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Looking at tradition would also help evangelicals learn about Christian liturgical traditions, like Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism, that many evangelicals reject because they say liturgy is unbiblical. When did these practices come to be? It turns out many of them came to be very early on in church history when people were close historically to the apostles themselves. There must be something to these practices that the early Christians thought was perfectly consistent with what they had received from the apostles.

And I think that would do a couple of things. It would turn down the volume of the rhetoric from evangelicals, at least free-church Protestants. They would understand this goes back a long way. That may not convince them that it is right, but at least it would show them that it was widely held and that Christians who were right there on top of the early church practiced them. That was quite liberating for me, when I became aware of the writings of some of the church fathers and especially the liturgical aspects. Some of the folks who have read my blog post on my return to the church have misunderstood my reading of the church fathers. They think I went back and tried to find theology, and that really wasn't it for me. It was the practices of the church that were more important. I did some research years ago on the relationship of Greek philosophy and the Christian doctrine of God, and that was very helpful. But that's when I first began reading the fathers. One finds the practice of penance very early on during the times in which Christians were being persecuted. Some of the Christians who had denied their faith had to publicly repent for their sins and suffer penance. This was considered to be perfectly consistent with a doctrine of faith.

Were you surprised by the number and strength of the reactions you received?

Yes, I'm shocked. What it did to me, though, was create a sense of humility that I don't think I ever had before in my entire life. I felt a sense of responsibility that had been placed on me by God to conduct myself in a way that was neither scandalous to the Catholic Church nor the evangelical world. This is a unique opportunity, and I don't know where it is going to go from here. But it is a unique opportunity to be able to engage both my Catholic friends and my Protestant friends in a way that we can have mutual understanding and maybe move toward some sort of Christian unity, even if it's not ecclesiastical.

The number of e-mails that I have received and the number of comments on websites—I would have never predicted it. I think I underestimated the deep divisions that were still there, at least among lay evangelicals and Catholics more so than the academics who interact with each other more often. Non-denominational Bible church folks are still reading stuff about Catholicism published in the 1950s. Evangelicals have a responsibility to educate their people on this. And I think Catholics, as well, have an obligation to set the record straight about evangelicalism.

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May (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51