when Evangelicals read it they are thrilled to find how deeply it is rooted in Scripture, they are also disturbed to find how little they disagree with. The new open-ness of the post Vatican II church also means that Evangelicals no longer find themselves condemned as heretical outsiders. Instead they are welcomed as brothers and sisters in Christ. This makes their traditional anti-Catholicism seem sour, backward and downright uncharitable.
As a result, Evangelicals are no longer frightened by the Catholic Church. Indeed, they are finding it very attractive. Since the 1960s Evangelicals have zoomed upward in social status, and this includes higher levels of education. As fundamentalists get some education and travel, they are naturally drawn to the historic church. When they start looking at the Protestant churches that claim to be historical they are dismayed by the radical liberalism they find there. When looking for the ‘mere Christianity’ of the historic faith they often wind up looking longingly at the Catholic Church.
This has led large numbers of them to take the step their parents and grandparents could never have contemplated: converting to the Catholic Church. This is happening at the grass roots level, but it is also happening at a higher level: influential converts like former Presbyterian pastors Scott Hahn and Marcus Grodi now exercise influential ministries in the Catholic Church. Journalists and apologists like Tim Drake, Carl Olson, Steve Rea, Dave Armstrong and David Currie are all converts from Evangelicalism.
The convergence is changing the face of modern American Catholicism. One example is from the very buckle of the Bible Belt—Greenville, South Carolina. Convert from Methodism, Fr Scott Newman is pastor of the large downtown parish of St Mary’s. In a town where Baptist pastors hold seminars on How to Reach Your Catholic Neighbour for Christ, Fr Newman is starting a Centre for Evangelical Catholicism which weaves together traditional Catholic worship and teaching with Bible studies, solid preaching, good music and all the upbeat and zealous aspects of Evangelicalism.
Meanwhile, former Lutheran pastor, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus is the Catholic half of a movement to bring Evangelicals and Catholics together to drive forward social change as well as to discuss areas of doctrine, worship and mission, while fast growing colleges like Ave Maria University and Franciscan University of Steubenville combine the best of the Evangelical renewal movement with all the strengths of a full blooded Catholic faith.
The root of this new convergence is in a shared faith. Speaking as early as 1986 Fr Graham Leonard (then still an Anglican bishop) observed and predicted the realignment that was taking place. At a lecture in Fulton Missouri he said, ‘there is a realignment 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… 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 generation, and indeed originates in them.’ The first describes the world view of historic Christianity. It is also the world view of Evangelicals and Catholics. The second is something else altogether.
Dwight Longenecker’s latest book is Mary: An Evangelical-Catholic Debate. His books are available through his website: www.dwightlongenecker.com
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