Why Evangelicals Go Catholic
00:00:00.000 | Here's an email question from Abby in Millersville, Maryland.
00:00:08.680 | "Pastor John, in the past few years I've heard from several former Protestant friends,
00:00:12.320 | 20-somethings from a variety of evangelical denominations, that they are joining the Catholic
00:00:16.840 | Church.
00:00:17.920 | Some of these friends are saying that they place a higher value on tradition than on
00:00:21.400 | Scripture.
00:00:22.400 | They are people with whom I spent years ministering and studying Scripture.
00:00:25.720 | What's going on here, are these just non-believers who are being weeded from the fold?"
00:00:30.200 | What do you say, Pastor John?
00:00:32.080 | The road to Rome is not a new phenomenon.
00:00:35.200 | It was happening when I was in college.
00:00:38.480 | It's always been happening ever since there was a church.
00:00:44.280 | People have left and people have returned to the Roman Catholic Church.
00:00:52.280 | And I suspect it will always be as long as both kinds of churches exist.
00:00:57.800 | It would be way too rash to say that everyone who makes the trek from Protestantism to Roman
00:01:06.480 | Catholicism are unbelievers who are being weeded out of the fold.
00:01:11.680 | They're just too many different kinds of reasons and the stories are never over in this life.
00:01:21.000 | So if a person goes this way or that way, you don't know where they're going to end
00:01:25.640 | up.
00:01:26.640 | And so don't write them off in either case.
00:01:29.440 | There are a lot of reasons, and it might be helpful for me to give you my take on why
00:01:35.640 | do people sometimes gravitate towards Roman Catholicism out of evangelicalism.
00:01:41.080 | And I'll give you, here's four things.
00:01:44.040 | One, many people of those who return to Rome are hungry for seriousness and are tired of
00:01:52.000 | the slapstick worship services that are normative in many evangelical churches.
00:01:58.560 | Number two, many are hungry for roots, a sense of history that they don't feel in the new
00:02:05.160 | church plant down the street that seems to mainly want to hide its connectedness to any
00:02:10.560 | tradition.
00:02:12.200 | Three, many are hungry for intellectual and artistic richness that worship services in
00:02:19.480 | jeans and movie clips and bouncing beach balls and the shrines of the drum set just don't
00:02:26.680 | satisfy.
00:02:28.480 | And fourth, many are hungry for authority and clarity and stability.
00:02:36.000 | And sometimes it's just easier to let the church tell you what to believe and to be
00:02:41.720 | unburdened by the need to work it all out.
00:02:45.280 | So those would be at least four things that I think grip some people and say, "I think
00:02:51.920 | the Roman church is more satisfying in all those regards."
00:02:56.200 | But for me, Tony, even though I sympathize with every one of those, my heart longs for
00:03:03.680 | seriousness, longs for roots, longs for intellectual and artistic richness, and loves true authority
00:03:11.680 | nevertheless.
00:03:13.800 | Questions remain, don't they?
00:03:15.440 | Are the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church biblical?
00:03:19.680 | And my answer is too many of them are not.
00:03:23.040 | I think the Roman church gets it wrong on justification.
00:03:26.320 | I think they get it wrong on the mass and the dispensing of grace.
00:03:30.080 | I think they get it wrong on the role of tradition alongside Scripture.
00:03:33.880 | I think they get it wrong on the authority of the Pope.
00:03:36.400 | I think they get it wrong in the doctrine of baptism or regeneration, which I think
00:03:40.480 | is very destructive.
00:03:41.840 | I think they get it wrong in the veneration of Mary and the prayers to the saints, and
00:03:45.680 | there are others.
00:03:47.080 | And so I can't let my desire for certain forms or styles or richness or traditions
00:03:54.720 | trump the doctrinal issues for me.
00:03:58.400 | So what I would like to say to those who are listening to this clip is, let's pour our
00:04:03.600 | lives into the true evangelical doctrines and grow churches that are strong and rich
00:04:13.760 | and serious and relevant and powerful and biblical and that overcome the weaknesses
00:04:21.120 | that have pushed some people away.
00:04:24.120 | Amen.
00:04:25.120 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:04:27.600 | Email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:04:31.360 | Visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of free books, articles, sermons,
00:04:35.640 | and other resources from John Piper.
00:04:36.960 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:04:37.960 | Thanks for listening.
00:04:38.960 | [END]
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