This last Easter I celebrated the seventh year since I chose to leave the Lutheran Church and become a Roman Catholic. (I always celebrate it on Easter, because I can never precisely remember the calendar date that I converted, and I do not see why the solar year should get preference over the lunar year anyways.) Since that time, many people have asked me for my conversion story, and, for about as many people as ask, I have given about as many versions of the story, and all of them are true. I tell the story sometimes from the perspective of Divine Providence (as far as I can divine it), relating the various ways that God pointed me in the direction of the Church from my youngest days, almost foretelling my future conversion. Sometimes I tell the story from the point of view of my developing interior life of prayer which, with fits and starts, always led me closer to the spiritual tradition of the Catholic Church, if not always without the admixture of error and misunderstanding on my part. I also tell the story from the point of view of my developing doctrinal sensibilities as rooted in Sacred Scripture, which, while not the initial steps on the road to Catholicism, ultimately proved to be the decisive ones. There are so many versions of the same story because, by the time I decided to convert to Catholicism I had a thousand reasons to be Catholic and only one not to be: my own sense of pride.
Recently, I was asked to give a talk to a lovely group of Catholics from Lyon College about my journey. Realizing that discussing the more providential and spiritual aspects of my conversion might seem overly introspective for such a group, I decided to give my lecture more on the concrete ideas that led me to convert. I am reproducing the lecture here, with some embellishment, as best as I can remember it while consulting my notes, recognizing that my treatment of the topics covered is neither exhaustive nor even adequate for a serious scholarly discussion. My lecture was not intended to be either. This is a simple history of MY theological reflections when I was aged 17-19; some of my thinking is more nuanced now than it was, and some of it is less so. Please be charitable.
Crossing the Tiber: A Convert's Journey
Today, as I watched the coverage of the Conclave, there were very strong feelings that motivated the shaping of my talk today. Eight short years ago, though they seem like a lifetime when you are a freshman in college, I was watching the same scene unfold on national television after the death of John Paul II. At that point, I had already decided to convert to the Catholic faith but, because of the RCIA schedule at the local parish, I was not permitted to start my instruction until the next Fall.
At the time, I was struck by the solemnity and grandeur of the moment, a moment which was being carefully watched by all the national media, whether religious or not. The thing that kept running through my mind the whole time was, "Baptists (the faith I was raised with) have nothing like this. Lutherans (the faith that I had chosen for myself not six months earlier) have nothing like this." What a striking thing that the head of this one Church should get so much attention. Sure, the election of the President of the Southern Baptist Convention gets a blurb in the local papers, but nothing like this, and Lutherans are almost invisible.
One day later, and I, the mainline Lutheran boy trying to be Catholic, watched with absolute joy as the announcement was made the Joseph Ratzinger would be Pope Benedict XVI. I liked this guy. His book, "Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith" was one of the first Catholic religious works that I had really devoured on my own. It had given me the first theologically sound explanation of the role of the Holy Spirit in the Church that I had ever thought reasonable, and I already knew that he was a friend of more traditional liturgy, which I was already involved in. Pope Benedict was my first pope, and I was very happy about that.
Let me give you a little of my background.
I was born right here in Batesville, AR; I grew up about forty-five minutes north of here in the thriving metropolis of Ash Flat. My mother was a devout Baptist. My father had been raised Church of Christ and was a devout...golfer. At first there was a compromise between Baptist and Church of Christ, where I would to the Baptist Church one week and the Church of Christ the next week, but at seven I decided to give my life to God (a time when Baptists say that they are "saved") and become a member of Spring River Baptist Church. I was baptized a week later. Although to Catholics it may seem rather old for Baptism and rather young for a life-changing conversion, in the Baptist Church I was considered VERY young, almost too young, for baptism. I know, however, what I did and what I felt, and ever since I have been thoroughly convinced that those Catholics who either (1) deny that children can have profound spiritual experiences or (2) deny that children have the intellects both to earn merit and commit mortal sin have no idea of children's capacity.
In the Baptist Church, my mama was my Sunday School teacher for most of my adolescent life. She was a very capable teacher and I credit her with both my knowledge of and love for the Scriptures. She very faithfully taught me what I would consider the key features of the Baptist version of Christianity, the main points of which are as follows:
(1) The Bible is the written Word of God and the only rule of faith for Christians.
(2) There are two ordinances- baptism and the Lord's Supper- and both of them are merely symbols of our relationship with God.
(3)"Once saved, always saved"- meaning that once one repents of their sin, believes in the Lord Jesus and in his death and resurrection, confessing it in a public manner, and commits their life to Him as their Lord and Savior, all their sins-past, present, and future-are wiped away. At that moment one is assured of heaven, even if they should fall for a time.
(4)Every local church is independent of the other local churches and should be run in a democratic manner.
(5) Worship is generally non-liturgical and unscripted, unlike Catholic, Lutheran, or Episcopalian services.
I was Baptist for a long time, so a lot of things happened to me that influenced my thinking, of course, but one of the most profound experiences that I would ever have happened when I was eleven years old and attending Church Camp over the summer. In the evening we would gather to listen to a long, impassioned sermon by the main preacher of the camp, where we would be exhorted to either give our lives to God for the first time or rededicate our lives to him if we were not living as we ought to be. I remember being struck to the core during one of those sermons, which were mostly about the stinging fires of Hell. I realized, while listening to the descriptions of heaven and hell, just how powerful and majestic God truly was and how wonderful the story of salvation was to me. At the end of the sermon, when there was generally some time left open for people to respond to the sermon, I remember walking up and praying, kneeling on the ground and just wanting to be as close to God as I could. When one of the assistant preachers came to talk with me, all I said was, if I recall correctly, "I want to rededicate my life to God and I want to be a preacher." Like I said, those who say that young children cannot have profound religious experiences have no friend in me.
Now, I was a pretty good student, and because I had every intention, from then on, of becoming a Baptist preacher, particularly a "hellfire and brimstone" preacher like the one I had heard at Church Camp, I tried to learn as much as I could about my faith. I generally read the Bible everyday, sometimes even toting it around with me at school. By the time I was sixteen, however, reading the Bible had lead me into a few doubts regarding the fundamentals of my Baptist faith.
(1) If the Bible was the only certain way to know God's will, or at least the only rule of faith, why isn't there a list of inspired books actually included in the Bible? How do we know that these are the only Scriptures, and if there is some other way of determining what ought to be included, isn't that at least one rule of faith that is not included in the Bible?
(2) Baptism seems pretty important in the New Testament, to the point that St. Paul says, "Even so, Baptism now saves you...." (Epistle to the Romans) and both Mark and Luke lay it down as a condition for the reception of the Holy Spirit. And why did St. Paul also say to the Corinthians "The cup that we share, is it not a communion in the blood of Christ?" And, in another place, "He who eats and drinks unworthily will be guilty of the body and blood of Christ"? How could someone be guilty of profaning something that wasn't there?
(3) If the whole point of Jesus' teaching was to get us saved, why didn't he get to the point faster instead of spending so much time telling us how to live? Essentially, it seemed to me, from most preachers' description of "meat and potatoes" preaching (telling people how to get saved and why) that Jesus was not a "meat and potatoes" preacher.
(4) If every church is supposed to be democratic and independent, what, for goodness sake, were the apostles, especially St. Paul, doing bossing all the local churches around and telling them to get in line? I can only imagine what would have happened if someone called an "apostle" from the Convention were to try any of that business with Spring River Baptist! Something was missing from the Baptist churches' organization.
(5)If liturgical worship should be considered "vain repetitions", as the King James version of the Bible says, then why did Old Testament prayers contain so many repetitions and scripted prayers. Was Jesus really speaking badly of Jewish prayers, in which he participated so many times? What about the psalm where the phrase, "his mercy endureth forever" is repeated at each verse? How is that, or any other hymn with a refrain, different in substance from a litany?
Around this time, after struggling with these questions for a while, I realized that, while I still wanted to be a preacher, I could no longer in good conscience become a Baptist preacher.
So, at ages sixteen and seventeen, around the time I became mobile with my first car, I set out on a sort of spiritual journey. I felt sort of...adrift. I used that car to go basically EVERYWHERE to Church. People started recognizing me as the boy who went to a different Church almost every Sunday. I went to Methodist churches, Pentecostal churches, Lutheran churches, other Baptist Churches, and, yes, even a Catholic church. I was looking for that one church that would perfectly fit the list of beliefs that I had drawn up for myself.
Finally, not finding any church that could match all my beliefs, I gave up and decided to join the one church I had visited that seemed like it would just leave me alone and let me believe what I wanted to believe. It was a Lutheran Church ELCA, the very liberal branch of Lutheranism. It was here that I first became acquainted with liturgical worship and slowly, although I hated it at first, I came to really enjoy it. The pastor, who was a woman (another big no-no in the Baptist Church), had been my piano teacher when I was a little boy. The congregation consisted of fairly well-to-do and well-educated yankees who tried to make me feel "welkom". I loved it and became a member after a couple months of attending services there regularly.
The funny thing is that the more I drifted in my religious opinions the more I turned to God in regular prayer. From the Lutheran tradition, rooted as it is in a catholic heritage, I slowly tried to bring in more and more liturgical and Catholic elements into my daily prayer life, just to add more content and significance to it. I must have creeped my poor Baptist mother out, chanting away upstairs, lighting candles, and burning incense until a thin haze would escape from my room every time I opened the door. A less trusting mother would have thought I was engaging in different recreations entirely.
Let's fast-forward a bit. A few months after joining my local Lutheran church, I headed off to Hope College, a Calvinist school in Holland, Michigan. While there, I spent some time going to Lutheran churches, but I was still a wanderer at heart and found my way into all sorts of Churches on Sunday morning. I went to a couple Reformed churches, which seemed to me like the most mind-numbingly dull service ever conceived by the human mind (all the length of a Baptist service but with none of the passion); I went to college chapel three times a week and on Sunday evening like most Hope College freshmen of any religious inclination. (For those who think that the number of times I went to chapel seems incredible, I would add that every chapel service, which was entirely voluntary, was generally standing-room only in a Church that could easily hold a thousand students. True, there were 2,800 students at Hope, but for a weekday service most preachers would consider that a pretty good turnout, and on the weekends many students went to local churches or went back home.) I also went to the Catholic Church nearby on several occasions, and I was now pretty comfortable with the way the Mass worked and was able to fully participate in it (except for receiving communion, of course).
As I said, I was still a wanderer, looking for just the right church to fit my needs. However, by this time, I began to realize just how prideful the process had become for me. Should I really be looking for the Church that matches my beliefs, or should I, instead, try to find the Church which has the most authority to tell ME what I ought to believe? If I could answer that question, then whatever might be my own opinions on this or that doctrinal matter, I ought to be prepared to submit to whomever the search might turn up as the most authoritative church.
The question, then, was this: "Did the Lutheran church have authority from Christ to tell me what I ought to believe? Did they even claim to have this authority, as the early apostles did?"
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