This will form the third entry in a somewhat unplanned series that I stumbled into two months ago. I found myself wanting to say something helpful to readers of Crisis about that notable and energetic sector of Protestantism loosely known as “the evangelicals,” but I ran out of space in my first column and spilled over into a second and now a third.
In the last two columns I pointed out that evangelicalism is not a denomination. A man may be a Presbyterian, an Episcopalian, a Methodist, or a Baptist and not be particularly evangelical. The word refers to an outlook. The evangelicals, many of them in these denominations, actually believe the creeds quite literally, as do all orthodox Catholics. They will have no nonsense about the Virgin Birth being a pious fiction, or the Resurrection referring only to some vaporous survival of “the spirit of Jesus” in His followers. Most of the big official Protestant denominations allow for great liberty on these points, and nearly all of their seminaries have long since gone over to what Pius X called Modernism. To this extent, then, we may say that the evangelicals constitute an energetically traditional and orthodox presence in Protestantism.
But there is an enormous phenomenon among them that leaves Catholics scratching their heads. This is the “independent” churches. Since the evangelicals do not believe that the Church is a visible institution founded by the apostles, with an apostolic priesthood and hierarchy, but believe it to be merely the worldwide aggregation of all individual believers in Jesus Christ (called the “invisible Church”), they, of course, can start up a church every hour on the half-hour. They don’t even need an ordained minister to do so.
A “church,” for them, is just a group of Christian believers who want to gather together for “fellowship” and preaching, and perhaps, from time to time, a “communion service” (this would answer to the Mass, but in their view the bread and wine stays just that, brought into play as a memorial device). Bill Jones may be the pastor, and, if things flourish, the group will move out of somebody’s living room and into some local facility. And then, as happens more often than not, since these evangelical churches grow, they will build an enormous building to house the hundreds, and often thousands, of people who have turned up to join the assembly. The “mega-churches” grow this way, and their facilities often look more like airports than churches.
A Catholic will be huffing and puffing at this point. “But you can’t just do that!” Well, they do. And here is where the rub comes—hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholics find their way to these churches and emerge gasping, “I was a Catholic until I was 15, and then I met Jesus!” or, “I was raised Catholic but I became a Christian when I was 20,” or, “I was Catholic until I was 30, and then I was born again.”
We may protest. But there it is. What has gone wrong? Have their parishes fed their sheep on pap—”caring and sharing,” and other Hallmark card sentiments? If this seems too severe, then we may look where we will for answers. Evangelicalism, from the Catholic point of view, is a sort of para-church phenomenon, and there is much that we would wish to tell them—about sacraments, the Eucharist, apostolicity, the Magisterium, and so forth. Meanwhile, we may do some sober reflecting.
(Correction: In my April 2006 column, I gave the name Tim Kelly to the pastor of Manhattan’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church. His name is Tim Keller. My abject apologies to him and to Crisis readers.)