"Help! All the Kids are Becoming Catholic/Orthodox"

An SOS from my Alma Mater

Photo by Leonhard Niederwimmer on Unsplash

A few weeks back, I received a rather interesting email. The subject line read: “Conversion at Moody.”

A pastor/scholar I know was brought in to address the faculty of my alma mater, Moody Bible Institute, and they were seeking his advice on how to address the rising interest in “liturgical traditions” at Moody. In turn, he was seeking my perspective as a relatively recent Moody grad who is intimately involved in the world of internet Christianity where interest in Catholicism and Orthodoxy is booming.

In essence, it appears the faculty wanted to know why their students were suddenly so interested in Catholicism/Orthodoxy. After all, Moody is a place where they’re fond of telling you that Bible is their middle name. And, in my experience, the professors were firmly convinced that the Bible pointed away from these traditions. For many, I imagine it’s inconceivable why these otherwise intelligent young Evangelicals are being lured away from the fold.

In fairness, that wasn’t true of all the professors. I remember confiding in one of my favorite theology professors there, an Anglican, that I was seriously looking into Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Sheepishly, I asked, “Have you ever felt that way?” Without missing a beat he said, “Oh, of course. Anyone who studies theology seriously considers that at some point.”

I was shocked, and quite comforted, by his openness. But it wasn’t a universal sentiment by any means. You were more likely to hear skepticism about the salvation of Catholics than any admission of the allure of Catholicism.

And it’s those professors that I imagine are the most befuddled by this strange turn of events in Evangelicalism. If only the students would go back to angrily debating Calvinism. That, at least, they know how to handle.

This is uncharted territory.

In this essay, I want to share my thoughts on why I think this allure is so prominent among young Evangelicals and what Protestants can do to retain their theologically inclined youth.

But first, a caveat. There’s often a narrative put forth in apologetics circles that, “Gen Z is becoming Catholic/Orthodox.” This is vastly overstated. Statistically, both Catholicism and Orthodoxy lose more members than they gain from religious switching, and there is no data of a “Gen Z revival” in any part of Christianity in America. So, if any apologists are reading this, please don’t take this article and use it as a clickbait victory lap.

At the same time, I do think it’s true that there is a rise in interest in Catholicism/Orthodox among some people in Gen Z, and it just so happens that those most interested in Catholicism/Orthodoxy are the types of people that show up at Moody: the theologically interested. Put differently, the people who are most likely to spend their free time watching YouTube videos about historical theology.

With that caveat in place, let’s look at some of the reasons young Evangelicals might be drawn toward Catholicism/Orthodoxy and what Protestants can do about that. This is, in essence, a lightly edited version of what I sent to said pastor/scholar.

1. The Gap Between the Fathers and Evangelical Experience/Theology Today

I think this is one of the biggest reasons for the draw to these traditions, especially at a place like Moody. Put simply, theologically-minded Evangelicals are encountering the Church Fathers and saying, "wait a second, that sounds a bit different than what I grew up with." When they then ask what to do with this, they find EO and RC apologists saying, "come over here! We've maintained this faith, unlike Protestants/Evangelicals." Absent any teaching on the Fathers from their pastors, this is a rather strong pull.

To address this, I think a place like Moody can do two things: First, they should be exposing students to the Fathers directly, cutting off the sense that Evangelicals don't care about/are unaware of/are hiding the Fathers. Second, and this is critical, they need to provide a means of understanding continuity and discontinuity. In other words, why is it that the Fathers feel foreign? Is it that Evangelicalism is adrift? Is it that the Fathers set off on a bad path? There are many possible answers, but I think students need some context for reading and making sense of the Fathers. Moody, and schools like it, does a great job of teaching hermeneutics as it relates to Scripture, but I think they could improve in their efforts to give a hermeneutic of historical theology. Otherwise, the simple narrative of "EO/RC maintained the faith, Protestants abandoned it" will ring true.

2. A Lack of Historical Depth in Evangelicalism

I think many young Evangelicals have a view of church history that essentially goes, "The early church (Acts) was good, then it went bad sometime in the Medieval period, Luther fixed it, but Luther's fix was just to read the plain sense of the Bible, so now we can just read the plain sense of the Bible, no history needed." That may be a caricature, but only slightly. From my own experience, one of the single most powerful things that made me pump the brakes when considering RC/EO in my college years was actually learning about Protestant history in a class on Calvin. By reading the Reformers, I was given both a model of engagement with history and a sense of a tradition I could be a part of. Furthermore, I was introduced to why the Reformation mattered. Even though I wouldn’t consider myself a Calvinist, in Calvin I found someone who made Protestantism seem tenable.

One of the challenges facing Evangelical institutions like Moody is that, in being interdenominational, they struggle to offer students a thick traditional identity (i.e., they’re not forming Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, etc.). Still, I think some type of exposure to historic Protestantism is key. The alternative to RC/EO must be more than just a different interpretation of Scripture. It must be a coherent tradition to inhabit. Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy don't just offer a way of seeing the world, they offer a culture to immerse yourself in that so many people feel devoid of. I take it as no coincidence that the rise of interest in traditional Christianity coincided with the rise of interest in sites like ancestry.com or growing nationalism—both of which, in their own way, are trying to offer people a sense of shared, communal identity rooted in the past. To focus on doctrine to the exclusion of communal identity when investigating why people convert would be folly. Protestants must have an answer to this if they want to keep people.

3. A Sense of Grounding

We live in a time of rapid change and overstimulation. In response, people are looking for something stable and structured. RC/EO present people with a sense of historical stability and liturgical traditions broadly offer a structure in which to live out the faith that feels steady. The smells, bells, rituals, and rhythms offer a level of incarnational spirituality in an increasingly virtual world, and they offer people structure at a time when we jump between things faster than ever.

Dissuading young Evangelicals from liturgy entirely might be difficult in this cultural moment (and unnecessary, in my opinion!), but I think at the very least, Evangelicals can offer models of structured devotional life rooted in the Protestant tradition (the BCP, creating a prayer rule, etc.). I can imagine students at Moody quite enjoying doing Morning and Evening Prayer, for example, and this would show a way of having structure without having to “jump ship.”

4. Sacraments

This overlaps with several of the above categories, but I think it’s difficult to walk away from church history without a sense of the centrality of the sacramental life of the church, and furthermore, I think there’s something incarnational once again about the sacraments that goes against the grain of a culture that spends all its time staring at screens. One of the death blows for Protestants is when passionate, pious students are given the impression they have to choose between the sacraments and their Evangelical faith. That, of course, is a false dichotomy, but it’s one that I think Evangelicalism is largely to blame for having lost its sacramental sense.

As a theme in many of these things, I think what a place like Moody should aim for is a message of, “you can have your cake and eat it too,” meaning, you don’t have to abandon Protestantism if you’re drawn toward sacramental worship. In one sense, being interdenominational allows Moody to say, “look, there are a lot of ways of being Protestant, and there are far more riches in this broad tradition than you might imagine.”

The Evangelical Brain Drain

These, of course, are just a few hypotheses. In reality, people convert or consider converting for numerous reasons, and many of them will have little to do with what I’ve outlined above. Still, I think these are illustrative of some of the main currents flowing through these discussions, especially as it relates to the relatively niche group of Bible college students.

Niche though this group may be, it would be dangerous to think this rising interest is meaningless. In some ways, I think there’s the danger of an Evangelical Brain Drain in which the brightest young Evangelicals leave Evangelicalism for other traditions. Reflecting on my own time at Moody, few of my peers whom I respected as theologians have remained Evangelicals. A handful have become Catholic or Orthodox. More have become conservative Anglicans. Several have gone mainline.

That’s not to say that the majority of Moody students leave Evangelicalism. I don’t have statistics on that, but I would be shocked if the majority left. Inevitably, some deconstruct, some convert, but by and large, most stay the course. I feel terribly elitist in saying this, but I can’t think of another way of expressing it: It’s not that some students convert that should be cause for concern. It’s which students convert that would be more worrying.

Like a small town losing all the kids who want to go to college, Evangelicals losing their most theologically interested students should be cause for concern.

At the same time, it must be said, being bookish is not the same as being saintly. There are more important things than passing Systematic Theology with flying colors. Theology, if we are to listen to Evagrius, is about learning to pray. And I can’t say that the brightest theologians—by academic standards—are always those who know how to pray the best. Perhaps that should be the bigger concern.

While people like me pontificate about the Evangelical Brain Drain, the non-denominational church down the street hits triple digits in annual baptisms and has to add a third service. They don’t seem too concerned by this.

It’s been over 30 years since Mark Noll infamously wrote, “The scandal of the Evangelical mind is that there isn’t one.”

In that 30 years, the fastest growing segment of Christianity has been Evangelical Protestantism, specifically non-denominational.

This could just be another sign that the academy and the everyday church attender are growing further apart.

Evangelicalism has always been a bit of a populist movement. I suspect most Evangelicals would rather have packed auditoriums than increase their share of university professorships. However, it strikes me that a future in which the head and the heart of the church are pulled apart is not a good one for anyone.

Solving that particular problem, though, is for another essay on another day.

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