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Magazine: Growing Trend--Evangelicals ‘Crossing the Tiber’ to Catholicism
TheSacredPage.com ^
| August 6, 2010
| Michael Barber
Posted on 08/07/2010 3:38:50 PM PDT by Salvation
The magazine Religion Dispatches has a new piece up by Jonathan Fitzgerald, entitled, "Evangelicals Crossing the Tiber to Catholicism: Under the radar of most observers a trend is emerging of evangelicals converting to Catholicism."
As he points out, there are an increasing number Evangelicals coming into the Catholic Church. In fact, while my wife and I were at Fuller we witnessed this phenomenon firsthand. Indeed, students would come up and ask us if they could follow us to daily Mass (which was celebrated at a Catholic Church down the street). I went to Mass with many fellow students who had never experienced a Eucharistic liturgy. . . and, for many of them, once they started attending they couldn't stop.
Here's the story as Fitzgerald
reports it:
In the fall of 1999, I was a freshman at Gordon College, an evangelical liberal arts school in Massachusetts. There, fifteen years earlier, a professor named Thomas Howard resigned from the English department when he felt his beliefs were no longer in line with the colleges statement of faith. Despite all those intervening years, during my time at Gordon the specter of Thomas Howard loomed large on campus. The story of his resignation captured my imagination; it came about, ultimately, because he converted to Roman Catholicism. Though his reasons for converting were unclear and perhaps unimaginable to me at the time (they are actually well-documented in his book Evangelical is Not Enough which, back then, I had not yet read), his reasons seemed less important than the knowledge that it could happen. I had never heard of such a thing. . .
. . . [M]y parents never spoke ill of the Catholic Church; though the pastors and congregants of our non-denominational, charismatic church-that-met-in-a-warehouse, often did. Despite my firsthand experience with the Church, between the legend of my parents conversion (anything that happens in a childs life before he is born is the stuff of legends) and the portrait of the Catholic Church as an oppressive institution that took all the fun out of being saved, I understood Catholicism as a religion that a person leaves when she becomes serious about her faith.
And yet, Thomas Howard is only the tip of the iceberg of a hastening trend of evangelicals converting to Catholicism. North Park University professor of religious studies Scot McKnight documented some of the reasons behind this trend in his important 2002 essay entitled From Wheaton to Rome: Why Evangelicals become Roman Catholic. The essay was originally published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, and was later included in a collection of conversion stories he co-edited with Hauna Ondrey entitled Finding Faith, Losing Faith: Stories of Conversion and Apostasy.
Thomas Howard comes in at number five on McKnights list of significant conversions, behind former Presbyterian pastor and author of Rome Sweet Home, Scott Hahn, and Marcus Grodi founder of The Coming Home Network International, an organization that provides fellowship, encouragement and support for Protestant pastors and laymen who are somewhere along the journey or have already been received into the Catholic Church, according to their Web site. Other featured converts include singer-songwriter John Michael Talbot and Patrick Madrid, editor of the Surprised by Truth books, which showcase conversion stories.
Would Saint Augustine Go to a Southern Baptist Church in Houston?
McKnight first identified these converts eight years ago, and the trend has continued to grow in the intervening years. It shows up in a variety of places, in the musings of the late Michael Spencer (the Internet Monk) about his wifes conversion and his decision not to follow, as well as at the Evangelical Theological Society where the former President and Baylor University professor Francis J. Beckwith made a well-documented return to Rome. Additionally, the conversion trend is once again picking up steam as the Millennial generation, the first to be born and raised in the contemporary brand of evangelicalism, comes of age. Though perhaps an unlikely setting, The Kings College, an evangelical Christian college in New York City, provides an excellent case study for the way this phenomenon is manifesting itself among young evangelicals.
The Kings College campus is comprised of two floors in the Empire State Building and some office space in a neighboring building on Fifth Avenue. The approximately 300 students who attend Kings are thoughtful, considerate and serious. They are also intellectually curious. This combination of traits, it turns out, makes the college a ripe breeding ground for interest in Roman Catholicism. Among the traits of the Catholic Church that attract TKC studentsand indeed many young evangelicals at largeare its history, emphasis on liturgy, and tradition of intellectualism.
Lucas Croslow was one such student to whom these and other attributes of Catholicism appealed. This past spring, graduating from The Kings College was not the only major change in Croslows life, he was also confirmed into the Catholic Church.
Croslows interest in Catholicism began over six years ago when he was a sophomore in high school. At the time, Croslows Midwestern evangelical church experienced a crisis that is all too common among evangelical churches: what he describes as a crisis of spiritual authority. As a result of experiencing disappointment in his pastor, Croslow began to question everything he had learned from him. This questioning led him to study the historical origins of scripture and then of the Christian church itself. Eventually he concluded that Catholicism in its current form is the closest iteration of the early church fathers intentions. He asks, If Saint Augustine showed up today, could we seriously think that hed attend a Southern Baptist church in Houston? The answer, to Croslow, is a resounding No.
. . .
You can read the rest
here.
TOPICS: Apologetics; Catholic; History; Theology
KEYWORDS: catholic; catholiclist; converts; evangelical; freformed
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To: NYer
At the time immediately following the Resurrection of Christ, the majority of individuals coming into the church were adults who could repent.Sorry NYer...No one comes into the church, the Body of Jesus Christ without first repenting...No one...To suggest that someone can be in Christ and be filled with the Holy Spirit without accepting Jesus first as his/her Savior is beyond ludicrous...That's the gospel of Hell...
However, these same individuals brought their children who were also baptized without a formal declaration of repentance.
No they didn't...YOu have no evidence of that...Not only pure conjecture but goes against the rest of the scriptures...
481
posted on
08/08/2010 4:47:02 PM PDT
by
Iscool
(I don't understand all that I know...)
To: ansel12; CdMGuy
Yes, there are plenty of conservative Catholics, the problem being that 1. The most heavily Catholic regions of the US tend to lean to the left. Rhode Island is the only majority Catholic state in the nation, but is also the most Democratic in registration. Moreover, it isn’t as though Catholic voters are a powerful conservative voting block within these regions either. 2. Many Catholics like to separate their religion from their politics, believing religion to be a “private” matter. This is particularly true here in the New York area. and 3. The Bishops no longer have the political clout/authority that they had in the peak period of the Church’s political influence (1920s-early 1960s).
482
posted on
08/08/2010 4:55:27 PM PDT
by
Clemenza
(Remember our Korean War Veterans)
To: Larry Lucido
Not so sure of that... but there is a 50/50 chance ..do you want on ???
To: Larry Lucido
Well if membership keeps dropping Rome could always move to mud wrestling and auto shows to bring in the customers.. errrr I mean attenders.. like so many of the seeker friendly folks have..
So sad..Jesus had 12.. today many would close a church that had 12 people
To: ansel12
Letting Obama win is just part of the grand plan... bring the second coming of Jimmy Carter... and behold we have the opportunity for the second coming of Ronald Reagan.
To: Cronos
When you want to experience the fullness of Christ and to experience a personal relationship with Christ, come to mass and experience Christ during the Eucharist.A relationship with a stale cracker that in and out of your system in twenty minutes???
If you guys had any clue about the spiritual circumcision
Col 2:11 In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:
YOu all would know that what goes into the body has no connection to the soul and spirit of man...
Heb 4:12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
And you guys think that God put these verses in the scriptures just because He was bored???
With the spiritual circumcision, your body is severed from your soul and spirit...
486
posted on
08/08/2010 5:05:50 PM PDT
by
Iscool
(I don't understand all that I know...)
To: Cronos; Salvation; the_conscience; smvoice; Quix; Gamecock; jboot; Alex Murphy; Dr. Eckleburg
But remember, you can still come to Christ and worship Christ in fullness in His Church, the One Catholic and Apostolic CHurch. hallelujah! I will pass on that ...too much paganism,superstition and mysticism has entered via Rome.
I recently heard a saying that has application here.. "God made man in His own image and man has been trying to return the favor ever since".
The minute we add or take away anything from the God of the Bible then we have crossed into idolatry of a god made to our specs ...
To: NYer
With baptism, the correct intention is to do what the Church does,HaHaHa...Sure...Forget about Jesus...
488
posted on
08/08/2010 5:07:53 PM PDT
by
Iscool
(I don't understand all that I know...)
To: Cronos; Salvation; ought-six
This man was jailed was many years ago, and I’m not sure what denomination he was affiliated with at the time, and hence cannot answer the the question. I do know that he considered it the highlight of his spiritual life as he was forced to depend completely on God and was able to grow very much spiritually from the time he was able to spend in Bible reading and prayer.
The entire purpose of my response was to correct Salvation’s implication that only Catholics were the only ones praying outside abortion clinics. It’s not true.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2566545/posts?page=154#154
“Then why is it that only Catholics are out praying in front of abortion clinics?”
While my perspective is no doubt biased based on who I know, the only people I know who’ve protested and prayed outside abortion clinics are Evangelicals. While I haven’t personally met a Catholic who has done that, I have no doubt that many people out in front of abortion clinics trying to save babies are Catholic.
489
posted on
08/08/2010 5:11:24 PM PDT
by
metmom
(Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
To: RnMomof7
I will pass on that ...too much paganism,superstition and mysticism has entered via Rome.
I recently heard a saying that has application here.. “God made man in His own image and man has been trying to return the favor ever since”.
The minute we add or take away anything from the God of the Bible then we have crossed into idolatry of a god made to our specs ...
INDEED.
490
posted on
08/08/2010 5:11:42 PM PDT
by
Quix
(THE PLAN of the Bosses: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2519352/posts?page=2#2)
To: Salvation
Yes, I did know that and it was an oversight. I apologize as I do try to ping people when referring to them in posts.
You’ll note that you were just included in a courtesy ping that I just posted.
491
posted on
08/08/2010 5:14:08 PM PDT
by
metmom
(Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
To: Cronos; smvoice
Christ died once and for all in space-time for our sins. Its a common mistake to equate sacrifice with death. Hello, the whole point of sacrifice is death. It's a very common conclusion to come to to equate sacrifice with death. The whole OT is filled with sacrifices for sin that required death. Jesus sacrifice on the cross resulted in His death.
If you're going to say that the mass and Eucharist is the same sacrifice as Jesus on the cross, it necessitates death.
You can't have the cross without it. You can't have payment of sin without it.
492
posted on
08/08/2010 5:19:41 PM PDT
by
metmom
(Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
To: NYer
Luke apparently did not directly witness the actual events surrounding the life of Christ, yet that is one of the Gospels.
Does that need to be thrown out as well?
493
posted on
08/08/2010 5:21:26 PM PDT
by
metmom
(Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
To: rwilson99
To: metmom; Faith
I agree with you that there are some protestants at abortion clinics. Heck, it is Faith who posts the 40 Days for Life on the news forum, so I am aware of it.
I pray that there will be many more joining the Catholics. Don’t be afraid if we are saying the Rosary — just listen.
Actually there is a beautiful Rosary booklet put out by Rachael’s Vineyard (recovery for victims of abortion — men and women both). The first five Hail Marys talk about the mystery, if I remember correctly, and the last five Hail Marys have reflections on life, abortion, choices, sorrow at the loss of life, etc. It really is very beautiful
495
posted on
08/08/2010 5:25:21 PM PDT
by
Salvation
("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
To: Salvation
I’m not afraid of hearing the Rosary. I’ve heard it enough and prayed it enough myself.
496
posted on
08/08/2010 5:45:48 PM PDT
by
metmom
(Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
To: Iscool
Sorry to see your disrespect for Our Lord continues, Iscool.
For your argument to be valid you put limits on the Power of God.
John 6:53-58 “Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.
54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.
55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.
56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.
57 Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
To: Salvation; metmom
Dont be afraid if we are saying the Rosary just listen.
Afraid of what?
Just Listen? LOL! When Christians are praying - they don't listen or pay attention to others at that time.
To: RnMomof7
I forgive you for making false statements about the Catholic Church. Peace be with you.
To: Cronos
500
posted on
08/08/2010 6:28:59 PM PDT
by
PatriotGirl827
(Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me, a sinner)
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