Because this topic is near and dear to my heart, I would like to see this thread get back to the OP’s topic and away from contentious discussions of conservativism, effeminacy, etc. I don’t see what these have to do with the OP.
Here’s the OP:
I know that thousands of people ‘change sides’ every year. Some become Catholic, some become Protestant.
I’ve see several videos on youtube posted by various Protestant groups lamenting the large exodous of high profile Protestants (Evangelicals, in particular) to Catholicism. Is that a trend that is continuing today, or has that tailed off?
If it hasn’t tailed off, what keeps 'em coming; and why do the Protestants they leave behind get so mad? It’s not THEIR lives, so what’s the big deal?
In my former posts, I mentioned that Evangelical Protestants who read and study the Bible (which they do–please don’t believe some of the Catholics who claim that Evangelical Protestants only know a few verses–you’ll get creamed in a discussion/debate if you make that incorrect assumption!).
Evangelical Protestants read and study not only the Bible, but many other religious books written by primarily by their own Evangelicals.
I mentioned in my previous posts that I grew up in an influential Evangelical Protestant church with a lot of scholarship. HOWEVER–no one ever talked about the Fathers of the Church, and if they did, they were talking about the Fathers of the Conference Baptists, who were Swedish!
I had heard of St. Francis, and that’s about it. I had no idea of early Church history, other than what is written in the Book of Acts of the Apostles.
I think that a lot of Evangelicals would say the same today. It just isn’t taught in Evangelical Churches. What we were taught is that in the 1st Century, heretics took over the Church of Jesus Christ, and these heretics were Catholic in their beliefs, and eventually became the Catholic Church.
However, the “alternative church” movement has taken many Evangelicals into an investigation of the 1st few centuries of the Christian Church, and they are discovering that this Church really was C-C-Catholic!
What has made the investigation possible is the internet. Up until the internet, Evangelical Protestants couldn’t read and study what they didn’t know existed! But now, Evangelicals can peruse the internet and will inevitably come across the writings of the Early Church Fathers and read them for themselves, without the filter of Evangelical clergy to “re-interpret” these documents for them.
Hooray for the internet! A mighty tool that God has used to bring Christians together!
