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red rover, red rover, let jesus come over
So the president of the Evangelical Theological Society has resigned in order to (re)join the Catholic church.
This has sent Christendom (or, you know, the evangelical community in the US -- I doubt a lot of the rest of the theological world cares much, but I really wanted to use the word "Christendom") into a tizzy. One professor at a seminary called it "a sad day for all the sons and daughters of the Protestant Reformation". But the reason I bring it up is that the WaPo article linked above includes the following paragraph:
This has sent Christendom (or, you know, the evangelical community in the US -- I doubt a lot of the rest of the theological world cares much, but I really wanted to use the word "Christendom") into a tizzy. One professor at a seminary called it "a sad day for all the sons and daughters of the Protestant Reformation". But the reason I bring it up is that the WaPo article linked above includes the following paragraph:
Beckwith is not the first, or even the most prominent, evangelical to switch to Catholicism in recent years. Others include Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), theologian Scott Hahn and the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the journal First Things. On the other side of the equation, the Catholic Church has been losing droves of ordinary worshipers to the Pentecostal form of evangelicalism, particularly in Latin America.Makes a decent point, I think, which is that there's mobility in both directions; but what I especially like about this graf is the word "equation". Not "chasm" or "schism" or even "divide" or "aisle" -- equation, y'all. That's my clever staff writer. That's my clever editor.
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(About 2/3 of the way through the interview, the question is: "You saw your ministry" -- i.e., before conversion -- "as an evangelical catholic Lutheran as trying to heal the breach with Rome but that is probably not how most Lutherans see it." QED, that's all. [g])
(Also, "recent" is relative. This is a schism that's been in effect since 1517, right, so converting in 1990? It's not yesterday, but it's not back in the mists of time, you know what I'm saying? even setting Luther himself aside [g], f you consider that the modern evangelical movement got its real jump-start with Roe v. Wade in 1973, a 1990 conversion is still more recent than not.)
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I stand corrected. To an extent. Obviously, he has been so described; but this is still the first time I've encountered the description.
(Also, "recent" is relative. This is a schism that's been in effect since 1517, right, so converting in 1990? It's not yesterday, but it's not back in the mists of time, you know what I'm saying? even setting Luther himself aside [g], f you consider that the modern evangelical movement got its real jump-start with Roe v. Wade in 1973, a 1990 conversion is still more recent than not.)
In the context of the article, it seems to me the only relevant relativity concerns the time relative to Beckwith's about-face. Seventeen years. Nearly a generation, reckoning generations conservatively. The impression I had was that the author was trying to convey a sudden, drastic alteration, on both sides of the equation, as you noted. Seventeen-year-old events do not quite fit with that.
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