Fox News’ highly reluctant Jesus follower has found a new church.
Kirsten Powers, USA Today columnist and contributor to Fox News, announced her decision on a live broadcast of “The Five.”
“Tomorrow night at 7 o’clock, I'm becoming Catholic!” she told viewers.
Powers, who grew up in the Episcopal Church, became an evangelical about 9 years ago, after attending Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. Listening to Tim Keller preach opened the door for her to believe in God.
“I came to realize that even if Christianity wasn't the real thing, neither was atheism,” she wrote in a 2013 testimony for CT. “I began to read the Bible. My boyfriend would pray with me for God to reveal himself to me.”
For a while, Powers felt no connection to God. That changed during an overseas trip, where Powers said Jesus spoke to her. Eventually she joined a Bible study, an experience that changed her life.
“I'll never forget standing outside that apartment on the Upper East Side and saying to myself, ‘It’s true. It's completely true,’” she wrote it 2013. “The world looked entirely different, like a veil had been lifted off it. I had not an iota of doubt. I was filled with indescribable joy.”
Powers gave few details about her decision to become Catholic. She did thank Father Jonathan Morris, pastor of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in the Bronx, on Twitter.
More than 100,000 adults a year join the Catholic Church, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University. Seven percent of Catholics and 11 percent of mass attenders are converts, according to CARA, and those converts are among the most active Catholics.
Overall, about half of Americans say they have a “close connection” to the Catholic Church, according to a September 2015 Pew Research Report. One in 10 (9%) are former Catholics.
