Evangelicals and Catholics…Together…Apart…Together…
Since the Georgetown controversy has highlighted the relationship between Catholics and Evangelicals, I thought I would post a link to this article about Commonweal contributor Peter Feuerherd’s new book Holy Land USA: A Catholic Ride through America’s Evangelical Landscape. Feuerhard’s interest in the subject came from his own experiences working as an editor at the American Bible Society, as well as the decision of his own daughter to enter an evangelical church.
Per our discussion a couple of week back about the movement of some high-profile Protestant theologians into the Catholic Church, this is a good reminder that there is movement in the other direction as well. Denominational mobility is a fact of life in the United States, although it can often be a source of pain to family members.
I will say, though, that there is an edge to these discussions among many Catholics I encounter these days, at least in my own slice of suburban California. I know parents who have allowed their kids to attend a bible study at a friend’s church, only to have the kid end up hearing a lot of anti-Catholic nonsense. I’ve also heard a number of summer camp stories where a Catholic adolescent ends up tongue-tied facing a well trained evangelical kid who seems to have all the answers about the Bible.
There’s no question that a lot of our problems here have to do with our own failure as a Church to adequately catechize our kids. But it’s hard not to conclude that there are some churches out there who think poorly catechized Catholics are a high priority for their evangelization efforts.
None of this is to deny that relations between Catholics and Evangelicals are probably better than they have ever been before. But there are certainly a few points of friction that shouldn’t be glossed over.
I have to wonder why relations between Catholics and Evangelicals are so great.
I’m am guessing that one reason is that many Catholics and many Evangelicals agree about abortion and gay marriage.
And while these are important moral issues, Catholics ought not to conclude that Evangelicals are therefore largely or even partially sympathetic with Catholic theology.
Our Evangelical neighbor regularly invites my son to vacation Bible school, enticing him with hot dogs, free pop and campfire singalongs.
I finally told her I’d be happy to send him to VBS for five days, if I could have her kids for five Sunday masses and weekly Catechism.
Hopefully, this will put a stop to her “friendly” visits.
>>Catholics ought not to conclude that Evangelicals are therefore largely or even partially sympathetic with Catholic theology.<<
Don’t we agree with them on the most important matter of all: the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ? Do we not agree that there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved?
mlj,
This applies to most Protestants does it not? Or are you just applying it or favoring Evangelicals?
Yes, it certainly applies anybody who proclaims Jesus as Lord. Excepting, perhaps, for the Jesus-only Protestants and Mormons…
I invite mlj and others who want to be buddies with Evangelicals and Fundamentalists to open a discussion with them about the catechism and recent encyclicals that inform our faith/
Evangelicans and Fundamentalists reject the sacraments as we understand them. Some Baptists believe you may need to be “rebaptized” if you’ve fallen away and committed sins.
They believe infant baptism is wrong and stands in the way of one’s being “born again” into a “personal relaitonship with Jesus Christ.” They don’t believe you’re fully baptized unless you’re immersed.
They reject the True Presence in the Eucharist, they reject Catholic notions of the priesthood. They are fond of quoting Scirpture, “Thou shalt call no man father,” as “proof” that Jesus did not want priests in his church.
They may reject abortion, but they also reject Catholic notions about birth control, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization and the like. Most of them believe in capital punishment, and certainly their churches do not teach against it.
They reject the liturgy and are suspicious of “written prayers.” They have no regular daily or weekly lectionary.
They reject Catholic tradition. They view veneration of the saints and the Virgin as idol worship. They are leery of representations of Jesus or God in art, and some churches ban it any pictures whatsoever.
I know thoughtful, decent Baptists and evangelicals. And I count some of them among my family and friends.
But the teachings of these sects are, at heart, anti-Catholic and, in my view, misguided.
I don’t want this to be pick on mlj day, but taking the opposite tack to Ms. Raber, what does mlj have against the Mormons as opposed to the Evangelicals? Obviously their “sacraments” are almost silly (pot calling kettle black?) and (e.g.) Joseph Smith’s famous second vision is just wrong about God (we’ll leave the golden plates and spectacles in the realm of myth) but in terms of communal life, ethics, and faith formation they represent a lot of what Catholics could aim for, along with a respect for other people’s religion.
Back to the point of the post, I have some experience with my kids and Evangelicals. When my daughter was in 9th (?) grade, one of her friends from an Evangelical church (Peninsula Bible, with which Mr. Nixon may be familiar) invited her to a religious based weekend. The upshot was that she returned far more devoutly Catholic (if only it had lasted!) and more Catholic idenitified than she went. Later on she spent two summers with Catholic groups at basically evangelical work camps on an Indian reservation and once again respected most of the evangelicals, largely people of different background than she had ever known before, but still self-identified as Catholic. I’m afraid the attacks on her Catholicism were all inflicted from within the Church! But that’s a different story.
Gene O’Grady writes: “I’m afraid the attacks on her Catholicism were all inflicted from within the Church! But that’s a different story.”
I understand. I am the mother of a 10-year-old who can’t wait to become a lapsed Catholic. He’s bored with Mass, but the CCD program is just toxic for a kid with ADHD. Think-and-do books and memorization of prayers.
He’d probably love the local evangelical Kids Kamp and Hootenanny for Jesus. But I’m not sure I could live with him exhorting me to stop worshiping statues.
OK, sorry, that was off topic.
Jean:
“They are fond of quoting Scirpture, “Thou shalt call no man father,” as “proof” that Jesus did not want priests in his church.”
That seems to be an argument for not calling them Father rather than an argument against having priests. Actually the habit of calling secular priests Father has not always obtained. I remember a French bio-pic about Vincent de Paul called Monsieur Vincent, and in Chaucer’s day, if I remember correctly, they were called Sir.
Training for the ministry among Fundamentalists and Evangelicals is all over the map, Joseph G., so you hear a lot of things from individual E/Fs that sound weird, wrong or ignorant.
I’m just reporting what I’ve heard.
When Catholics say they feel an affinity with E/Fs, the first question should be, “Which ones?” Because the E/F camp is a big one, not all of its adherents believe the same thing, and they may include big denominations like the Southern Baptists or teeny independents that are affiliated with no denomination.
The fact that Catholics don’t say which E/Fs they find alluring, in my view, is indicative of just how Catholics really know about them.
Sorry, last sentence should be “… just how LITTLE Catholics really know about them.”
On a personal note, because it carries so many different meanings, I don’t find the term “evangelical”, standing alone, particularly useful. For an interesting article on two very different “evangelicals” check out Father, Son and Holy Rift at latimes.com.
To a certain degree, I can understand where mlj is coming from. It seems to me that we Catholics, whether from a justified defensiveness or a sort of parochial (sic) pride, tend to emphasize those things that set us apart from other Christian traditions. We are Catholic because we venerate saints. We are Catholic because we have a liturgical tradition that stretches back to the early church. We are Catholic because we reject contraception (at least some of us do) and oppose embryonic stem-cell research.
All of this is true, but is there not a certain hierarchy of truths? Are we not Catholic first and foremost because we believe in Jesus Christ, Son of God, whose death and resurrection have reconciled us to the Father and given us the gift of the Holy Spirit? It seems to me that when we lose sight of this primary truth of the faith and spend all of our energies on the secondary, or resultant truths, we miss out on an opportunity to talk with our brothers and sisters from other traditions. And without dialogue, we will never see John XXIII’s dream of Christian unity realized.
Don’t get me wrong. I am just as proud of my Catholic faith as the next guy. I find Catholicism to be the most intellectually satisfying, historically honest, and emotionally fulfilling tradition around. But I also find that many (not all) Evangelicals hold the same core convictions that I do. They celebrate these convictions differently, and they are missing out on all of the ramifications of these convictions, but the commonality in many cases outweighs the distinctions.
I would venture to say that in some cases I feel more comfortable around my Evangelical friends than I do around many parishioners, for whom Catholicism is one of the many “things” they do in their lives and not the guiding principle that informs all the other things they have going on.
Having said all of that, I too would be uncomfortable with the scenario Ms. Raber paints of the Evangelical neighbor who seems dedicated to proselytize my children. If there is no room for mutual respect, there is no room for dialogue or friendship. This is just as true on the personal level as it is on the institutional level.
I think Mr. Jameson makes some good points about heirarchy of beliefs.
But I also think Catholics should approach E/Fs with caution. Do they have an agenda (like my neighbor)?
And do Catholics have the same response to political issues on which E/Fs seem to agree? For instance, Catholics and E/Fs are anti-abortion. But do Catholics and E/Fs share the same ideas about how women who have had or seek abortions might be treated in a post-Roe v. Wade world?
The similarities between E/Fs and some Catholics strikes me as more social and political than theological.
I think it is just delicious that lefties who generally prattle on and on about dialogue and ecumenism have such a problem with one of the great ecumenical dialogues going on for many years among faithful Catholics and Evangelical Protestants.
It is ecumenism in its purist form. We put aside strong theological differences to work projects of common concern and what grows from it is love and understanding.
Our Father God has taken the evil of abortion and attacks on the family and drawn something good from them and that is a increasing unity among his children which, after our presence in Heaven, is what He desires most of all.
Once more, you guys are missing the boat.
I deleted the comments of one reader of the blog, neither a contributor to dotCommonweal nor to the print magazine, that compared First Things to Der Sturmer. That’s out of bounds.
The person who uses the nom de Web “MLJ,” who apparently believes himself deputized to police all of dotCommonweal’s threads, claimed that “Commonweal” had voiced or endorsed this comparison. This is false. He knows this is false, of course, but the truth in this case doesn’t serve his purpose.
Consider this a warning to both parties. Repeat this behavior and I will delete your comments every time I see them.
I would rather be a lefty prattling about ecumenism on the shore than getting into a boat with the Fundamentalists and Evangelicals whose “Sola Scriptura” theoogy proclaims most Catholic tradition as heresy..
I urge Austin to attend any of my family holiday dinners and get a load of my Fundamentalist/Evangelical in-laws before he weighs anchor.
Yeah, we agree about abortion, and that’s pretty much it.