I admit to having experienced perverse enjoyment when first hearing the story Episcopal Bishop James Pike. The cautionary tale is featured in Joan Didion’s The White Album, and more recently, in two sobering chronicles of Protestant decline, Ross Douthat’s Bad Religion and Joseph Bottum’s An Anxious Age. Following an impressive revisionist binge, Pike finally cast off Christianity completely. In pursuit of some kind of Gnosis, he drove into the Jordanian desert in a Ford Cortina with two Cokes and his third wife, where he lost his way and died. Such a fitting illustration of the Protestant condition, I once thought: an ill-equipped Ford Cortina hurtling to desert doom.
The story was on my mind on a recent trip to Amsterdam, which might well have been my last day as a Protestant. I make my way past drug dens and prostitution booths to Amsterdam’s Beginhoff, a charming courtyard where the Beguine sisters once lived, worshipped, and cared for the sick—until Calvinists took their property in 1578. The church itself, prominent in the center of the tulip-lined enclosure, was then given to Amsterdam’s English speaking Protestants, and it was here that the pilgrims reportedly worshipped before boarding the Mayflower to come to the New World. The historic church is locked. Why are Protestant churches so often locked? Across the way, however, is one of Amsterdam’s “hidden” Catholic churches, a concession to Catholic persistence built a century after Protestant takeover on the condition that it didn’t look like a church. This church isn’t locked. Behind the unassuming façade is a magnificent worship space where a lively, reverent Mass is just concluding. The church is relatively full. The wall paintings celebrate the 1345 Eucharistic miracle of Holy Stead, which once drew thousands to Amsterdam. It is among the ironies of church history that across from the place where the pilgrims worshipped are the remains of a once great pilgrimage center. Judging by the numbers, I have to concede that my surprise audit of religious life on a weekday in Amsterdam certainly doesn’t score any points for the Reformation.
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