Gerald R. McDermott | Friday, 11 April 2008
Pope to find US Protestants more receptive
Benedict XVI will be welcomed by many American Protestants when he visits the US next week.
When Pope Benedict XVI goes to America next week, he will find a religious landscape different from that which greeted his predecessor John Paul II. He will be greeted by an American Catholicism that has been haemorrhaging non-Hispanic whites, mainline Protestants who have diminished in numbers and importance, and the emergence of evangelicalism as the largest religious tradition in America.
Benedict may also find less Protestant hostility to Rome and the papacy than at any previous time in American history.
These are some of the startling implications of the most important survey of American religion in decades. In February 2008 the Pew Research Center released its first report on the "US Religious Landscape Survey," a massive study that conducted 35,000 in-depth interviews of a representative sample of American adults between May and August 2007.
Some things have stayed the same in American religion. For example, atheists and agnostics taken together still number only 4 percent of American adults, and Protestants still outnumber Catholics by more than 2 to 1.
But there are striking differences. The Protestant market share is shrinking markedly: as recently as the 1980s Protestants were two-thirds of the adult population, but now they are only 51 percent. According to the Landscape Survey’s summary, "The United States is on the verge of becoming a minority Protestant country."
There is also a new "loosening of denominationalism." More than one-quarter of American adults (28 percent) have left the faith in which they were raised in favour of another religion—or no religion at all. 16 percent of American adults say they are unaffiliated with any particular religion. But one-third of these people are adopting the European pattern of "believing without belonging." They say religion is "important" to them, but they haven’t joined a religious group.
No American religion has lost more than Catholicism: 32 percent of those raised Catholic have left the Church — half of those have become Protestant, usually joining an evangelical church.
The American Catholic Church has retained its market share—one-fourth of America—but only because of Hispanic immigration. Latinos are now one-third of all U.S. Catholics, and nearly half of all Catholics between the ages of 18 and 29. This reflects the burgeoning Latino community — now 14 percent of the U.S. population and projected to be 29 percent by 2050.
Twenty per cent of all American Latinos have left the Catholic Church, and most have joined evangelical churches. According to Gastón Espinoza, president of La Comunidad of Hispanic Scholars of Religion, there are "nine million US Latino Protestants [and they] are overwhelmingly Evangelical and Pentecostal in their orientation."
Another big change is the "homogenous, ageing and diminishing" state of mainline Protestantism. Once the majority of Americans, now these Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians and Congregationalists number only 18.1 percent of American adults.
They are divided internally by questions about sexuality, biblical authority, and the necessity of Jesus for salvation. "Progressives" regard the biblical restriction of sex and procreation to heterosexual marriage as unenlightened and uncompassionate, and think non-Christians can be saved without Jesus. Self-styled "orthodox" say the Bible’s vision of sex and marriage is true for all ages, and that Jesus is the only Saviour.
Progressives define the gospel as liberation from earthly structures of oppression such as racism, sexism, heterosexism and imperialism. The orthodox retain the traditional definition of gospel as salvation by Jesus’ death and resurrection from sin, death and the devil.
Evangelicals now number 26.3 percent of American adults. Unlike mainline Protestants, they are young and growing. But like mainline Protestants, they are also divided. While all evangelicals agree that the Bible is their authority and they should share their faith with others, there are differences between those who prefer the term "fundamentalist" and the rest of the evangelicals.
Fundamentalists tend to read the Bible more literally, while other evangelicals tend to look more carefully at genre and literary and historical context. Fundamentalists question the value of human culture that is not created by Christians or related to the Bible, whereas more evangelicals see God’s "common grace" working in and through all human culture. Fundamentalists tend to restrict their social witness to protests against homosexual practice and abortion, but most evangelicals also want to fight racism, sexism and poverty.
The growing strength of evangelicalism is one reason why the Pope may find more openness from Protestants than ever before. While fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals continue to denounce Catholicism as false religion because they think it teaches salvation by good works, evangelical leaders in recent years have found common cause with Catholics. This began with the pro-life movement, in which evangelicals and Catholics found themselves working together in the 1970s and 80s to fight abortion-on-demand. Then in 1994 prominent evangelical leaders joined hands with Catholic theologians to start "Evangelicals and Catholics Together," a movement that has pointed to theological agreements on the Bible and salvation while at the same time disagreeing about prayer to Mary and the saints, purgatory, and other doctrines.
For decades evangelicals in non-denominational charismatic and Pentecostal churches, which may number half of all American evangelicals, have felt an affinity for their brethren in the Catholic charismatic movement.
A recent article in Pro Ecclesia, an American journal "of Catholic and Evangelical theology," argues that Jonathan Edwards, the most distinguished American theologian ever and a hero to most evangelicals, held a view of salvation similar to that of Thomas Aquinas, perhaps Catholicism’s greatest theologian.
One of the most noted developments in American evangelicalism in recent years has been the rise of "emergent" and "missional" churches, which are dominated by 20-somethings who are less concerned with doctrine than social action and mystery--which some find in Catholic-like liturgy. Many of these young evangelicals admired John Paul II’s boldness and warmth, and find attractive Catholicism’s devotion to social justice, defence of biblical morality, and opposition to capital punishment.
Latino evangelicals will also be attentive to the Pope’s visit. The Landscape Survey found that most of them left Catholicism not because something negative "pushed" them out, but because the desire for more intimate religious experience in evangelical churches "pulled" them.
According to Professor Espinoza, "Many Latino Catholics who convert to Protestantism feel a little betrayed by their previous faith - wanting to know why it took a conversion experience to another tradition to facilitate and develop a relationship with Jesus Christ. But they are also less hostile to the papacy than fundamentalists because they admire the positions on family issues which the last two popes have taken."
Even Baptists, who now represent one-third of all US Protestants and close to one-fifth of the American population, have a "selective appreciation" for the Pope. Michael McClymond, religion historian at St Louis University, says that Baptists, who in 1960 led the opposition to (Catholic) John F. Kennedy’s election to the presidency, now show a growing recognition that John Paul II and Benedict XVI have become the "de facto leaders of world-wide Christianity."
Many mainline Protestants will also listen appreciatively to the Pope next week. The progressives among them oppose Catholic positions on birth control, women’s ordination, abortion and homosexuality. But the orthodox -- for example, Episcopalians who now call themselves "Anglicans" to protest their denomination’s acceptance of liberal theology -- appreciate the Vatican’s commitments to historic doctrine and morality. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (at 4.8 million members, the largest American Lutheran church) is beginning to follow the direction of the liberal Episcopal Church, but it also signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999) between the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church—abandoning the anathemas Lutherans and Catholics hurled at each other nearly four hundred years before.
In short, next week in America Benedict will face a new American religious scene. He may also get a hearing that is historically unprecedented.
Gerald R. McDermott is Professor of Religion at Roanoke College, the second oldest Lutheran-related college in the US. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Understanding Jonathan Edwards: An Introduction to America’s Theologian (forthcoming from Oxford University Press).
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Jude Fonseka said...Interesting use of the word ‘market share’ =S
Anyways I feel this ‘acceptance’ by the Protestants will help more come to the Catholic faith, when minds are willing to listen and THEN make a judgement, it’s better appreciated than a mind that comes there to protest and cause trouble.
Australia | Friday, 11 April 2008 at 5:29 pm
Ikenna said...A good preview of the kind of America the Pope is going to face next week. Praying a lot for a successful trip
Nigeria | Friday, 11 April 2008 at 8:18 pm
Ron Henderson said...Interesting commentary on the religious landscape the pope will ecnounter in the USA next week. As for me, the Bible is to be our only basis for belief and action. The RC church places tradition on a higher level than the Bible, and that is absolutely wrong. God sets the pace for humanity as outlined in the Scriptures, not human traditions developed over the years as we see in Catholicism.
-- | Friday, 11 April 2008 at 11:43 pm
Pat S said...Ron,
Who wrote the table of contents for that Bible you point to? Could it have been tradition? The Catholic Church: publishers of Bibles for the past 2000 years…
Pat
-- | Saturday, 12 April 2008 at 11:06 am
Jude Fonseka said...^ If it’s wrong, prove it. The Bible came AFTER the church. For a good 380 years, how did the bishops and religious teach the public? Through oral tradition passed down from the disciples of Jesus. The Church places scripture as higher priority, prima scriptura. However, we don’t adhere to ‘sola scriptura’ where it’s ‘scripture alone’ - if it was really scripture alone, then scripture must indicate it right?
If you say that scripture is the ONLY basis for belief, then scripture itself should say that, of course it doesn’t.
1 Timothy 3:15 says ‘the pillar and bulwark of the truth is the church’
Taking this into account as well as the fact that the Bible only was compiled in 390 A.D and it would have taken a good 20 years to reach the Christian public (considering the times) - there had to be another way that they learnt their faith.
Yes, oral tradition, passed down from the disciples themselves.
Australia | Saturday, 12 April 2008 at 12:25 pm
Ron Henderson said...I am afraid, Pat, that I do not follow your argument. The Bible I talk about was translated from sources that eventually go back to the originals; the dead sea scrolls test the authenticity of these; so do archaeological discoveries in the main, do the same for what is referred to as the New Testament. As regards the Catholic Church being publishers of Bibles for the past 2000 years, that is historically inaccurate; 2000 years ago take us to AD 8. Where was the RC church then? Ask your priest what the RC church thinks of tradition vs. the Bible.
Canada | Saturday, 12 April 2008 at 1:16 pm
Jude Fonseka said...Ron, answer my argument instead of Pat’s. Don’t be so naive enough to think Pat meant an exact date. He didn’t literally mean 2000 years. It’s an estimate.
‘The Bible I talk about is translated from sources that eventually go back to the originals’ - This is rather unclear. Do you mean the NT and OT or NT only or OT. Different things happened with the OT and NT. There isn’t a set formula.
What is fact is, that the bishops at the time, around 380 A.D, confirmed at the council of carthage what was initially put together in 180 A.D or so. And hence the debate over what was authentic and not officially was closed. Even with your arguments over Pat’s statements, it doesn’t prove ‘sola scriptura’- the fact remains that the Bible came after Jesus established authority with the disciples. Around 140 years after his death was only when the Bible starting to take physical manifestation, in other words the words of Jesus were written down. However this isn’t all of it agreed, some things were written down as far back as 56 A.D, but well after Paul’s death was it only debated as to what was authentic and not.
Oral tradition set the standard until scripture became reality. Whatever point in the gospel you point to as being the definite starting of the Church, it would STILL be BEFORE anything was written down, and BEFORE the Bible was compiled as a whole. So talk about dead sea scrolls don’t do anything to prove ‘sola scriptura’. Absolutely nothing.
Australia | Saturday, 12 April 2008 at 10:51 pm
Jude Fonseka said...Another thing Rob is, we don’t take tradition over the Bible. If the Bible forbids something, we don’t do it. The Church’s stance is more ‘prima scriptura’, but in no case is it ‘sola scriptura’ as already pointed out twice.
And no, we don’t worship Mary or worship statues, just in case you are thinking of bringing that up.
Australia | Saturday, 12 April 2008 at 10:53 pm
Ron Henderson said...Jude, nice try. I am afraid you have it some what wrong, however. We do not have a problem with the OT; these books are known; they comprise our Bible, and are among the Jewish scriptures. The scriptures the disciples and Christ had were of course the OT. Jesus quoted these very heavily. All the writers of the NT quoted these. When Paul said ‘all scriptures are given by inspiration and are...’ he had only the OT at the time. When Paul reasoned with the gentiles and Jews in Acts 17:2 he was using the OT. Jesus himself spoke of the scriptures many times to the Jewish leaders. In Luke 24:25-27 he referred to the scriptures naming the categories (Moses, prophets, etc.), as he proved to them prophetic fulfilment of his life.
In 2Peter 3:15,16 we find Peter referring to Paul’s writings and calling them scriptures. Therefore, we know that the early church after Christ did indeed have scriptures. First they had what we call the OT; many references to this in the NT. Secondly they had the writings of Paul, the gospel writers, and those of James and Jude. Paul wrote very early in his ministry, having his writings read in the churches. Paul himself says that he delivered to the converts that which was delivered to him. It is therefore certainly not correct to say that the early church (of the disciples) went by oral tradition, and that our NT does not go back to the originals.
We certainly know that there were many writings of Jesus that were in circulation, and available to the gospel writers. Before the Gospels were written (ca. 50-100 AD) the disciples used the OT as source material, as shown above, and also Paul’s writings, written before AD 67 when he died. So the early church had the OT, Paul’s writings, first gospels, and other sources mentioned here and there; Luke writes in Acts 1:1-3, for example of his thesis which he made of the life of Jesus. And as said above, Paul wrote from, besides the OT, what had been delivered to him.
Part 1.
Canada | Sunday, 13 April 2008 at 10:59 am
Ron Henderson said...Part 11.
The OT was by the time of Christ already accepted as ‘canonical.’ Putting them together started with Ezra ca. 450 BC; at Jamnia, AD 110, they only underscored what was already listed and canonical; this is just a brief survey. The NT books were confirmed in today’s order around AD 367. The books were not made then, nor put in order then, but were recognized as already canonical or properly selected by the collaters.
It is inaccurate to say that the Bible took physical form around 140 years after Jesus’ death. If you mean as a whole unit, then maybe. As you well said, the NT books were written early, by Paul and Mark and other writers. And these were used to teach scripture. 2Tim 3:16, 17 makes this very clear. It matters not at what point people ‘recognised’ the Bible as ‘the Bible.’ The fact is, the scriptures existed early, OT and then NT books; and these were used by the early church. Don’t be fooled by the term ‘oral tradition.’ If something is unwritten it is unknown except when referred to in a written source.
When we speak of the RC church and tradition we all know that this means the inventions, teachings, and dogma arrived at during the many counsels they had. There are a host of these unbiblical teachings that you have and that you put above the Bible.
-- | Sunday, 13 April 2008 at 11:27 am
Ron Henderson said...For us Protestants, the Bible does declare itself as the sole determiner of truth and belief, just as Martin Luther told you guys years ago. For example, in Isa. 8:20 it says that if one does not speak according to the law and the testimony, then there is not truth in him; 2Tim. 3:16, 17 says that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for the benefit of the entire church in their Christian growth.
Jesus tells us in the Revelation that we must not take away from the scriptures or we endanger our eternal life; while this is about the Revelation, it also applies to the rest of scripture. Jesus says that the scriptures testify of him and that in them there is eternal life. Paul says that we must never preach another gospel other than what he has preached, not even if that gospel is from an angel!! (if it contradicts the gospel given, of course). So it is very clear that the Bible presents itself as the authoritative word of God. So whatever tradition you have, if it is not in harmony with the Bible then throw it out!
We all know that the RC Church has traditions that are extra biblical and that are above the Bible. The veneration of saints, Mariology, immaculate conception, transsubstantiation, purgatory, hell, limbo, confessional, Precepts, and a host of others. Your own Catechism tells you of a good example, the change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, done on no biblical authority, but by the authority of the RC Church itself!
-- | Sunday, 13 April 2008 at 11:45 am
Jude Fonseka said...Ron, thanks for giving me another brief overview of history. However your part 1 doesn’t prove your initial post:
“As for me, the Bible is to be our only basis for belief and action.”
Paul and the disciples may have had quoted the OT, and so did Jesus and many others at the time. But the Bible isn’t only the OT, the NT wasn’t confirmed until 380 A.D, that fact still stands. As for the oral traditions, early CHRISTIANS didn’t follow all the traditions that the OT did (Jews) considering the old covenant was superseded by Christ himself, I do not see how this statement holds:
“It is therefore certainly not correct to say that the early church (of the disciples) went by oral tradition, and that our NT does not go back to the originals.”
Unless of course you wish to imply that the NT is just a rewrite of the OT. Which it isn’t, so until the NT was affirmed are you implying that everyone still lived by the OT? No, that’s not true at all, but that’s what you are implying.
Addressing part 2 next.
Australia | Sunday, 13 April 2008 at 11:56 am
Jude Fonseka said...Your attacks at the RC isn’t valid until you provide proof. You are merely providing an opinion on ‘unbiblical teachings’. Some scriptures existed very early, for e.g. Paul’s. But some weren’t written until much later. In either case, like I already said, the scriptures, no matter how early it was, was written after Christ’s death. And they weren’t written by the actual disciples themselves, but people learning from the disciples, which adds years. The general public did not know or learn of these scriptures until 100’s of years later.
They stuck to tradition and the teachings taught by the disciples, they knew which traditions from old were intact and which weren’t. Sola scriptura doesn’t stand when scripture itself doesn’t give reference to it. If you want to claim that biblical fact is by scripture alone, then where in the bible does it say ‘only use scripture’?
1 Timothy 3:15 - The pillar and bulwark of the truth is the church. Why? Because it’s true, the church was instituted before scripture, the teachings existed yes, but a means of teaching was oral tradition until scripture could be studied.
Australia | Sunday, 13 April 2008 at 12:01 pm
Jude Fonseka said...I’m not going to address the issues of purgatory and etc individually here because there is only 2000 characters I’m permitted, however you can do a google search on the matter. It is up to you to prove that scripture forbids these concepts since you are the one doing the accusing. I didn’t even bring it up, so until then, you have only brought up normative statements.
You also haven’t proved how the Church has taken away from scriptures. The only Church that has followed the teachings of the early church is the catholic church. Looking at commentaries from the early fathers and early teachers and defenders of the faith, protestant resembles absolutely nothing to it.
Funny you should bring up Luther, he was the one who was angry at James’ gospel. Luther came 1500 years after the scripture. To imply that Luther was correct would mean the church (as a whole) was in error for 1500 years and would contradict the statements in the Bible that Christ would always be with the Church. A church that is erroneous doesn’t have Christ with them (in terms of faith and morals)
Furthermore Christ established a hierarchy; show me which of the 30,000 protestant denominations offering ‘the truth’ have a hierarchy as established by Christ. Every time someone disagrees with their Church, they take it upon themselves to interpret and go preach and hence lead many more into error.
‘By their works will you know them’ - I’m sure it was not Christ’s prime intention to establish 30,000 denominations.
Australia | Sunday, 13 April 2008 at 12:06 pm
Francesca said...I think it is true that Protestant Evangelicals are seeing the leadership about moral issues emerging amongst Roman Catholics which they wish they had, but don’t, and that, for that reason, they feel an affinity for RCs which they’ve never felt before. Protestants and Catholics still differ on basic doctrinal points, such as which comes first, the Bible or the guys who wrote the Bible and compiled the canon, and excluded Gnostic Gospels from that canon. But thinking Protestants are less hostile to Catholicism than they were half a century ago, because they see RC leaders courageously holding the line.
United Kingdom | Monday, 14 April 2008 at 2:22 am
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