I was raised in Indonesia as part of a Roman Catholic family. When I first became a Christian, I attended a church in Jakarta with little to no formal liturgy, an emcee for a liturgist, a band that sang a few songs from the most recent Hillsong album, and a 20-minute sermon based on a few lessons and some biblical texts.
When I told my Roman Catholic family members that I had become a Christian, they asked me when I would return to the Catholic church. I would reply, with some trepidation: “Oh, I think I’m … Protestant?” They would respond in bewilderment: “But don’t you know that the Catholics were first historically?”
Gavin Ortlund’s newest book, What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church, reminds readers that what often passes as “Protestant” in the rhetoric of Eastern or Catholic apologists compares “the worst of Protestantism to the best of the non-Protestant traditions.” Moreover, Ortlund shows “how commonly and easily Protestantism is misrepresented, even by Protestants.”
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