It’s true. My wife Shirley and I, and our three teenagers, are now Catholic. OK, now, get up off of the floor! Believe me -- no one is as shocked by this turn of events as we are. We never wanted to go in this direction, but we have been led (driven, more accurately) to it by the Holy Spirit. After a lifetime in the churches of Christ, we feel that some explanation is in order.
The Stone-Campbell “Restoration Movement” in the early 1800s was driven by the commendable desire to overcome denominational differences and achieve Christian unity by rejecting all human creeds and innovations and restoring first-century Christianity. This would be achieved by following the simple “pattern” of church organization and practices described or implied in the New Testament, and especially in Acts and the epistles. As these men and their followers studied scripture with open minds, they moved away from the dominant (in America) Calvinist theology that underpins most Baptist and Presbyterian doctrines. They were certainly moving in the right direction with this, and most of the distinctive church of Christ doctrines are scripturally sound. However, the practical effect of this “just study it for ourselves” hermeneutic, applied over the past two centuries, has been repeated cycles of division. Like all of the other nominally protestant denominations, the Disciples split and split again into what today are probably over a dozen distinctive groups and sects. In the whole protestant community, after about 500 years, there are now probably over 30,000 separate groups. With no central authority, members of the churches of Christ and related Disciples groups have been unable to agree on a host of issues, nor even on which issues are “core”, meaning matters of fellowship vs. matters of opinion. There is widespread disagreement on which doctrines and practices are necessarily inferred by scripture when there aren’t explicit verses on the topic, nor is there agreement on whether the silence of the scriptures on a given subject is authoritatively inclusive or exclusive as to certain doctrines.
This problem of constant division and bickering has bothered Shirley and me for our whole adult lives, even as we have worked hard to serve the Lord in the churches of Christ. We have been in some small towns with four or five tiny church of Christ congregations, none of which will talk to or acknowledge the others. We commonly heard people comment on this situation by asserting that those who disagree (with their own point of view, of course) just don’t have the right attitude toward the Scriptures, or the proper hermeneutic, or a strong enough love for the Truth. The obvious problem with this assertion is that it is manifestly untrue. We have known many wonderful and dedicated Christians on various sides of all of the commonly debated issues within the churches of Christ, and also in many other denominations. So why is there so much division? Why are there thousands of separate churches, when Christ prayed so fervently for unity, and even commanded unity?
Shirley and I have relocated several times over the past 30-years, due to various job changes. We found an abundance of church of Christ congregations in the Midwestern and Southeastern states and in Texas; so many that in a larger metropolitan area one can easily find congregations that more or less fit one’s own views on the various divisive issues. However, there are not so many congregations in the West in general, nor in Reno specifically. When we moved here, we visited all of the church of Christ congregations at first, and “placed membership” (an unscriptural term in itself) in two of the congregations here for one year each, but each time we encountered serious problems with certain things that were being taught, and found the congregations be very small and socially insular -- not very welcoming to new members. Some of the congregations had suffered recent church splits, and the members still carried wounds and resentment from those events. In frustration, not knowing where else to go, we decided to try visiting some of the evangelical churches in the area. We knew we would object to some of their doctrines, but we hoped we might be able to accept this in exchange for a more stable and growing church home for our children. Calvinist doctrines, which most evangelical churches subscribe to, were the big problem. Having grown up in the churches of Christ, I have always believed, for example, that baptism is essential for salvation, rejecting the principle of “faith alone” for justification, and also rejecting the strict Calvinist version of eternal security. We are also amillenial rather than premillenial, but don’t we generally spend a lot of time on eschatology.
After visiting several evangelical churches in Reno, we found a comfortable home at Sierra Bible Church, which is affiliated with the “Evangelical Free Churches”. We were welcomed warmly and discovered opportunities to participate in church life there, singing with the choir and “worship team”, and helping teach Sunday school classes. SBC is well-led, and the members love the Lord and each other. SBC offered solid Biblical teaching with a minimum of the “softball theology” found in many contemporary evangelical churches. We saw the members there exhibiting the fruits of the spirit in abundance. However, we often had to bite our tongues in class when Calvinist doctrines were taught, and we often had to talk with our kids after their Sunday school classes to explain why we disagreed with their teachers.
After almost a year of attending SBC, Shirley was talking about our background and our dilemma with a close friend who happened to be a Catholic convert from the Baptist church. In discussing our doctrinal concerns, her friend remarked that our beliefs were consistent with those of the Catholic Church in many respects. In fact, she said, our “church of Christ” beliefs were much closer to traditional Catholic beliefs than hers had been when she was a Baptist. This was a shock to Shirley. We didn’t even know there was such a thing as a well-educated and knowledgeable convert from Protestantism to Catholicism! Shirley began reading more about the Catholic church, and found that in recent years there have been more and more protestants, including several prominent pastors and theologians (and many members of the churches of Christ), that have “crossed the Tiber” to the Catholic Church. She read some excellent books and web sites created by these converts, and learned that many of the things we had been told about the Catholic Church all our lives did not accurately portray the Church’s real doctrines and practices. Unfortunately, our prejudices had been reinforced over the years by “cradle Catholics” we have known who were poorly informed about their own faith -- “poorly catechized”, to use the Catholic term. We soon discovered that Catholics have their own words for everything, which complicates any communication with protestants, at least in the early stages. Furthermore, many of our Catholic acquaintances were not very righteous in their personal lives, or they were pious but superstitious. As in any church, some Catholics are not able to adequately distinguish between fundamental doctrines of the church and their non-dogmatic practices and traditions. However today, as a result of this recent wave of protestant conversions, there is an abundance of books and web sites which lay out the Church’s history and doctrines in a very accurate and accessible way.
The more Shirley studied about early Church history and the scriptural basis of Catholic practices, the more convinced she became that the claims of the Catholic Church to be the true first-century church were in fact true. As you might expect, I was very concerned about her sudden interest in this. I certainly had no interest in the Catholic Church, nor any desire to learn more about it. I thought I was already pretty knowledgeable about Catholicism and the corruption and apostasy that led to the introduction of un-biblical practices such as the priesthood and the episcopal hierarchy. I believed that these were innovations adopted to accommodate pagan beliefs and practices after the legalization of the Church by Constantine in the 4th century. Honestly, I didn’t really think much about the logical consequences of this view about Catholicism – the implication that virtually every person in the world who considered himself a faithful Christian for over 1000 years, including dozens of famous martyrs, were in fact destined for eternal Hell because of their belief in false doctrines and an apostate church. In frustration and with much trepidation, I agreed to study these things with Shirley, and she agreed to not take any further action until I had reached a conclusion about the matter for myself. The next several months involved many hours and days of research and study, soul-searching, debate, and prayer.
What we both discovered, much to our surprise, was that the distinctive Catholic doctrines and practices that are portrayed by protestants as fourth and fifth-century “inventions” were, in fact, original to the first-century apostolic church. We found plenty of evidence in the early Christian writings and in scripture that these things were practiced and accepted from the beginning. It was amazing how that so many scriptures (such as John chapter 6) which we had found troubling and had “hand-waved” past in church of Christ Bible studies were being made totally clear! We also found it interesting that there is an extensive record of debates on all sorts of topics within the Church during the first several centuries of its existence, but these debates were primarily over imposition of Jewish laws upon gentile Christians, the nature of Christ and the Trinity, the canon of the New Testament, etc. We thought to ourselves, “if the distinctively Catholic doctrines we think of today, such as the Real Presence in the Eucharist, the Bishops, the Priesthood, etc., were new inventions and contrary to the Apostles’ teaching, why was there no debate or division caused by their introduction?” Weren’t there faithful and conservative Christians fighting against these innovations, like they fought against other heresies? Anyone who grew up in the churches of Christ today could certainly imagine the riots if someone tried to introduce such practices into the church! And yet…instead of debates over these things, we found, in the writings of early Christian fathers, compelling evidence that already by the end of the first century, when many church leaders were still alive who had been personally taught by the apostles, the church was already recognizably Catholic in organization and practice. And there were no fights about it at all! It’s true that some of the details of Church’s organization were defined gradually, but there was no debate about it. Apparently, these things were universally accepted, either as being consistent with what the Apostles had taught, or done with appropriate and legitimate authority.
Once we discovered the writings of authentic Catholic apologists and studied what the church actually proclaims about itself, we began to understand the distinction between capital-T Apostolic Traditions, or “dogmas” (the fundamental and required doctrines of the church, such as baptism and the Lord’s Supper), and small-t traditions and potentially alterable practices recommended by the church leaders (such as clerical celibacy). Then, many of the puzzles and frustrations over questions of authority and division that Shirley and I had struggled with for years began to be resolved. The missing pieces fell into place and formed a beautiful and complete theology that we had never known before, although we had understood portions of it. The Lord DID provide a way for Christian unity to work, through the Church in its leaders from the apostles until today. We discovered that every bishop in the Church today descends in an unbroken line of authority and succession from the original 12 apostles. The system that Lord made has kept it faithful and unified down to the present day, as He promised it would, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The (highly destructive) innovations occurred 15 centuries later with the Reformation and the doctrines of Sola Scriptura (scripture alone for authority) and Sola Fides (faith alone for justification). There actually IS AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN a sound way to establish authority and definitive interpretation of scripture, just as Peter and Jesus said there would be.
Having come, very reluctantly, to the conclusions that the Catholic Church has the Authority from the Apostles to interpret scripture, that the Church itself compiled and gave us the scriptures, and that the Church’s distinctive doctrines are in fact original to the apostolic period -- that the Church has never become apostate, in spite of a number of ungodly leaders over the centuries, Shirley and I decided that we must leave our comfortable past behind and “come home” to the fullness of true first-century Church of Christ. This is the REAL THING that the churches of Christ have (unsuccessfully) been seeking to become. Stone, Campbell, and their followers actually got many of the important doctrines correct, to the extent that they broke from classical Protestant (and especially Calvinist) ideas, but they missed on the issue of authority. Some aspects of Catholic practice and “small-t” traditions still seem strange to our sensibilities, but we now accept and trust the Church’s authority established by Christ through the apostles, and we intend to study these issues in the years to come as we learn more. One interesting detail, since we in the churches of Christ have always insisted on “calling Bible things by Bible names”, and therefore criticizing the names of other Christian denominations, is that the official name of the Catholic Church is actually the “Church of Christ”, in papal declarations and such. Just another example of the ways in which the Stone-Campbell movement had many correct ideas, but just didn’t take them far enough back to the real and original Church that Christ founded.
Our conversion was certainly upsetting to our friends and family. We have been torn by the competing desires to keep the peace by not upsetting people, and to share the wonderful things we have discovered! In conversations with other people that have left the churches of Christ, I have heard many stories of negative, and even spiteful and mean, reactions from their friends and families, including being “dis-fellowshipped”. We pray that God will give us the patience and grace to explain our journey to others without rancor.
May the Peace of Christ be with you always!