The Protestant Difference

These are ecclesiastically unusual times. Various factors are serving to attenuate old party lines between Protestants and Catholics and even Eastern Orthodox. The ongoing sexual revolution has pushed to the fore moral and ethical issues where all Christians share common ground. There is a growing realization among many Catholics that the Bible has been neglected in the day-to-day life of many, as evidenced by the popularity of, for example, Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Bible in a Year Podcast. Many younger evangelicals find worship that is little more than a TED talk embedded in a rock concert to be unsatisfying and have begun to search for more historically grounded, liturgically sophisticated, and beautiful forms of worship. Hence we have the rise of the ACNA as well as conversions to Rome and Constantinople. And then there are the internal struggles. Conservative Catholics face constant pressure from a progressive but authoritarian papacy while many Protestants have come to realize that the doctrines of God and Christ that dominated the popular theologies of the past 50 years of evangelical publishing are closer to early church heresies than the orthodoxy of the early church creeds. Read Full Article »