Posted on 02/03/2008 8:00:08 PM PST by Pyro7480
Through an acquaintance, I learned today that Allen Hunt, an Atlanta area Methodist minister has recently been received into the Catholic Church. Hunt has been serving as pastor at an Atlanta Methodist church, and has also been steadily growing his Allen Hunt Show radio ministry, which currently is syndicated on 13 stations with eyes on growing to 75 stations by the end of the year. The show airs on mainstream stations, out of a desire to be, well, mainstream and therefore reach a larger audience.
I emailed Hunt to find out if what I had heard was indeed true, and he responded in the affirmative. So, to Allen Hunt, we say, Welcome Home! I asked him for a summary of his reasons for coming into the Church, and he gave me permission to publish the following:
[T]his transition reflects my personal journey over the past 15 years. When on vacation, I have usually worshipped at Catholic churches because I felt most at home there. Since stepping aside from my role at Mount Pisgah, I have had the freedom to consider why I felt most at home in the Catholic Church.To make a long story short, I do believe in the real presence of Christ in communion. That doctrine is very important to me as is the notion that Christ birthed one Church. I have struggled with both of these issues internally for a number of years. The fact that there are 30,000 branches of Christianity in America alone grieves my heart. I believe that continuing division and debate over essentials provides a poor witness to the lost about our Christian unity in the one Lord. My ministry in radio has only served to reinforce that conviction. Finally, I have always struggled with the idea I call doctrine by democracy. I simply have not been able to get my arms around the concept that we vote on certain things to decide what is true.
Still working his way to heaven.
“When Protestants abandoned the Reformation, i.e. Calvinist theology, they had returned to Rome in much of their belief already and had no legitimate reason to NOT be Catholic. IOW, they were illegitimate Protestants and had no right to refuse Mary veneration, belief in eating Jesus, etc.”
You know, I’ve said that very thing to Lutherans and Anglicans, though as I commented earlier, I think the Orthodox ecclesiology and its interface with praxis might make Orthodoxy a better fit for them even if there are elements of their theology, as there are of yours, which are distinctly Latin.
There is little doubt in my mind that the average disgruntled Calvinist looking to convert, however, would be far happier as a Latin than an Orthodox.
Deo gratias!
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