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Christian Network

In His seminal book "The Call", Oz Guiness speaks of a "Protestant distortion" and a "Catholic distortion". He uses these terms to speak of errors believers make in approaching giftedness and vocation. But the distortions he speaks of can be applied to other aspects of the Christian life as well. For many Americans who have grown up since the 1960’s both traditional Protestantism and traditional Catholicism have left us cold. There is a growing sense that, at their core, neither interpretation of what the Church is meant to be is closely enough aligned with the will of God, at least during this time in history.

In general it is far easier for Evangelical believers to criticize the Roman Church than that of the Reformers. Most of us, when presented with the characteristics of both systems, recognize that we are far more Protestant than Catholic. This is, of course, no coincidence. The Evangelical churches in the United States are Protestant, at least in their origin. Most grew out of the great Protestant denominations and many born-again believers remain Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, etc. The average Evangelical, if shown the theological distinctives that differentiate the two traditions in question, would probably identify themselves as Protestants. Even those who have little or no knowledge of Church history would most likely do so.

Despite this less and less Evangelicals are willing to follow in the early Reformers footsteps and write off Roman Catholicism altogether. It is true that most of us know, almost instinctively, that we could not be Catholics. There are a number of theological reasons for this but perhaps the core is that we put supreme value on a personal relationship with God, one that we did not get from a church but from a direct experience with the reality of Jesus Christ. For this reason, more than perhaps any other, the majority of Evangelicals are uncomfortable with the Catholic emphasis on ritual and the seeming elevation of extra-biblical traditions which appear to take the emphasis off seeking Christ alone.

That said some thoughtful Evangelicals have been challenged by individuals we know in the Roman Church who do, in fact, hold up Christ alone as the Person all must consciously come to for a true relationship with God. Some of us have also met Catholics who obviously have great joy in their relationship with the Lord and, yet, appear happy in their tradition. This causes a disturbing disconnect, especially when some fundamentalists in our camp go so far as to vehemently (and, as usual, angrily) insist that the Roman Catholic Church is "The Whore of Babylon" from Revelation. If this is true how can we account for the real love for the Saviour that some Catholics seem to glow with? Usually our answer is that if they have a right relationship with God that relationship exists despite their Catholicism, not because of it. But could there, perhaps, be something in their tradition that we have written off to our own spiritual hurt? Could it be that they have some things, good things, that we do not?

At the same time more and more of us are beginning to see serious flaws in the Evangelical Protestant religious system in America. I use the term "religious" deliberately. Evangelicals tend to hate the word, believing that it is indicative of a man-centered, tradition-saturated approach that has nothing to do with knowing God. This is why one of our favorite witnessing lines is " I don’t have a religion, I have a relationship!" The idea that our churches have some "bad religion" is usually lost in the exultation of our approach to Christianity as the only one that is authentic. This is the Evangelical conceit. It blinds us, I believe, to other legitimate aspects of the Faith, ones we have written off because they are not in our tradition and because we have "thrown the baby out with the bathwater" when it comes to anything not distinctly Evangelical.