After serving in the Presbyterian ministry for over two decades, our guest Jim Tonkowich, former president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy, made the decision to convert to Catholicism. We follow Jim’s journey in this interview that is part personal reflection and part sociological look at the state of Christianity today.
We begin our discussion by going back to Jim’s early upbringing and learn that his family was rooted in the Russian Orthodox Church. His curiosity in religion, though, was piqued while attending boarding school in Connecticut when he purchased a Bible and began reading it. Finding this reading difficult on his own he began participating in a Bible study group and also attended a “Ski and Skeptics” program that helped him to start making sense of Christianity, much the way a the box top picture on a jigsaw puzzle helps one align the pieces. We follow him through his college career at Bates College and his further investigations into theology and philosophy. At this point in his life, he is still not a Roman Catholic.
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