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Is Rome Home?

What is with all the evangelicals fleeing to the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches? This is a real phenomena that cannot be ignored. I personally know several people who grew up in evangelical Protestant churches and are now members of the Roman church. There’s also been very public evangelical figures making their home in Rome and Constantinople. In 2017, the Bible Answer Man Hank Hanegraaff officially joined the Eastern Orthodox Church. Though he hasn’t officially nailed down his position, Crazy Love author Francis Chan appears to be taking steps in a similar direction.

So what are we to make of all this? In my experience, there are two main motives for evangelicals immersing into the Tigris. And, I want to add that I am in sympathy with both these motives. However, it is my opinion that biblical, fundamental Protestantism better fulfills these longings than the Roman or Eastern churches.

Motive #1: Contemporary evangelicals are thirsty for worship that feels like worship

The contemporary Christian worship movement is now old enough to be traditional. Many Christians have lived and died going to church every Sunday where the worship was accompanied by drums and bass guitars and led by men and women wearing jeans and t-shirts. For them, church is a place where you wear sweatpants and drink coffee and sing songs that 200 years ago would have been considered too juvenile for ten year olds.

This casual approach to worship has left many Christians starving for something that feels weighty, reverent, and religious. And the Catholic church appears to offer exactly that. If you walk into the Catholic mass everything about it screams gravitas! You have stained glass windows, gothic architecture, incense, chanting in a dead language, centuries old liturgies, and clergy with medieval costumes.

Again, I’m in sympathy with this. I’ve also found myself being turned off by the informal liturgy of contemporary American worship and being drawn to something that feels ancient and real and serious. This isn’t an entirely illegitimate desire. But I think that seeking to fulfill this desire by migrating eastward is misguided.

First of all, there’s not as big a difference between contemporary American and Roman and Eastern liturgies as you might expect. Ironically, they both have different means of fulfilling the same ends. In both cases, the goal of church is to create a certain feel and mood.

The low church seeks to summon the presence of God through sacramental music. The high church seeks to summon the presence of God through sacramental bread. In contemporary churches, the priests wear jeans and t-shirts. In sacramental churches, the priests wear collars and robes. One church has smoke and lights. The other has smells and bells.

Though an individual might transfer from the low church to the high church, they take with them the same heart that wants a worshipful experience. In both cases, the same mistake is made of thinking we can conjure up worship with enough special effects. In many cases, the migration toward Rome is not a rejection but an extension of postmodern, relativistic existentialism.

But those who worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth and in the beauty of holiness. They must draw near to God with a sincere heart and full assurance of faith. Though we haven’t always lived up this ideal, the fundamental Protestant doctrine of worship best encourages us to do that.

We believe in the radical idea that God knows how He should be worshipped better than we do. And so we regulate our worship by God’s inspired Word. Biblical worship is not about creating a certain mood, but about pointing our hearts and minds to the character and work of God. This is done through the preaching of the Word and singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs that accurately reflect biblical truth.

There is nothing more weighty than God Himself. You don’t need to seek out a worship experience from either a Catholic priest or a contemporary praise band. God invites you to draw near through Christ. I believe that the doctrines of fundamental Protestant Christianity best allow us to do this.

Motive #2: Contemporary evangelicals are hungry for tradition and stability

When one looks around at all the different Protestant denominations, many of which were formed only a hundred years ago or so, there is something appealing about a church that claims to have existed united and unchanged for the last two millennia. It gives great confidence to have a direct tie to Peter and Paul.

Once again, I understand where this is coming from. I’m a younger man with a great respect for that which is older. I respect tradition and the teachings of the past.

But once again, it’s a mistake to think that this desire can be satisfied in the Roman and Eastern context. It’s just plain inaccurate to think that Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy have remained unchanged for two thousand years. Both have changed considerably in my lifetime, how much more since the time of the apostles. There are also many disagreeing groups within the Catholic and Eastern umbrellas. Their supposed unity is actually just a formal union based on allegiance to a particular bishop.

The idea that the apostolic tradition has been perfectly passed down from the time of the apostle Peter to the time of Pope Francis, is historically indefensible. However, we do have the apostolic tradition preserved for us sufficiently and inerrantly. But it is not preserved through the leaders of a particular religious organization. It is preserved in the apostolic word – the New Testament.

Though many high churches try to appeal to historic precedent, you can’t get any older in church history than the New Testament era. God inspired the apostles to write down everything He wanted us to know about their teachings in the New Testament. And in that written apostolic tradition we have everything we need to be thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

So the Reformers, the Baptists, and the Fundamentalists were not (at least in their minds) inventing something new, or pulling doctrines out of the air. They were appealing to something older than the church hierarchies. In their minds, it was the Catholics, not them, who were the innovators and breakers of tradition. The beauty of sola Scriptura is that we don’t need to follow the supposed heirs of the apostles. We get to follow the actual apostles. I’ll take Paul and John over Francis and Kirill any day.

Conclusion

If you’re one of many Protestants who feel drawn to the Roman and Eastern churches – I get it. I understand the appeal. But don’t be deceived. What you are actually seeking can be better realized in authentic fundamentalism. Biblically regulated worship can fulfill that longing for the presence of God more than any sacramental experience. The apostolic New Testament is sufficient for life and godliness and can give you what supposed apostolic traditions cannot.

To my fellow evangelical and fundamentalists out there – we need to be fostering the kind of Bible-based, authentic worship that satisfies the deep longings of the heart. By not taking worship seriously, we have left people vulnerable to other movements that appear to. We should take this as an opportunity to embrace ordinate, sober-minded, New Testament worship.

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