The "Wide Net" of Modern Media Protestantism

 I have often said that our Christian brethren do four things admirably: they lean heavily of the Word on God in scripture as they understand it and in prayer; they take fellowship seriously; they evangelize boldly and care for the vulnerable; they often tithe generously.

It's not hard to see why: we have met and are friends with many Protestant Christians who love Christ and intentionally work on cultivating a personal relationship with Him. Everything they do flows from that love and relationship. They are generous and often joyful, and not afraid to talk to you about Jesus and give you an ear to listen with or a shoulder to cry on. They make themselves approachable and want work to bring the reality of God's Kingdom to life. In short, they want everyone to know the joy of Christ, and they are not afraid to share it.

My wife and I were talking last night, though, about the curious tendency of many Protestant Christians to essentially 'erase' the existence of the many, many saints throughout history (both before and after the Reformation) who have also done just what I mentioned above: immersed themselves in scripture, taken the need for community seriously, evangelized boldly, cared for the sick, dying, poor, and orphaned, and given away not just ten percent, but all they had to follow Christ. In a Protestant classroom or Sunday school lesson, it's as if they never existed.

This isn't all, of course. We consider all our Christian friends "brothers and sisters in Christ," by nature of our common baptism. We often engage in overlapping efforts to protect life, strengthen families, fight a corrosive cultural climate, and ensure our Judeo-Christian heritage. But again, when it comes to the nuts and bolts of what those moral issues are, or how to interpret the Bible, or how one should respond to challenges to the Faith, we Catholics have a blueprint and map that has withstood two thousand years and is as relevant today as it was when Christ founded his Church on the Rock; it is watertight! When one knows his Catholic faith and lives it out, it’s only his lack of will (not an absence of grace) that keeps him from joining the ranks of those saints throughout history we read about in books. 

Modern Evangelicalism has built up its ranks on the mass of now ex-Catholics (walk into any evangelical Church and you'll find a sizable number of this populace, guaranteed) who were the opposite--who didn't know their faith or what it stood for, who viewed Catholicism as nothing but a "bunch of rules, and who really did desire fellowship and a "personal" relationship with God that wasn't satisfied with the way their religion was passed on to them. 

How does it do this? Like I said earlier, Protestants don't have doctrine, the Sacraments, or a magisterial and intellectual/theological framework as part of the core of their faith, so what they do have in that absence, they tend to do well. Catholicism is a kind of robust 'maximalism' that leaves no tool unavailable in our toolbox to attain sanctity; Protestantism, in contrast, is a kind of religious 'minimalism' that works with what it has. When you only have three shirts, two pants, and one pair or shoes in your wardrobe, you want to make sure it's of the highest quality!

That's something else my wife and I were discussing last night--why many of the 'themes' in Christian preaching (especially among female evangelical influencers and ministries) seem so repetitive and tend to 'dilute and diffuse' anything with meat into what I call the "wide-net" hypothesis. It goes something like this: 

You take a common theme that any human being (but especially women) can relate to: we are all broken. We all crave love and acceptance. We have all made mistakes. None of us likes to be judged. Etc. 

Then you offer the affirmation, by way of support, acceptance, and yes, even spiritual platitudes that can apply to a wide range of personal situations, and tap into one's emotional response to these deep human needs. Nothing controversial, nothing you can really pin down. You're not looking to divide, but bring people in.

Finally, you show how the Bible, and the God of the Bible, is a way of addressing those desires of the heart. And you welcome them in to the fellowship of believers with open arms.

Here's a good example I found online from a social media post by a popular Christian woman/influencer that gets at this "wide-net" approach:

"When I pray, I position my heart to see and receive what God is already doing. 

God is not absent.

But when I deafen my ears with my own thoughts and opinions and stiffen my neck by only looking in the direction of what I think should be happening, I miss Him. 

And I think He’s not moving. So I kick it into high gear. I wear my body ragged and my emotions into a tangled fray. 

I just need to stop trying to fix, control, and achieve what God wants me to slow down enough to receive. 

He has the answer. He is the solution. And I can rest in these truths."

Of course, none of this is necessarily wrong. As a Catholic who does read scripture pretty regularly, though, I also find another approach that our Lord gave us when his disciples requested of Him, "Teach us how to pray." Jesus responded, 

"When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation." 

(Lk 11:2-4 DR) 

The Lord's Prayer (the Our Father) is a more or less formulaic prayer, but it is also a "complete protein" and "the perfect prayer" that would not be very common at a (non-mainline) Protestant worship service, which gives more credence to the spontaneous and unscripted way of praying. What I find interesting from my experience of it, is this type of unscripted "reinvent-the-wheel" prayer often ends up being somewhat counter to our Lord's instructions of "When you pray, do not babble like the heathen, since they think that they will be heard because of their many words" (Mt 6:7 EHV). 

Of course, as Catholics in our rich spiritual heritage, we have many different types of prayer, including ejaculatory prayers similar to this. But it's not our only way of praying. Like I said, we are a religion of "Maximalism," not minimalism.

Maybe it's also because of our rich heritage of the employment of the faculty of reason (which also informs our moral choices and gives them a foundation to be built on) which complements faith as a set of "two lungs" that sees as somewhat shallow the front-row-emotionalism present in many evangelical churches. Again, Catholics are playing the long game, and recognize that any faith steeped in an overly-weighted ratio of emotive response does not have the fortitude to stand the test of time. Emotions are not bad or wrong (and of course, many of the saints have been known to weep over their sins and experienced the ecstasy of God's love in their prayer), but by their very nature are fickle and fleeting--not the kind of stone you want to build a house on! 

But reason was held suspect, I suppose, during the Reformation and seen as overly-scholastic. In throwing the baby out with the bathwater, Protestants now find themselves not only without a magisterial body to interpret scripture with God's authority, but without any substance to articulate why a particular moral act is "against the bible." The Bible clearly states that divorce and remarriage is adultery, but we find many Christians justifying this very act using the Bible itself! Of course, Catholics divorce and remarry as well, and we have our own issues with this, but at least the teaching body of the Church has a methodology (the rota) for determining whether a marriage was in fact sacramental and binding so that if one still chooses to go this route, they are at least not ignorant and are subsequently culpable. 

All this being said, as Catholic Maximalists, we really do "have it all." The Catholic Church and our faith as Catholics has formidable intellectual clout, a rich history, and is theologically and scripturally sound. We have a testament of saints who had a true "personal relationship with Christ" to show that living it out and being "saved" is possible, a robust liturgy to ground the heavenly here on earth, a guidebook for the tough moral issues of our day that are not based in one particular preacher or teacher, is one of the biggest charitable organizations in the world, and the tangible sacraments to aid us with grace. Protestants may cast a "wide-net" by appealing to the lowest-common-denominator with the things that were handed to them and that they retained (from Catholicism, no less!), but Catholics know that the Way is narrow, and few find it. Why dump out the tools in your box in preparation for such an arduous journey when we need (and have been given by the Lord Himself!) everything we can get?

When Catholics pray for unity in the Church, we also pray for our "separated brethren" because we have experienced the fullness of  the Christian faith, the cup of grace which is filled to overflowing. We want them to know not just the Truth, but the Way and the Life as well! Catholicism is the farthest thing from reductionism...we want it all! God wants to give us all "so that our joy may be complete" (Jn 15:11) and the means to enter into life with every possible grace. He does that through the Holy Spirit, and through the Church guided by that same Spirit, as much today as on the day of Pentecost. 

We can learn a lot from our Protestant brothers and sisters who love Jesus and the Bible and live lives of faith and moral uprightness. Let's offer them just as much, as Catholics, in return, by using everything we have been given for the glory of God--to the max!