Where did all of the teachings and practices of the Early Church go in many of today’s Evangelical Churches? Why have they stripped so much of the richness of the Christian faith away? I am a Protestant who belongs to a church which posesses Tradition as part of our authority in teaching and doctrine. I don’t know how you can’t contain these ancient practices of Christianity in your worship. They are as Biblical as the Gospels themselves!
I am not sure what traditions you mean, but I’m going to give this a go. I have often wondered about this, as I live in an area where Evangelicals and Fundamentalists (not exactly coextensive terms) are far and away the largest religious groups. As I grew up among them, it seemed to me (a) that their beliefs were not terribly different from my own (I’m Catholic), just kind of “stripped down” and (b) that they were plain and basic in every other way as well. I attended a public high school “in town” where most of the townspeople were mainline Protestant of one kind or another; something that’s no longer true. Fundamentalists, over the years, moved from the country to town and brought their religion with them.
Most are Scot-Irish, and their history is a turbulent and often oppressed one. Many were originally “Borderers” in the seemingly eternal battleground between England and Scotland, or Welsh. Their lives there were exceedingly sparse. When the British needed “expendable” Protestants to subdue northern Ireland, “Borderers” were picked, often unwillingly, to colonize. They were good fighters, but never became Anglicans. They went from being lightly evangelized Catholics to whatever they made of religion on their own, with no transition stage between. When it was time to subdue the American continent, again, they were picked up and dropped into a subsistence wilderness. There was then a “leakage” west through the mountains to where I live, and on past, into the Texas Hill Country. Always at a simple, subsistence level. Always isolated. Pretty much always left to their own devices in every way, sometimes in simplicity so complete that it would make an Amish blush for his modernity. Some, of course, went South into better lands than the mountains they often preferred. But they took a certain mentality with them.
Flannery O’Connor, perhaps the greatest of Southern writers said that Southern Fundamentalists would be surprised to know that thier beliefs were closer to that of the Catholic Church than to classic Protestantism. Both, certainly, are given to a sort of “Biblical literalism” that mainline Protestantism frequently does not adhere to. And so, perhaps it was not so strange that I thought, as a child, that their faith was not so different from my own but found mainline Protestantism very different when I entered high school. It’s hard to generalize about such things, and always perilous, but that was my observation.
One has to keep in mind that the Scots-Irish Fundamentalists in the U.S. have been here for 300 years and more, and have been isolated for virtually all that time. On top of that, their leaders have inculcated in them an aversion to all things “fancy”, “intellectual” or what they think is “man-made” or “unbiblical”, which they apply to the Catholic Church. I think that is as much of a holdover from their hostility to the English aristocracy and their Anglicanism as it is anything else.
It was amusing to me to hear the local Evangelicals and Fundamentalists rave over “The Passion of the Christ”. Massive parts of that were “tradition” not found in the Bible at all, or being “traditional” views of the Gospel accounts. “Repetitious prayer” was there in the form of the Stations of the Cross and the Sorrowful Mysteries. “Maryolatry” was there in full. Yet they accepted it without reservation. The centrality of the Eucharist was highlighted. And they didn’t question a bit of it. I think, in truth, that they are not so much rejecting of tradition as simply ignorant of it and distrustful of the notion. They accept a great deal of it without ever realizing that’s what it is. But what they do not go for is anything that seems to contradict that Biblical literalness and, for the most part, anything that seems “intellectual” or “fancy”.
Their greatest desire is to get “closer to Jesus”, and they are quite passionate about it, and quite impatient of anything that seems like an impediment to a “direct line” to that goal. They can sin with gusto, but repent with even more of it. They reject things they THINK are only tradition, being suspicious that they are man-made impediments to “getting closer to Jesus”; a task in which only the words of Jesus, as they understand them, are trusted.
Our parish is full of converts from Fundamentalism and Evangelical groups. Ask them why they converted, and they will all say it’s the Eucharist. When they wrap their minds around that, it’s a bombshell for them. “Closer to Jesus” with a capital “C”. They do so, not because it’s tradition, but because it’s “literal”; a simple, straight line to Jesus, straight out of the Bible, and in Jesus’ own words. Talk theological concepts to them and you’ll lose them. Talk Jesus’ Literal Presence, and very literal morality and forgiveness for sin, and they’re right there with you.
I don’t know if this is responsive to your inquiry, and I know my Catholic bias is showing. But I have puzzled over this for many years myself, and it’s the best answer I have come up with for it.
