"Look, Sharon, if you - or anyone else - can convince me, from the Bible, that the Catholic Church is the church established by Christ, I'll be a Catholic tomorrow!" - Bruce Sullivan June 1993
With that bold challenge, I had hoped to goad my devout Catholic friend into a serious evangelistic Bible study. Instead, she presented me with a copy of Karl Keating's Catholicism and Fundamentalism... and so began the end of my career as a Church of Christ gospel preacher.
I was raised in South Florida as a Southern Baptist. Attending services three times each week was standard fare in my childhood home. My childhood recollections are adorned with memories of children's' choirs, Vacation Bible Schools, and youth gatherings. I am eternally grateful to my family and the Southern Baptist Convention for rooting me in the scriptures, introducing me to Christ and instilling within my soul the conviction that the world needs - above all else - Jesus! However, it was not until I went away to college that I began to explore what I believed and why I believed it.
When I arrived on the campus of Auburn University, in Auburn, Alabama, I was, to be sure, a spiritually minded young man. In fact, I guess you could say that I and always been spiritually minded. My upbringing and religious formation had served to keep me out of any real trouble. In fact, I was happiest when I was among Christians. Nonetheless, the content of my faith had not been supplied by any diligent, personal study. It was, rather, something that I had more or less absorbed along the way. However, this state of affairs (i.e., my lack of diligent, personal study) began to change shortly after my arrival at Auburn.
My years at Auburn were characterized by an enthusiastic involvement in campus ministry. I was very active in the Baptist Student Union, and, later, after joining the Church of Christ, the Auburn Christian Student Center. Both ministry organizations encouraged personal growth through small group Bible studies. Both ministry organizations urged participants to answer Jesus' call to discipleship by taking up the cross and following Him daily. Yet, strangely enough, it was a course offered by the university that launched me into an intense search for truth.
It was the first quarter at Auburn, and, in order to "round out" my schedule of classes, I enrolled in a course entitled, "The History of Religion in America." For the first time in my life, I was in a classroom setting with Christians of other denominations. For the first time, I began to learn what made me, as a Baptist, different from, say, a Methodist. And, for the first time in my life, I had the opportunity to visit other churches and to consider their beliefs in an environment of total freedom. My spiritual journey had begun!
Looking back, I can see that the freedom afforded by being on a campus roughly eight hundred miles from home played an important role in my faith journey. There were churches of every conceivable denomination within walking distance of the campus. There was also a seemingly endless number of campus ministry organizations: the Navigators, Campus Crusade for Christ, the Baptist Student Union, the Auburn Christian Student Center, the Wesley Center, and many more. There also many "campus preachers" who felt called to proclaim their understanding of the gospel outdoors on the thoroughfares of the campus. Together, all of this created a rather exciting - though sometimes confusing - mix!
Yes, my Auburn years were certainly ones of both excitement and confusion. They were exciting because life-changing ideas were being served up faster than they could be taken in. They were confusing because many of these ideas seemed to contradict each other! I listened almost continually to contemporary Christian music, watched Jimmy Swaggert nearly every Sunday morning and visited churches that aroused my curiosity. One such church was the Auburn Church of Christ.
It was January of 1985, and I was living at the Baptist Student Center. It was a Sunday morning, and I had just finished watching the Amazing Grace Bible Class television program produced by the Madison Church of Christ in Nashville, Tennessee. I was somewhat familiar with the Churches of Christ because my best friend back home was a Church of Christ member, and I had gone to church a couple of times with him during my high school years. However, as I turned off the television set that morning, it occurred to me that I had not visited the Church of Christ in Auburn. I decided to rectify that situation immediately!
I met many beautiful Christian people that Sunday morning at the Auburn Church of Christ. However, I was particularly taken with one individual - Jim, their campus minister. I sat in Jim's Bible class that morning as he led a study of the book of Acts. As was typically the case, I asked several questions and made several comments during the course of the study. What struck me most about Jim was the way in which he handled my questions and comments: he listened attentively, responded charitably, and acknowledged truth when he heard it. It was a refreshing change from the ridicule and rebukes that I had often received in response to my questions. We immediately began forming a friendship.
The weeks that followed were filled with visits to Jim's office at the Auburn Christian Student Center. During our sessions together, Jim introduced me to the "Restoration Plea." The "Restoration Plea" is the distinctive call of the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement (also known as the American Restoration Movement). This nineteenth century movement, named for its two most prominent personalities (Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell) summoned all Christians to an "undenominational" unity based upon the principle of "restoration" (i.e., the restoration of the "ancient order" which had been lost through "apostasy" and the "traditions of men"). I was immediately drawn to "the plea" as an iron to a magnet! After years of searching and questioning, it seemed as if I had finally found the solution to the denominational chaos around me. Six weeks later, Jim baptized me and I placed membership with the Auburn Church of Christ.
The years that followed were exciting ones. Through my involvement in the Auburn Church of Christ, I was introduced to Gloria Edwards, an attractive veterinary student from Kentucky, who would later become my wife. I became an active member of the Auburn Christian Student Center and continued to preach outdoors on the campus (a practice begun roughly a year before joining the Church of Christ). Jim became my mentor and role model, and because of my interest in missionary work, he pointed me towards the Sunset School of Preaching in Lubbock, Texas.
Upon graduating in June of 1986, Gloria and I were married. We spent our first summer together raising the financial support we needed in order to begin our studies at Sunset. Two months later, with the summer behind us and the future before us, we loaded our Chevette and left for Lubbock.
The Sunset School of Preaching more than met our expectations. The curriculum was intense, the sense of camaraderie was palpable and the experience was profoundly life changing. For two years we were the privileged pupils of men who had given their lives to missionary service in every corner of the globe. Their extraordinary example served only to heighten our desire for missionary service, and, as a result, we became founding members of a mission team targeting the largest Catholic country in the world - Brazil.
The years following our graduation can best be summarized by noting that we initially served a congregation in Kingsport, Tennessee, that was to be the sponsoring congregation for our missionary work in Brazil. However, our missionary team unexpectedly disbanded and a change of plans was necessitated. We subsequently served briefly with a congregation in Greenville, North Carolina, and eventually ended up back in Gloria's home state of Kentucky. In Kentucky, I took a secular job for my livelihood and began serving rural congregations as an itinerant preacher. It was during this time that we met the Antonio family.
Art and Sharon Antonio moved into our rural county in order to enjoy a homesteading way of life after Art's retirement from the U.S. Navy. My secular job placed me in contact with them shortly after their arrival. We immediately struck up a friendship, though I have to admit that my in initial motivation was primarily sectarian in nature. My plan was to convert this devout Catholic family to the true gospel of Christ as presented by the true church of Christ.
Initially, our conversations concerning religion were somewhat strained, to say the least. I had no first-hand knowledge of Catholicism, and the Antonios had no first hand knowledge of the Restoration Movement's slant on Christianity. As a result, we found ourselves frequently at an impasse in our attempts to communicate to each other our respective views on the faith. However, perseverance pays off, and after several months of befuddling verbal exchanges, two major breakthroughs occurred.
The first breakthrough occurred when Sharon gave me some material to read from the Couple to Couple League. These materials presented and defended the Catholic Church's teaching on artificial means of contraception. I have to admit that, prior to reading the CCL's material, I had dismissed the Catholic teaching out of hand as being indefensible. However, upon closer examination, the Church's teaching proved to be not only defensible - it proved to be the beautiful bedrock of Christian marriage. Nevertheless, even though I recognized that the Catholic Church had "got it right" on this issue, I was not prepared to acknowledge the Catholic Church as the church established by Christ, or for that matter, that Catholics were Christians in the Biblical sense of the word. Those acknowledgments would have to await the second breakthrough alluded to earlier.
The second breakthrough occurred in June of 1993. I was getting nowhere in my efforts to get Sharon to sit down and have an in-depth look at what I believed the scriptures taught concerning baptism. In a state of mild exasperation, I issued my challenge: "Look, Sharon, if you - or anyone else - can convince me, from the Bible, that the Catholic Church is the church established by Christ, I'll be a Catholic tomorrow!" On the very next day, she presented me with a copy of Karl Keating's Catholicism and Fundamentalism. I happily accepted the book as an indication that we were finally making progress. I was more convinced than ever that it would be a matter of time before my friends recognized the errors of "Romanism" and the truth of the gospel as presented by the Church of Christ.
I initially set out to read Keating's work simply to expose the manifest errors that I knew, a priori, it had to contain. After all, what could possibly be easier to debunk than Roman Catholicism? I can remember being amused by a quotation from Sheldon Vaneuken on the book's back cover. He said, "I strongly advise sincere fundamentalists not to read this book or they may find their faith collapsing in ruins." I may fiancee actually laughed aloud - but I didn't laugh for long. Before I finished reading the first chapter, I knew that I was in trouble. Keating was asking me questions that I could not answer. Instead of exposing his errors, he was exposing the flimsy nature of the assumptions underlying my position!
Keating's book did several things for me. First of all, it challenged the basic assumptions underlying my faith (chief among them being sola scriptura - the Bible alone as my sole guide in matters of faith). Secondly, it exposed the myriad of misrepresentations concerning the Catholic faith made by many men that I had greatly admired (for example, Keith Green and Jimmy Swaggert). Finally, Karl Keating did what I thought no one was capable of doing - he presented a Biblical defense of the Catholic faith.
It is very difficult to describe the intense emotional and intellectual struggle that followed my reading of Catholicism and Fundamentalism. On the one hand I was nothing short of terrified. On the other hand, I was unexpectedly enthralled. I was enthralled by the prospect that the Catholic Church just might be the church established by Christ, but I was terrified of damnation should I and my friends be led astray. There is no way to do justice to my struggle in a few short sentences. Suffice it to say that the ensuing months were agonizingly exciting. They were exciting because it seemed that each day brought some new piece of evidence to my attention. The evidence was growing like a snowball racing down a mountain. The evidence seemed to lead inescapably to Rome. These months were agonizing because despite the evidence in favor of the Catholic Church I was plagued by doubts. These doubts took the form of troubling questions. For example: "What about all the obvious contradictions between the Bible and Catholicism?", and, "What about the scores of scandals in the Church's present and past?" Yet these questions were countered by other, equally troubling questions like, "How do I know - apart from the teaching authority of the Catholic Church - that the Bible is the inspired word of God?", and, "How can I be certain that my understanding of God's word is correct?" At times I came close to despair, wondering if there ever would be any clear-cut answers.
In my hour of need, God sent an angel into my life by the name of Father Benjamin Luther. Father Luther is a Catholic priest who was raised in the Church of Christ. Therefore, his own spiritual journey had taken him down a similar path. I am not at all uncertain that he did not impoverish himself in order to provide me with the books, tapes, and study materials that I needed. Even more important were the hours we would spend on the phone every week discussing the faith. Still more important were the prayers and masses he offered up on my behalf.
Father Luther's prayers were not left unanswered. Eventually, the dust settled and the answers for which I sought came. I could attempt to account for this by pointing to a veritable mountain of literature and notes that give testimony to the untold hours I spent in unrelenting study. However, looking back, I can now see that conversion truly is impossible apart from grace. Argumentation and study - as indispensable as they are - can take one only so far. The gap is ultimately crossed on the bridge of faith, and faith is a gift of God. We can - and must - knock, but it is God who opens the door. It is His promise that if we seek, we will find. (Matthew 7:7)
I would like to conclude with an excerpt from a letter I wrote shortly after my reception into the Catholic Church. The letter was written to Scott and Kimberly Hahn in order to thank them for the prayers and support that they had offered on behalf of me and my family. I share it now because it ties together all of the preceding in just a few sentences.
"For the first time in my adult life, I feel that I can settle into the faith (not, mind you, to be confused with the 'settling in' characteristic of mediocrity). For over a decade, the faith has been something to be debated, wrangled over, figured out, restored, etc.... all without any moorings to historical Christianity. What a burden! Who could possibly be up to such a task? Who could ever feel confident that they had finally arrived at the 'pristine' apostolic faith? Now, finally, the Catholic faith has - contrary to popular belief - set me free to live the faith to the fullest without the uncertainty that comes from setting one's self up as Pope! The faith is no longer an elusive mystery, ravaged and mutilated by the storms of time. Rather, it is preserved, defined, and presented - clearly - by the Mystical Body and Bride of Christ, the Catholic Church. In her, history, reason and the scriptures all converge. No one else can legitimately make that claim.
A fuller account of Bruce Sullivan's journey to the Catholic faith and a study of the issues that lead to his conversion is available in his book, Christ in His Fullness (CHResources, Zanesville, OH). It can be obtained at the Coming Home Resources website.