In an age which often seems characterized by vitriol, division, and polarization among Christians, books such as Beth Felker Jones’s Why I Am Protestant offer a welcome respite and compelling counterexample to online shouting matches.
Jones’s book is the second publication in InterVarsity Press’s Ecumenical Dialogue series, which is slated to include three books by different theologians reflecting on their own faiths and traditions with an ecumenical slant. Matthew Levering’s contribution, Why I Am Roman Catholic, was published in 2024. An Eastern Orthodox perspective is forthcoming. In Jones’s contribution to the series, she argues that being a Protestant is both intellectually credible and spiritually sustaining in a world of theological diversity and Christian division.
In Jones’s volume, the reader is treated to a refreshingly positive argument for the riches of the Protestant tradition.
First and most crucially, Jones begins by focusing on “why I am a Christian.” Her description of gradual and grace-filled growth in the life of faith alone makes the book worth reading. As another theologian whose testimony is also of the “I-grew-up-in-a-Christian-home” variety, as Jones puts it, I was touched by her experience of a continual call into deeper relationship with Jesus Christ, alongside her growing conviction of God’s beauty and the joy of living out Jesus’ good news in Christian community. Jones’s testimony is both theologically rich and full of deep, personal conviction—a rare combination.
Beyond telling her own story, Jones’s book serves as a useful guide for ecumenical dialogue in two ways. First, Jones is a charitable reader of her own and of others’ traditions. She never succumbs to polemics, and most of her own arguments focus on the graces she has received within the Protestant tradition. She demonstrates this charity especially clearly in her emphasis on the value of “unity in diversity” (following Paul’s call in 1 Corinthians 12 to celebrate different gifts) within Protestantism and Christianity more broadly.
Jones’s charitable approach to theological difference provides an important model. Her gratitude does not hinder her from articulating intellectual and experiential challenges to Protestantism. Jones approaches these challenges—such as conflicting interpretations of Scripture, the continuing Protestant schism, and historical divergence from the early church—honestly.
Without dismissing them, she presents arguments as to how they might be overcome. For example, in considering the Protestant tendency to divide, Jones argues for a spiritual rather than an institutional reading of the church’s unity. Although she does not support continuing church divisions, she seeks spiritual unity, which she believes lies deeper than institutional divisions. In a similar way, she argues that finding a cohesive, orthodox reading of Scripture is feasible even among divergent theological arguments.
While Jones demonstrates charity, she also writes with clarity and intellectual rigor. One problematic trend in some of the 20th century’s ecumenical movements was abandoning clarity in favor of unity, underplaying or dismissing doctrinal differences. Jones refuses to look past core doctrinal disagreements between Christian traditions.
Second, the book is an important marker of current Protestant and Roman Catholic theological disagreements. As Jones rightly asserts, Luther’s critiques regarding salvation by works accurately described some Catholic theologians but were inaccurate regarding Catholic doctrine according to the Council of Trent. In present ecumenical dialogue, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification is generally understood to have settled this Protestant-Catholic division.
The questions Jones raises are more nuanced and ordinary: How do we read Scripture? What is the nature of the church? How do we understand how much of the church’s historical practices and structures are binding on contemporary Christians? Jones’s work illumines doctrinal differences, moving ecumenical discussion forward.
Nevertheless, I was left with a few questions. First, despite Jones’s emphasis on unity in diversity as a hallmark of Protestantism, I wonder whether Protestantism itself provides enough theological unity to justify the project. Would a better title perhaps have been “Why I Am Baptist” (or Presbyterian or Anglican)? If doctrinal differences within the Protestant tradition are significant enough to repeatedly divide church bodies, is it unified enough to constitute a whole?
On a more technical theological point, it does seem Jones leans too heavily on Augustine to support her own ecclesiology of grace. Jones helpfully highlights Augustine’s rejection of the Donatist claims to be the pure church as important for his ecclesiology. However, Augustine primarily condemned the Donatists because they have broken communion with the church Catholic not because of their puritanism.
As Jones rightly points out, Augustine’s own reading of the controversy is focused on the essential nature of the institutional church as located in the communion of bishops in apostolic succession. Bishops, regardless of the role of the Bishop of Rome, seemed to have a more crucial theological role in the early church than Jones references. Is she reading Augustine against himself? Perhaps this question reflects some larger concerns (which Jones acknowledges) about Protestants arguing for an ecclesiological rather than Christological continuity with the church of the first four centuries.
In addition, although this goes beyond the scope of this project, I would have enjoyed hearing how to deal with division within Protestant churches. Why is it so hard to display charity toward people who share much of our own understanding of the nature of church or the authority of Scripture but differ on other issues? Jones draws heavily from various theories of Anglican ecclesiology.
Yet Jones’s hopeful perspective is particularly poignant given that one group of Anglican bishops called for a radical rupture of communion with others following the global Anglicans’ statement of October 16. Is the deepest challenge for Protestants talking with Roman Catholics, or is it Protestants learning how to better talk with each other?
Given that Jones’s book is part of an ecumenical series, both her book and Levering’s Why I Am Roman Catholic share an emphasis on spiritual growth, the importance of grace, and the impact of Scripture. Their points of common spiritual experience do not in and of themselves resolve the doctrinal differences between their traditions. However, they do present a compelling example of what Pope Francis called the “ecumenism of life”—one in which Jones and Levering call other Christians to walk. Jones’s most compelling call, however, is not to overcome differences with Catholics. Rather, her generous reading of the Protestant tradition provides a hopeful approach for Protestants to better figure out their own “ecumenism of life” together.
Elisabeth Rain Kincaid is director of the Institute for Faith and Learning at Baylor University, where she also serves as associate professor for ethics, faith, and culture at George W. Truett Theological Seminary. She is the author of Law from Below.
