There and back again: My spiritual journey these past ten years, part V

We ended up attending the two LCMS churches in our town for about two years. We even went through a catechism class at one point, but my wife wasn’t ready to join. Then we moved to Rome, Georgia. I immediately sought out the LCMS congregation in town. It is smaller, which is to be expected as Lutheranism isn’t exactly common in northwest Georgia. Georgia and the city of Rome are Baptist territory and most churches are much more like the churches my wife and I grew up in. But the people in Rome’s LCMS congregation were very friendly and it seemed to be a fairly traditional Lutheran church.

As in the past with Catholicism and Orthodoxy, my wife was never completely sold on Lutheranism. She did seem to relate to it much more than Catholicism or Orthodoxy. And by this time she shared some of my own misgivings about much of American Evangelicalism, especially pop psychology sermons and blatant, entertainment style worship. But all in all, she never seemed to want to leave American Evangelicalism. Rather, she just wanted to find a decent Evangelical church minus some of the most egregious problems of Evangelicalism as a whole. When we moved to Rome, Georgia she put her foot down again.

So what was I to do at this point? Theologically and spiritually I had checked out of American Evangelicalism years ago. I can’t ever imagine going back in that sense. I had come to the point in which I automatically evaluated a church based on its theology and its denominational affiliation. I didn’t mind visiting a Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian church. But in visiting such a church I saw myself as just passing through and couldn’t remotely conceive of attending one on a regular basis, much less joining one. Basically, if a church held to a Baptist, Zwinglian, or Calvinistic understanding of the sacraments, it was do not pass go, do not collect $200 for me.

On the other hand, I had attempted to convince my wife to leave American Evangelicalism for something like eight years. If I hadn’t convinced her in eight years or more of trying, I probably wouldn’t ever do so. We were also both just worn out over this issue. And life is just too short to discuss and disagree about this forever. I mentioned the idea that we should just consider going to separate churches, but she wouldn’t have it. In retrospect, considering the fact that we hope God will bless us with children in the future, I think she is right about this. The whole issue was causing strain in our marriage. I saw and still see causing undue stress and especially breaking a marriage over this as perverse. My wife has been really patient about my journey. It really pained me that this caused her distress. I love her deeply, even more so than when we married. I can’t imagine life without her. I would be worse off in every way, including spiritually without her.

So after prayer and discussion we finally came to an arrangement. We ended up regularly attending and eventually joining a Baptist church in Rome. But we didn’t just join any old Baptist church. We joined a Reformed Baptist church. Now I still don’t agree with the Reformed and have found on a first hand basis that many Lutheran critiques of the Reformed are spot on. But I’ve come to admire some aspects of Reformed theology and think they make some valid observations of their own, even if they are badly wrong on some issues. More importantly, this church teaches and proclaims the Gospel much more clearly than your average revivalistic Arminian Southern Baptist church. In addition, it is very committed to missions and to helping the poor and downcast in the community. As a whole, the people in the church are also very loving. The worship is “contemporary,” which is inherently problematic for me, not to mention a bit boring. But the worship isn’t as extremely contemporary as one finds in many churches. It isn’t a perfect church. But it could be much worse. And while we joined a Baptist church together, my wife and I do on occasion attend the local LCMS congregation, which is a real blessing to me. Theologically, I still very much consider myself a Lutheran.

I should also add that my politics have changed somewhat in the last ten years as well. I would still consider myself a conservative, though I do have a libertarian streak. At times I haven’t used the term “conservative” to describe myself because of what much of what conservatism has become. I don’t entirely identify myself with the Republican party and am completely disgusted with the actions of Congressional Republicans and president Bush between 2001-2007, especially with respect to the Iraq war and spending. I’ve come to read conservative thinkers such as Burke and Kirk over the years. For lack of a better description, I’m a social conservative who is closer to the paleoconservative movement these days than any other. I particularly disagree with the neoconservatives who got us into Iraq and the “country club” Republicans who look down on social conservatives and seem more interested in what benefits big corporations and their bottom line than anything else. But my politics flows out of my faith. And as interesting and important as politics can be, I see faith and culture as much more important than politics.

Ironically, while I checked out of American Evangelicalism years ago, I never officially became Catholic, Orthodox, or most importantly for me at this point, Lutheran. Technically, I’ve been a member of a Southern Baptist church all my life. So my journey has sort of been one of there and back again. Looking back, I did some stupid things these past ten years. I suffered from some of things that afflict many “converts” of all stripes who are desperately trying to leave one Christian tradition for another. This included rationalizing doctrines and practices, impatience, pride, and at times a know it all attitude. I’ve struggled with my fair share of sins and continue to do so. But I was trying to follow God as best I could and balance new convictions, competing doctrinal claims, and my marriage, which wasn’t always easy. I think I have learned quite a bit these past ten years. I hope I am the better for it. My situation isn’t perfect. But I’m blessed in more ways that I can count.

I’m happy to call all Christians, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox who place their faith in the Incarnate, crucified, and resurrected son of God for their salvation as brothers and sisters in Christ. The church today, including American Evangelicalism, suffers from some pretty bad problems. But we live in a fallen world and it has always been so. What can we do? Repent of our sins. Teach and proclaim Christ to all, help the poor, the sick, the orphans, and those in need. Love our neighbors as ourselves. Love our families and encourage our family members to seek Christ. Pursue justice and peace. Rejoice in the many blessings God has given us. Delight in the Lord. Trust God in our times of need. Bloom where you are planted. Find a place in the church, imperfect as it is, where you can worship, be fed, serve, and live in community. Serve Christ and you neighbor within your vocation.

Finally reader, if you haven’t grown weary of my long story by now, I’ll leave you with one last thing. As much as we have to “do” ultimately Christianity isn’t about what we do, it is about we what Christ has done and will do for us in the fullness of time. So above all else, cling to faith in Christ.

There and back again: My spiritual journey these past ten years, part IV

By this time, it probably won’t surprise the reader that I didn’t know much about Lutheranism growing up. I probably figured they were similar to the Methodists or Presbyterians in that they had a more “formal” worship and baptized infants. It was in reading about Catholicism and Orthodoxy, however, that I increasingly became aware that Lutheranism really was pretty different from the rest of Protestantism. I knew that Anglicanism was to some extent as well. But orthodox Anglicanism was never a viable possibility where we lived. Today, Anglicanism seems too Reformed to boot. At any rate, I soon began exploring Lutheranism. I first went to a local Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) congregation on my own. Eventually, my wife came with me.

To my surprise, I really liked what I found in Lutheranism. At first, I saw it as a possible temporary compromise. Then I began reading Lutherans such as Martin Luther, Martin Chemnitz, Francis Pieper and contemporary authors such as Gene Edward Veith. Martin Chemnitz was especially influential upon me. I also read more about the history of the Reformation and read the Luther’s catechism and the Lutheran confessions. As Veith put it, Lutheranism really is the best of Catholicism and the best of Protestantism. Lutheranism had pretty much everything that I had come to see as essential and that had attracted me to Catholicism and Orthodoxy in the first place, namely tradition, liturgical worship, and a belief in the real presence and baptismal regeneration. Lutheran worship was beautiful and the Lutherans have a rich musical tradition in the way of hymns and musicians such as Bach and Handel.

While Lutheranism contained many of the best elements of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, it also maintained the best elements of Protestantism so to speak. The two LCMS congregations where we lived had good preaching and Bible studies. More importantly, they preached the Gospel very clearly. Now the reader, especially a reader who is Protestant may be wondering, why wasn’t the Gospel the main issue for you in the first place? What about things in the Catholic Church that obscure the Gospel such as indulgences or the teachings of the Council of Trent? Or what about the Eastern Orthodox position on original sin?

Looking back, it is amazing that I didn’t take the issue of soteriology a lot more seriously. But I was so desperate to leave Evangelicalism that I was willing to rationalize a whole host of things. Moreover, it’s not as if modern American Evangelicalism clearly believes, teaches, and confesses salvation by grace alone and justification by faith alone. Modern American Evangelicalism is rife with Arminian revivalism. It is far more likely to feature emotional, revivalistic services (and “seeker sensitive” worship is often just updated revivalism) in which people are implored to come down and “make a decision for Christ.” Or, one will find a lot of pop psychology and moralistic, Christless preaching. Really, even to this day I fail to see how much of American Evangelicalism has any business accusing Catholicism or Orthodoxy of teaching “works based salvation.” At least the Catholics and Orthodox have the creed and the sacraments, which point one to Christ.

Within American Evangelicalism, only the Reformed, which are a minority, albeit a very vocal minority, could with some plausibility assail Catholic and Orthodox soteriology. The Reformed were at least very serious and thoughtful about their theology. As I’ve mentioned before, however, I’ve never seen Reformed theology as a viable option. First, in my view the Reformed are obviously wrong about the sacraments. Their views on the Eucharist make them a bit suspect on the Incarnation while their denial of baptismal regeneration and in the case of Reformed Baptists of infant baptism make them suspect on salvation by grace alone. It’s not that the Reformed don’t believe in the Incarnation and salvation by grace alone. Rather, their theology of the sacraments are logically and most importantly Biblically inconsistent with these key doctrines.

I also found the Reformed focus on God’s sovereignty a bit bothersome. I believe that God is sovereign. Nothing happens without God willing or allowing it to happen. God’s enemies do not have the slightest chance of overcoming him. Moreover, God often uses what his enemies intend for evil and turns it into something good. I don’t deny that the Reformed make some good observations about God’s sovereignty. Nonetheless, I don’t see God’s sovereignty as his chief attribute and as the proper focus of theology and Christian life. If anything, holiness is God’s principal attribute. After all, the worshipers in the vision of heavenly worship that the Bible gives us in the sixth chapter of Isaiah and fourth chapter of Revelation cry out “holy, holy, holy!” not “sovereign, sovereign, sovereign!” God’s sovereignty seems in some cases to overshadow everything else in Reformed theology, including the work of Christ.

In the end, I’ve just never had the sovereignty bug that those who were, are, or who become Reformed seem to have. I believe God is sovereign, but I’ve never lain awake at night anguishing over this issue. I also think the Reformed draw many conclusions about God’s sovereignty that are based on philosophical speculation. The Reformed seem too uncomfortable with mystery, paradox, and seem too eager to use human reason in an attempt to resolve questions about God’s sovereignty and predestination that the Bible gives no clear answer to and that we human beings can’t completely understand in the first place. This leads them to make many “logical conclusions” about God’s sovereignty that in my view simply aren’t supported by the Scriptures. For instance, the Reformed are entirely correct about total depravity and the predestination of the elect. And while limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints may well be “logical conclusions” of total depravity, I believe that many passages in the Bible are completely contrary to these doctrines.

The problems I see with Reformed theology goes even deeper. From at least the time of the Puritans many serious Reformed Christians have agonized over whether or not they were among the elect. And if Christ only died for the elect as limited atonement teaches, one cannot tell everyone that Christ died for them. Honestly, limited atonement seems anti-Gospel to me. How one can attack things such as indulgences and Trent as soteriologically problematically only to turn around and assert limited atonement makes no sense to me. Ultimately, the Reformed take on the sacraments, the undue emphasis they place on God’s sovereignty, and doctrines such as limited atonement and double predestination undermine their soteriology, even if they do believe in salvation by grace alone and justification through faith in Christ alone. I maintain that Reformed theology is a much more serious and God-centered theology than Arminian revivalism. But what the Reformed give with one hand they often take with the other. So in the end, neither the Reformed and especially Arminian revivalism was able in my eyes to both mount a successful challenge to Catholic and Orthodox theology and present a viable alternative.

This was not the case with Lutheranism. In fact, I’ve never heard the Gospel preached and taught so clearly as in LCMS congregations. And I could take Lutheranism claims much more seriously because they didn’t have the baggage the Reformed had such as limited atonement and double predestination. Furthermore, Lutheranism actually made a stronger case than Catholicism and Orthodoxy when it came to the sacraments. In other words, as a whole Lutheranism made sense to me. Lutheran pastors, writers, and teachers firmly and convincingly taught me the demands of the law and the utter depravity and inability of humans to do good works for their salvation or to come to faith in Christ by themselves. In the end, the chief doctrines of the Reformation, sola gratia, sola fide, and sola Scriptura all registered with me within the Lutheran church and within the context of Lutheran sacramentology, worship, the Lutheran confessions, and Lutheranism’s distinction between the Law and the Gospel. In the end, I found a church with many of the positive aspects of traditional Protestantism such as good preaching and Bible studies. I also found a church with a sense of beauty and God-centered worship and with real ties to the early church and the Christian past as a whole. Most importantly, I found a church who in almost all they did focused on Christ crucified and resurrected for my sins. Faith in Christ, and Christ alone for my sins and the sins of all humanity was above all their driving focus. And this was the one thing I absolutely needed the most.

There and back again: My spiritual journey these past ten years, part III

Basically, between 1999 and 2001 I began to theologically and spiritually check out of American Evangelicalism. It was at this same time that I began to look for a new church home so to speak and immediately gravitated to the Roman Catholic Church. I read a fair number of Catholic apologetic works and began engaging in dialogue with Catholics and Protestants on the internet. This experience only pushed me further away from Evangelicalism and towards Catholicism. Evangelicalism simply didn’t seem to have any good answers to Catholic claims. I noticed that some of the strongest defenders of Protestantism were Calvinists, or Reformed. Yet I found it hard to take the Reformed too seriously or more importantly as a viable alternative to Catholicism. After all, they were blatantly wrong on the sacraments, not to mention predestination, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints. But more on that later.

There were some Catholic doctrines that bothered me such as papal infallibility, indulgences, and what seemed to me as an overly complicated soteriology and overly speculative Mariology. But a return to Evangelicalism was out of the question. Also, John Henry Newman’s theory of “doctrinal development” quelled some doubts for a while. It was around this time that my wife and I began one of what would end up as a series of moves related to study and employment opportunities. Upon our first move we began attending a Roman Catholic parish and did so for about a year. It was at this parish that I learned to love liturgical worship and deepened my knowledge of Catholicism. I also found that many of my stereotypes about Catholics were laughably untrue.

While I was becoming more and more interested in Catholicism and expressed my interests in becoming Catholic, my wife was much more hesitant. In retrospect, she was very patient with me. I believe that she thought this was some temporary phase and that I would eventually snap out of it. That, however, did not happen. When we moved again, however, we found the Catholic parishes in our new town were a bit strange and seemed to resemble something out of mainline Protestantism. This was a bit disconcerting to me. It also provided the opportunity to try another church, this time the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Looking back, I had lived a very sheltered life within Evangelicalism. I was barely aware of the existence of other Christian traditions outside my Baptist faith, much less what they believed. There is nothing wrong with this. Most Christians live a fairly sheltered life and generally aren’t aware of that many Christian traditions outside their own. But exploring Catholicism made me much more aware of the existence of other traditions in general. More specifically, I became more aware of Eastern Orthodoxy. I began to read some Orthodox theology and apologetics. For the first time since I began to study the early church and had done a 180 in my theology, I encountered a non-Roman Catholic church with a plausible theology. Eastern Orthodox claims created some problems for Catholicism in my mind. As with the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church also taught that it was the one, true church-the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church as it goes in the Nicene creed. I spent a while anguishing over issues such as Tradition, church authority, papal infallibility, and which church was the one, true church. In time these issues would fade in importance to me and the Catholic case became less convincing.

Because of growing doubts about Catholicism and the abysmal condition of the Catholic parish nearest to us, my curiosity with Eastern Orthodoxy grew. We thus began to visit a nearby Orthodox parish. We found the people very friendly. The parish was a mix of ethnic Orthodox and converts from Evangelical Protestantism. I found the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom absolutely incredible and very centered on God. Orthodox worship was the complete opposite of the “contemporary seeker sensitive” pop music, secular entertainment style worship that was prevalent in Evangelicalism. I still think the Orthodox have probably the most beautiful liturgy of any Christian church. And I love the smell of incense in a church, candles, and icons.

To my delight, I found the Orthodox didn’t believe in some Catholic doctrines that bothered me such as indulgences or papal infallibility. All in all, Orthodox was even better than Catholicism. By the summer of 2004 I probably would have become Orthodox and indeed hoped to enter a catechism class with that purpose in mind. But my wife put her foot down. Although she found the people at the Orthodox parish nice, she simply couldn’t relate to their worship. She was tired of what had probably come to seem like a phase of mine gone horrible wrong and just wanted to go back to Evangelicalism. Returning to Evangelicalism, however, was out of the question for me. Oh sure, I could visit an Evangelical church from time to time. But I wasn’t remotely interested in attending one on a regular basis, much less joining. And taking communion at an Evangelical church was completely out of the question for me.

But what were we supposed to do? This brought me to yet another possibility. What if we could stay Protestant without returning to Evangelicalism? In short, what about Lutheranism?

There and back again: My spiritual journey these past ten years, part II

As spiritual matters became more and more important to me, I gravitated to the study of theology and especially church history. I have always enjoyed reading, and my academic studies were in History. So this was a natural direction for me. I began by studying the early church. What I read in the early church fathers and in the works of historians such as Pelikan, Kelly, Chadwick, and other mainstream church historians really rocked my world.

I began reading about the early church with prejudices that were typical of most American Evangelicals. I had this vague notion that the early church was basically Baptist in its faith. Over time, especially after Constantine, pagan elements and other false teachings began to creep into the church. Things got even worse during the Middle Ages, especially as the papacy increased its power over the church and ignorance and false doctrine became more entrenched. I was always fascinated with the beauty of medieval cathedrals and believed that true Christians did indeed exist under the medieval papacy. But I viewed the Reformation as a necessity. Ironically, the Baptist faith I was reared in was in many respects quite different from the faith of reformers such as Calvin and especially Luther. I wasn’t aware of this initially, though if these differences had been brought up I probably would have remarked that while Calvin and Luther got the ball rolling in the right direction, they simply didn’t “go far enough” in the Reformation.

At any rate, as I began to study the early church I discovered a number of things that shocked me. First, as I suspected the early church fathers were passionate defenders of basic, orthodox Christian doctrines such as the Incarnation, the Trinity, the resurrection of Christ, the veracity of the Scriptures, and Christian morality. They also were quite willing to die for their faith. And in a number of cases they did just that. In addition, some of the earliest church fathers either knew an apostle or knew someone who did. Moreover, almost all of them knew the Bible well. For many of them, Greek was even their native language.

I rapidly concluded that the early church was worth taking seriously and that we modern Christians got our ideas about what consists of basic, orthodox Christianity from them. The early church fathers thus had to be what I came to term “generally reliable” or else the foundation of Christianity itself was questionable. After all, if we got our idea about the Incarnation, the Trinity, the death and resurrection of Christ, and the canon of Scripture, about what books were considered as inspired and part of the Bible from men who were as doctrinally as trustworthy as Benny Hinn, then we had a major problem on our hands.

The problem was that the early church and its leaders overwhelmingly held to doctrines that were glaringly different from American Evangelicalism. For example, I read Ignatius of Antioch, who was said to have learned about Christ from the apostle John and was fed to the Lions for his faith in Christ. He repeatedly discussed communion as the true body and blood of Christ. Not only did Ignatius of Antioch believe in the real, substantial, bodily presence of Christ in communion, but he warned against the Gnostics, who apparently viewed communion as akin to a symbol of Christ’s body. In other words, the Gnostics, who denied the Incarnation sounded a lot like modern American Evangelicals! Reading Ignatius of Antioch was a real eye opener for me and marked my initial turn away from American Evangelicalism. I soon found out that Ignatius of Antioch was far from alone and that well before Constantine the early church believed in things about worship, baptism, communion, and other issues that were very un-Baptist.

As a result of all my studies, I went back to study the Scriptures with a whole new set of questions. I should also mention that it was just before this time that I began to question some doctrines that were common in Southern Baptist circles. I have already abandoned the idea that drinking alcohol was inherently sinful. But just before I began reading church history I began having doubts about the idea of that once one came to faith in Christ that one could not lose ones salvation, or “once saved always saved” as it was commonly called. Contemporary worship also increasingly seemed shallow and boring to me, and many of the sermons I heard increasingly sounded like pop psychology. It was reading about the early church and re-approaching the Scriptures with new information and new questions, however, that irrevocably shattered my Baptist faith specifically and my adherence to American Evangelicalism in general.

Through prayer and further studies I soon came to several conclusions that I still hold:

1) The early church fathers had to be “generally reliable.” Individually they could and did error and they were not inspired. Nonetheless, they were serious Christians and to dismiss them was the equivalent of cutting off the branch on was sitting on. The same was true of church history and Tradition in general.
2) The church had and has a lot more authority than Evangelicals gave it credit for.
3) Properly administered communion is the true body and blood of Christ, not a symbol and not a spiritual presence. Communion, or the Eucharist was a means of grace that offers the forgiveness of sins. It was “the medicine of immortality” as Ignatius of Antioch called it.
4) Infants should be baptized and baptism works the forgiveness of sins. Ordinarily, a person cannot be saved without baptism. As with communion, baptism is totally God’s work, not something we do out of obedience, an “ordinance” to please God.
5) Liturgical worship arose naturally out of Christianity’s Jewish roots. It was far from some pagan addition. Moreover, liturgical worship is more orderly, less faddish, less apt to favor one generation’s “style” over another generation, contains more Scripture and more importantly is more Christ focused than anything “contemporary worship” in any of its manifestations has come up with.

If you are familiar with these kinds of ideas and have read any stories of Evangelicals who converted to Catholicism or Orthodoxy, you’d probably say I was pretty typical. In many ways I was, though to even my own surprise I never ended up in Rome or Constantinople.

There and back again: My spiritual journey these past ten years, part I

I noted in my first post that I plan to avoid discussing my personal life on this blog. Well, I’m going to go ahead and diverge from that principal. My next five posts will instead be a series on my spiritual journey, especially in the last ten years or so. This isn’t because I want to dwell on my personal life and turn this blog into a protracted discussion on what I ate for breakfast and what kind of gum I enjoy and some such. Rather, I think I owe the reader an explanation up front of what in the world someone with Lutheran convictions is doing as an active member of a Baptist church. It makes sense that anyone who wishes to follow this blog knows where I am coming from. And I can’t entirely separate the theological from the personal in accounting for this. My next five posts, therefore, will be devoted to this. It will be my “testimony” of sorts as some Baptists might say.

I was incredibly blessed to have been raised in a wonderful Christian home. I am still richly blessed by my family. My parents raised me and my brothers in a home full of love, humor, wisdom, and encouragement. Most importantly, I learned about Christ from my parents and came to faith in him at a very early age. In fact, I don’t ever really remember not believing in Jesus. Upon my confession that Jesus was my Lord and Savior I was baptized at age six. I was raised in a Southern Baptist church. The church youth and college groups were important part of my world as teenager and young adult. While in college I met a remarkable young lady who had also grown up Baptist. We fell in love and were later married. I’ve been blessed to have her as my wife for about ten years now.

I’ve never seriously considered any other belief system besides Christianity. And the only form of Christianity that has attracted me is basic, orthodox Christianity, “mere Christianity” as C.S. Lewis put it. See the Nicene creed if this still is unclear. “Liberal” or “progressive” Christianity seems to be a knock off of secularism, chasing whatever is currently faddish and popular on the secular left. Or, it is some form of Unitarianism that for some odd reason still wants to call itself Christian. I don’t doubt that there are earnest, orthodox Christians in mainline Protestant churches. However, I’ve never seen any particular reason to be associated with a denomination in which abandoning basic orthodox Christianity is tolerated and in many cases rampant among church leadership. Why bothering to go to church if believing in the basic doctrines of Christianity is optional in the first place? One might as well sleep in on Sundays and abandon religion altogether.

I’ve studied other world religions such as Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism. But none of them strike me as especially convincing. I went through a phase in my late teens and early twenties in which I read a good deal of atheist philosophers, especially Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre and others that are often called existentialists. Atheism, however, never appeared to me to have coherent answers to questions I had about the origins of the universe, life on earth, human consciousness, beauty, love, ethics, and so forth. I don’t have any major problems with evolution, but naturalistic atheism leaves much to be desired. I certainly view the idea that there can be such a thing as objective ethics in a world without God as absurd. I also see Positivism or Scientism as it is often called to be inherently self-refuting. The “new atheists” as they have been labeled don’t exactly have many “new” ideas, nor do they have many ideas that I find especially challenging to my faith.

In the end, I find the case for basic, orthodox Christianity compelling. If the reader would like further explanation of this, they are welcomed to consult Christian apologetics and philosophers, and especially the works of writers such as C.S. Lewis, Alvin Plantigna, Henri de Lubac, Ravi Zacharias, G.K. Chesteron, Fydor Dosteovsky, and so forth. I should note that I don’t think that anyone becomes a Christian simply because there are good arguments for Christianity, or because they are smart enough. They certainly don’t become Christians because they are good enough. Apologetics, philosophy, and theology have their places, but ultimately faith in Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit. After all, there are plenty of who people who are intelligent and aren’t Christians. There also plenty of people who aren’t all that intelligent who are Christians. The opposite is true in many cases as well. Of course, intelligence and wisdom aren’t the same thing either.

Growing up as Baptist in a middle class family in the South I knew little outside of modern American Evangelical Christianity. My church was conservative, but wasn’t by any reasonable definition a fundamentalist church. By the 1990s it was a growing church and had embraced many of the ideas of the church growth movement about things such as preaching, teaching, and especially worship. I had gone through phases growing up and as a young adult in which I was more serious about my faith and phases in which I was less serious about my faith. As is the case today, I struggled with sin at time and in some cases made progress, though of course I will continue to deal with sin until I draw my last breath.

Up until about ten years ago I was a fairly typical committed young Evangelical Christian. After attending a huge weekend event aimed at college students called “One Day” I became more earnest about my faith. My desire to know God at a deeper level, to seek a holier life, and ultimately to pursue his will for my life grew much more intense than it was before. This pulled me into a period of study and prayer that had some pretty unanticipated consequences. It also ultimately led me to where I am today.

The name and purpose of this blog

The internet and blogs are interesting places to learn and exchange ideas. I’m hardly new to this world, though I have been slow to create my own blog. I suppose I’ve been too busy or too lazy, or perhaps a bit of both. A friend originally suggested the name of this blog to me more than a year and a half ago. Yet it bears further explanation as it is a play on words in more than one way.

First, theologically I am a Lutheran, or an Evangelical (evangelisch) in the historical, Reformational sense of the word. For reasons that I will explain later, however, I am a member of a Baptist church, a church that one in America today might commonly associate with the term “Evangelical.” Second, although I went through a period in my life in which I seriously considered becoming either a Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, this blog isn’t about swimming the Tiber, Catholic or Protestant apologetics, Protestant-Catholic relations and the like. Indeed, “Rome” for me is simply the city where I live, Rome, Georgia. And Rome, Georgia is an old Southern town. The people here are either nominally or in practice overwhelmingly associated with “Evangelical” churches in the common sense of the term, namely Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterian, Pentecostals, and non-denominational churches. You’re a lot more likely to find revivals, altar calls, and praise bands in the churches in my Rome than rosaries, masses, and so forth.

My intention is that this blog will give me a new forum for my ideas on theology, culture, politics, humor, and whatever else I find interesting. I promise not to blog about what I ate for breakfast and other trivial matters. And I will generally avoid issues related to my personal life. I hope the reader finds this blog informative and perhaps entertaining at times. I welcome comments and discussion on this blog. It is my house, however, and as such I reserve the right to remove any comments I consider inappropriate. Just follow the golden rule and you’ll be fine here. If the title and my eclectic links still have you confused, I should be able to clear things up in time on this blog. Or maybe not.