“Crossing the Tiber” in the Age of Algorithms

How American Evangelicals Are Discovering Catholicism Beyond Its Caricatures

Audio Article Version

If you follow religion in America, you may have noticed that evidence suggests the steep decline in Christianity may have plateaued. While the number of Americans who report having no affiliation with the Faith is still at an all-time high, there is one discernible segment of Christian America that is seeing significant growth.

Younger Americans are joining the Catholic Church. And while many of these converts are new to Christianity altogether, the vast majority are finding their way into the Church from Protestant or evangelical (PE) circles.

This article offers a glimpse into the “movement” and seeks to answer whether it is truly that, or merely a fad. In doing so, it attempts to examine some of the broader socio-historical context to support the idea that a meaningful transition in American Christianity is underway, and has been for some time. It also offers a look into how PE commentators, as opposed to Catholic converts themselves, interpret the movement. Ultimately, it will present an opinion on what is believed to be the underlying cause of this migration.   

Rather than echoing existing commentary, this piece seeks to highlight a few often overlooked points and widen the topic beyond ongoing conversations about the many younger adults who are making (or strongly now considering) a move to the Catholic Church.[1]

Movement or Fad?

For over a year now, reports of young people converting to Catholicism have been steadily emerging, most prominently in the U.S., but also in parts of Western Europe like England and France. Media voices have taken notice, with reels, videos, and posts either highlighting the trend or offering theories for it. There’s now (as there has been, if you have been paying attention) a flood of content on the topic.

To some, it feels new, prompting the understandable instinct to “wait and see” if it’s just another quick-to-flame-out fad. That caution isn’t misplaced, these days, especially when much of the attention has centered on a few well-known PE influencers, such as Cameron Bertuzzi and Candace Owens, who have joined the Catholic Church. Furthermore, public figures such as J.D. Vance, Ross Douthat, Eva Vlaardingerbroek, and Shia LaBeouf sharing their own conversion stories can give the impression that this is just a reflex of high-profile curiosity.

Broader Context

Nevertheless, when these popular figures are considered in conjunction with the context provided by more distantly recent articles and commentaries on the matter, it seems evident that something broader than a select few notable examples of individuals moving “to Rome” is occurring. The basis for that idea is five-fold:

1—The Nature of Influencers When it comes to “influencers,” they are often never innovators, nor are they independent. Instead, they are keen to recognize trends early on and get out ahead, making it appear as if they are on the cutting edge. In reality, they are followers, just ones nearer the leading edge who draw greater attention to some thing than that thing’s innovators ever cared to, or were capable of.

2—Is There Movement Among Scholars and Pastors? This is the real question. What are pastors and scholars doing? In American Protestantism, a shift feels more serious when respected pastors and theologians convert. When figures like the scholar Francis Beckwith (once president of the Evangelical Theological Society) or the influential megachurch pastor Ulf Eckman “stunningly” convert to Catholicism, it signals something more substantial than a fad. Because for each notable example, dozens of unknowns have followed the same course. 

This is a significant marker because the cost is steep. Converts will lose community and family ties may become strained. They will undoubtedly face judgment—often harsh—being seen as faithless, in moral failure, or even damned. Traitors, in a way, who came to embrace beliefs they once deemed false or heretical … or something even worse.

But for pastors and scholars, the risks are greater still. Converting may cost them their jobs, housing, insurance, retirement benefits, and professional or ministerial standing. Scholars at confessionally aligned PE institutions often sign strict doctrinal statements, and aligning with Catholic beliefs can trigger immense scrutiny and/or termination.

Such was the case for Dr. Joshua Hochschild, who was terminated from Wheaton College, an elite evangelical school, after converting to Catholicism.[2] Consider also the “fall from grace” that Francis Chan, a household name in contemporary PE, orchestrated for himself by positively engaging with Catholic thought on Real Presence and the Eucharist.

For many, converting means not just personal loss, but professional exile. Thus, such a transition among this class of seriously vested individuals signals something deeper afoot, as they would not make this drastic move unless they considered it to be that important.[3]

3—What Do the Numbers Tell Us? It seems paradoxical to speak of a movement of people coming into the Catholic Church when the numbers tell us that, like all Christian circles in America (Protestant, evangelical, etc.), the Catholic Church has hemorrhaged adherents right along with the best of them, in recent decades. However, the growth among younger segments of Catholics does appear to have been cloaked in the outpacing of total losses of passing elderly Catholics, as well as losses from Boomers and Gen X who have left the Church (or even the Faith altogether).

Similarly, the duration of the movement has also been overlooked. In American Christianity, theological shifts in ideas taking place in the “ivory towers” of PE theological academia precede shifts in the pulpit by a few years, with the laity adopting those ideas and trends more popularly about a decade or more out. This holds for what we are now seeing.

Earlier in this millennium, a notable influx of PE scholars entering Catholicism became visible in the early to mid-aughts. The trend has continued through the first quarter of the century, with a marked pastoral movement surfacing five to ten years later. While a few high-profile examples dotted the landscape, the trend was largely obscured by the overall decline in Christian numbers across the same timeframe. It is now becoming difficult not to notice, as the movement is gaining more widespread traction.       

Today, while dioceses continue to grapple with closing parishes, they are simultaneously reporting considerable growth, especially among younger generations, within others.

Because invoking select points of data is so often used to create misleading pictures, the matter will be left with this intentional vagueness. However, it is suggested that an independent exploration of the numbers and an interpretation of their meaning may best serve readers interested in developing a more comprehensive understanding of this topic.  

4—Anecdotal Experience For many, the movement is also something they have personally encountered. People they know, from church, from work, from other circles, maybe even their family, have wound up in the Catholic Church. As familiar faces from their churches convert to Catholicism—often through the evangelical “deconstruction” process—pastors and congregants are feeling the impact personally. Many of you reading this article can relate, as evidenced by your own experiences with the author.

But what many may or may not be able to appreciate is how many people you know (or kids of people you know who are now young adults) are seriously “Catholic curious” these days. Most of them ask to keep their interest or intentions confidential, but you would be surprised just how many have reached out to discuss why I, myself, for example, made the move and to seek answers to questions about Catholic faith, practice, and teaching. Practically all of these individuals fall within the span of younger Millennials and Gen Z—most of them come from a PE upbringing, a few have been from mainline traditions, and a couple have had no religious background whatsoever.

5—How Non-Catholic Christians Are Reacting Of course, suppose one were to limit feedback on this to Catholic voices. In that case, they might be justified in feeling that a measure of natural triumphalism was somewhat amplifying the momentum of this movement. Everyone wants to gush over their team, right?

This makes the response from Protestantism the most revealing marker, then, given the notable shift in its nature. While earlier evaluations were mostly speculative and dismissive, recent reactions indicate growing recognition and significant concern that something deeper is at play. PE commentators now attempt serious analysis, acknowledging this as more than a trend hyperinflated by a popular few. They serve as testimony to the fact that this is harder to dismiss as mere celebrity noise, catching hold of an ultimately insignificant and fleeting wave of followers.

 Rationalizing the Movement

Focusing, now, strictly upon those leaving other Christian traditions for the Catholic Church, how this movement is mainly interpreted depends, not surprisingly, upon the affiliation of the commentator analyzing it.

Self-Inflicted Wounds

From the standpoint of PE reflection, the movement is primarily interpreted as a symptom of unfavorable conditions in their circles, influencing adherents to seek greener pastures. With admirable introspection, these analyses typically attribute the loss of adherents to Catholicism specifically to the methodologies adopted by contemporary American Christianity, while largely downplaying or denying that the ancient alternatives offer anything more spiritually meaningful, theologically coherent, beautiful, sacred, and true.

These attitudes, which are often not well-developed, are commonly accompanied by editorializations that blame defections on contemporary evangelicalism’s forsaking of “sound biblical teaching” and a rejection of the “biblical worldview” in favor of accommodating “the culture” or seeking to be more relevant within it.

This tactic is so frequently brooked that it often comes off as a trope employed by conservative (both theological and socio-political) believers to make sense of how their brand of the faith fails to resonate with younger Christians who increasingly see it as toxically political and at odds with the Jesus they read about in the pages of the New Testament.

Nevertheless, there is tremendous validity to it all. The identity and nature of mainstream Protestant Christianity in America, according to some, are facing a "generational reckoning." The attraction, enthusiasm, and increasing politically nationalistic entanglements leave younger Christians faced with the notion that the Christianity of their parents is an inauthentic contortion of the very gospel they grew up hearing preached—ironically enough, in those same congregations. 

Still, what is legitimately being identified in this introspection can only partly explain the movement. If the migration away from the darkened auditorium, highly polished, concert-style praise and music, followed by an uplifting message, sort of Christian communities were giving witness to noted growth in “good old-fashioned Bible preaching” congregations, then the fuller argument would stand.

To that point, some are interpreting that the move toward Catholicism is driven by a desire to escape the vapid trappings of performative Christianity for something more “simple.” Curiously, though, while there is movement within evangelicalism “away from the show,” this desire for the “simplicity” of hymns and unapologetically “preaching the Word” would likely translate into reciprocal growth for the more authentic local “Bible church.”

Yet, this is not the case.

Many who retain the label evangelical are reimagining what “church” means entirely. This includes house liturgies, sporadic to occasional pop-up congregations, theology podcasts, and being “churched” in online spiritual collectives and other various sorts of improvised gatherings of like-minded believers who are still classified as “evangelical” via survey.     

Other Protestant commentators interpret the migration into the Catholic Church through the lens of alternative cultural factors, which, again, likewise reject any insinuation that these converts are locating something that could ever actually be spiritually or theologically deeper in Catholic doctrine and practice.

One example is Lance Wallnau, a prominent figure in the American Dominionist movement and the New Apostolic Reformation, who attributes the move to Catholicism, noted among young men, as a response to the culture, which has sought to neuter the sense of classical masculinity. Catholicism, he says, is giving these young men the order, structure, and challenge they crave.     

Others point to similar aspects, but with less social and cultural insinuation, such as Gen Z being drawn to the look of cathedrals over auditoriums. They find the formality of liturgy, vestments, corporate recitation, liturgical seasons, and ritual sacramentalism more appealing than the casualness of their former traditions. 

Not always, but notable instances of these explanations offer a loaded and reductionist view of why evangelicals become Catholic. It is conveyed by the notion that unsettled PEs attracted to the grandiose religious adornments of Catholicism are caught up in the siren song and “seduction” offered by a more established religious framework, its perceived reverence, a “sense” of greater historical rootedness, and its “intellectual and artistic richness.”

Next, there is the suggestion that Protestantism is being victimized by an increased number of Catholic apologists, with marching orders taken straight from the Second Vatican Council. These magisterial mouthpieces are frequently accused of a willingness to “misrepresent actual Catholic doctrine … soften the terminology to appear harmonious with Protestant views …” as if to lure in and poach evangelicals in seasons of spiritual distress.[4]

Put another way, and with all the classic overtones of nineteenth-century American “anti-papist” rhetoric faithfully maintained, groups like the narrowly conservative Reformed Protestant media outfit, The Gospel Coalition, blame the movement on sinister and manipulative means of “attracting disillusioned or dissatisfied Christians” to the Catholic tradition, through slickly produced but questionably honest internet content.

Correspondingly, some claim it is due to the “surprising savvy of online” Catholic Apologists who are “targeting” Protestants. This is an allegation that blames the motivation to leave PE communities on a force other than PE itself. It does so without giving in to the idea that there is anything redeeming or optimistic about the Catholic Church, favoring instead to maintain centuries-old anti-Catholic narratives about a Church more interested in building an institution of power than bringing people to salvation in Christ.

The Gospel Coalition put it this way:   

Catholic apologists are much more focused on growing Roman Catholicism as an institution (i.e., “the one true church”) than on merely winning souls for Christ. This makes sense given Catholicism’s traditional view that to be outside the church is to be outside Christ. The call “home” is a call to the institution of the Catholic Church, not merely a call to find redemption in Christ.[5]

Controlling the Narrative

The overwhelming majority of sources consulted for this piece, which were far more numerous than those linked, note a conspicuous absence of meaningful engagement with actual converts to the Catholic Church, from which genuine understanding of their motivations can be gained. Instead, when conveying explanations on behalf of converts, it is commonly done through selectively vague reasoning that serves as the sketch lines for a caricature.

Flippant representations of conversion motivation abound, like:

-          “They’re seeking to find something they hope will be more spiritual”

-          “They’re drawn to formality, hoping to find a more reverent and holy experience”

-          “They find the long sense of tradition attractive”

Sweeping and non-specific paraphrases like these provide wide maneuverability for supplying the most palatable interpretation possible for the PE audience, making it easier to argue that the culprit for defections is PE itself, rather than any truly substantive aspect of Catholicism[6]. 

PE scholars Bradford Littlejohn and Chris Castaldo put forth a somewhat more sincere effort, at least at first glance. In their 2023 publication, titled Why Do Protestants Convert?, they attempt to offer a more complete exposé, contending that this movement from Protestantism to Catholicism is “in large part the natural result of the self-inflicted wounds of the late 20th century scandal of the evangelical mind.”

As a result, they contend:

A strange phenomenon has gripped Protestantism in recent decades: many of its best and brightest thinkers have converted to Roman Catholicism. Likewise, many earnest, normal believers have found Protestantism shallow in doctrine, history, ethics, and worship, and [have likewise] made the leap to Rome.[7]

The “scandal of the evangelical mind” is a reference to a watershed text of the same title by renowned historian of American Christianity and evangelical Mark Noll, which chronicles the nature and history of the anti-intellectual movement within American evangelical circles.

Readily acknowledged by PE scholars as a prominent feature of the evangelicalism flowing into, and then downstream of, early twentieth-century fundamentalism, it is argued, that the current state of mind within contemporary PE Christianity has left the most recent generations of its theological luminaries and students who take seriously the “pursuit of knowledge and the desire to find deep answers to life’s most profound questions … finding the call of Rome to be powerful and persuasive.”[8]

Insightfully, Littlejohn and Castaldo have observed,

Questions that press in on the church today—matters of authority, of history, and of tradition, for example—are not matters that Protestantism, at least in its more biblicist forms, has historically taken with particular seriousness … And the multitude of novel moral and ethical challenges the church faces at ground level in the ordinary life of any congregation, from matters of sexual ethics to issues such as IVF and surrogacy, has exposed Protestantism’s lack of a strong tradition of social teaching.  Then there is worship; the idiom of the rock concert with added TED talk is scarcely adequate to convey the holiness of God, the beauty of worship, and the seriousness of the Christian faith. [9] 

Such challenging questions leave Protestant scholar Carl R. Trueman to admit,

In each of these areas, Rome might be said to have answers.  Authority, history, tradition, liturgy, social teaching, beauty—these are all strong suits for Catholicism, especially when compared to those forms of Protestantism that have ignored them. 

Initially, Littlejohn and Castaldo seem to concede that, in terms of real authority, beauty, and a reverential approach to worship, “Catholicism adds intellectual and cultural sophistication,” which is often overlooked by a large portion of the evangelical world. 

In a published review and critique of the book, fellow PE scholar Nathanael Blake of the Ethics and Public Policy Center suggests that the authors missed an opportunity to expose what is really taking place with these conversions. He proposes that despite all the gross foibles and dark aspects normative in the Catholic community, converts are baited in by the Catholic Church’s glossy misrepresentations of what it truly is:  

A point that might have been fruitfully drawn out more is that potential converts are disproportionately exposed to what is best in Catholicism. Encountering Catholicism through the sort of devout, intellectual, and artistic circles the authors describe obscures and blunts the reality of much of modern American Catholicism. The hospitality, warmth, and beauty that such circles offer are precious, but that is not the norm for American Catholic life, which is full of plenty of other parishes that function as sacrament factories with terrible preaching and little community, to say nothing of the apostasy and scandals that plague the Church of Rome. Consequently, potential converts should reckon with the disappointing realities of American Catholicism outside of the rarified circles of the conservative Catholic elite.[10]

With a dexterous ability to overlook the very same scandalous and toxic precedents equally long-afflicting his own PE sphere, Blake’s interpretation ultimately amounts to little more than the “siren song” excuse for conversions. It just happens to be cloaked in a bit more elegant prose than The Gospel Coalition’s report.

Although critical that they did not leap as hungrily on the angle as they could have, Blake reaches harmony with Littlejohn and Castaldo and the rest of the choir of PE commentators who conclude “that Protestants [ultimately] convert because of Protestant failures.” 

Listening to converts, it is clear that this is indeed the case. But it is only half of the story.  In all, only a partial portrait is being presented. PE commentators often ignore or deny the other half of the picture, namely, the information their emigrants are reporting back to them. Why, it can be rightly deduced, boils down to the inconvenience of the whole truth.  

Something Is Missing

In summarizing Littlejohn and Castaldo, Blake suggested,

Conversions rarely begin from theological contemplation, but from a sense that Protestantism lacks something Catholicism has. Thus, explaining why Protestants, and especially so many of their “best and brightest” convert requires examining the failures of modern American Protestantism.[11]

This is a bold claim, to be certain. But for those who see the glaring paradox of such a statement, the obvious and immediate question that arises is: How can the “best and brightest” PE has to offer be so easily swayed?

It is a self-contradictory notion that belies the reality established by both PE commentators, who have interpreted this departure at varying depths, and the five aspects of the broader context outlined at the beginning of this piece.

While the attempt at PE self-reflection and analysis is to be appreciated, it is wholly (and perhaps willfully) oblivious to the reality.

Insofar as the “best and brightest” represent the truly thoughtful and careful populations of American PE, it also includes those who were so highly vested in NOT becoming Catholic, yet who did. As mentioned, this places pastors and scholars among all those everyday adherents who are losing faith, not in Christ, but in the PE framework.

If the “sirens” of Catholicism can so easily make gullible PE’s best and brightest, how can it be that any PE adherents are left to speak of? 

But there is a deeper inquiry that needs consideration. Many of these commentators are uniquely critical of a particular brand of American PE—the megachurch model. It’s as if, as we have seen, in their eagerness to blame the superficiality of megachurch evangelicalism for migrations to Catholicism, PE commentators ignore how the megachurch exodus is not creating a boon for orthodox, so-called “bible-based” Protestantism.

Strange, because practically all of the PE interpreters who blame the ills of PE itself for conversions, claim that the remedy is in a return to Protestantism’s rich “Reformed heritage.” 

All of these interpretations for why the flock is moving away from their PE upbringings are missing something. They are not finding the coherence Protestants claim to possess in other brands of their heritage. Yes, the megachurch paradigm often leads them out the door. But their first consideration of what comes next is usually not Catholicism.

In testimony after testimony from converts to Catholicism, a recurring theme emerges. Perhaps some other denomination, such as high-church variations of Protestantism, will be the answer. Their journeys to the One True Church often involve what amount to “layovers” in the liturgical traditions of particular Lutheran synods, Anglicanism, or other denominations.   

Yet, in the end, they find heritage Protestantism lacking as well. And while Blake may be correct in stipulating that “conversions rarely begin from theological contemplation” (although that seems a tenuous statement when talking about theologians and pastors), it is theological contemplation that ends up ultimately making the Catholic Church their answer.

Because, when someone in the PE tradition is finally able to see Catholicism by its own terms, theological contemplation leads to an illuminating and exciting spiritual awakening. One that goes far, far deeper than the on-the-surface explanations PE commentators will use to account for their conversion.      

Why Now?

As a historical theologian whose research has focused heavily on American Christianity from the mid-eighteenth century onward, I would argue that the denial of the fuller picture is based (perhaps subconsciously, perhaps not) on the anti-Catholic heredity that is genetically inherent in the DNA of Protestantism and Evangelicalism today.

As the adage of the historian goes: To better understand the present, it helps to know how the past brought us here.

A Very Brief History of Anti-Catholic America 

Put succinctly, this Country has been virulently anti-Catholic since well back into its colonial past, which Quakers, Puritans, and Anglicans dominated. And in the intervening centuries, Catholics have confronted a gamut of consistent discrimination. At times and in places that involved facing mere legal prohibition and segregation, while in others it spelled victimization in the face of outright harassment and violence. 

“In the context of America,” explains the Protestant Christian historian Ryan Reeves, “[Catholicism] has always been the marginalized, excluded, and persecuted Church.”[12]

Punctuating this fact most forcefully is that barely a century ago, anti-Catholicism was so fierce in the U.S. that it served as the seed by which a rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan was conceived. Revived under the oversight of William J. Simmons in 1915, the “New Klan” thrived in the cultural upheaval that followed World War I.[13] This iteration of the KKK was far less consumed with strictly terrorizing emancipated Blacks. Instead, greater attention was conjured by the newfound fears of middle-class Protestants who aligned behind “the Klan’s denunciatory finger [which was being] pointed at the growing ranks of Catholics” encroaching upon them.[14] 

While events deeper into the twentieth century, such as the Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam, the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, and the sexual revolution, distracted American hostilities outward, away from Catholicism, the bias against it has endured. Hardly as blatant and as structural as a century ago, the anti-Catholic strategies of the later 1900s remained confined mainly to various popular media, faithfully reflecting the paranoid bigotry of nineteenth-century print.

Popular figures within the PE world of the late century regularly promulgated anti-Catholic sentiments. Screeds against "Rome and its papist minions" were published in various forms so as to reach the widest audience.

This included faux academic works, such as the Reformed theologian Lorraine Boettner, who penned a biased, mischaracterizingly inaccurate, and at times antagonistic “analysis” of Catholicism, titled Roman Catholicism.  Under the guise of scholarship, this text, which accepts as fact “virtually any claim made by an opponent of the Church,” has served as the authoritative tome behind anti-Catholic ideas since the 1970s.[15]

For a more wide-ranging audience appeal, books and articles by prominent evangelicals, such as the enormously influential preacher Jimmy Swaggart and the esteemed contemporary musical artist Keith Green, highlighted the popularity of Catholic negativity among PE Americans.  

In the 1980s, unhinged anti-Catholic propaganda was popularly left in public restrooms, restaurant tables, and phone booths via the wildly popular Jack Chick’s tracts. At the century’s close, the celebrated Left Behind series of novels, written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, and despite their insistence to the contrary, routinely smuggled across clear anti-Catholic prejudice by way of various plot points and character portrayals.[16]   

Such ideas about the Catholic Church’s malignant role in the end times, passed down in the doctrines of the nineteenth-century dispensational theology saturating American evangelicalism, are smugly and matter-of-factly passed along from their pulpits regularly these days.[17]   

A Levelling of the Playing Field 

While the antagonism of half-truthed or patently deceitful portrayals of Catholic teaching continues in abundance, this first quarter of the current century is proving inconvenient for controlling the narrative on Catholicism any longer. Whereas what earlier generations knew about Catholicism was engineered mainly for them by their PE communities, the evolution of the social media age has allowed for the “Catholic voice” to speak for itself.

This has made the great Protestant scholar and apologist William Lane Craig uneasy, forcing him to retreat to the uncharacteristically flimsy argument outlined above. “Many Catholic apologists, “he laments,” seem to be more exercised and worked up about winning Protestants to Catholicism than they are with winning non-Christians to Christ. “[18]    

What seems like an onslaught of Catholic apologists targeting conflicted young PE adherents, pastors, and theologians is just equal opportunity for Catholic voices to access avenues for sharing the beauty and theological substance of the Ancient Church, and/or setting the record straight about how it has been portrayed.

The ready availability of Catholic media at this time is demonstrating itself to be a force of gravity for the Church.

Of course, Catholics have long been responding to the misrepresentations of the Church’s teachings and the nature of its practices. Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Mother Angelica, and EWTN fought the good fight in the Information Age, admirably working to advance the truth and beauty of Catholicism to a mass audience in the latter half of the prior century.   

Decades ago, however, unless a particular Protestant/evangelical was seriously inclined to seek out actual Catholic teaching, they would have been unlikely to encounter it, insulated by the echo chamber of presuppositional opposition to Catholicism that they traveled in. An echo chamber that, despite Craig’s analysis, taught them for their entire lives to get out there and witness to their Catholic friends, family, and neighbors, as though they were chief among the non-Christian ranks.   

Turnabout, it seems, is fair play because that is no longer the case.

In this era of YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and the ease of Google search, the playing field has been levelled. Algorithms for believers scrolling through topics of faith and questions about uneasiness with their PE experience are more likely than ever to have the teachings of the Catholic Church or the voice of a Catholic perspective delivered to them, as was never possible before.

Bishop Robert Barron, Father Mike Schmitz, Matt Fradd, Trent Horn, and the whole team at Catholic Answers (among others) are being increasingly followed by non-Catholic audiences. The effect is akin to a theological enlightenment for many, and they realize, “The Catholic Church may not be what I was led to believe it is.”   

Not the Catholicism They Were Led to Believe It Was

Ulf Ekman, echoing the process of so many converts, summed up precisely what is taking place through this levelling of the field. Of his own experience, he stated the following:

I discovered how little I really knew about [Catholics], their spirituality and their beliefs. Unconsciously I carried many prejudices and bad attitudes and have been quick to judge them without really knowing what they actually believed. It has been good to discover and to repent from nonchalant and shallow opinions, based not on their own sources but on their opponents, and to discover a very rich heritage, a strong theological foundation and a deep love for Jesus Christ among them.[19]

For Ekman, like many others, the discovery about the Catholic Church is that it is not the apostate, contorted version of Christianity presented to them for so long, but something sensible, beautiful, truthful, and something they want to be a part of—no matter the cost.

That discovery unfolds in steps, often like this:

First, there is the recognition that the Catholic perspective on some topic or other hardly sounds as bad as the way PE folks have always made it out to seem.

Next, there is an acknowledgement that a significant portion of Catholic teaching actually makes considerable theological and spiritual sense.

After that, there comes the realization that the Catholic approach to Christianity reconciles many of the theological tensions their PE framework had them contending with.

It is here that a sense of understanding makes brief contact with the sacred depth of sacramental and liturgical worship around the Eucharistic celebration in a way that seems permeated with awe and mystery, as opposed to the rote ritualism it is typically reported to be. This is a major turning point.

Lastly, and despite some lingering questions and hesitancies, the seeker arrives at a place of genuine trust that the Catholic Church is what it claims to be, as opposed to what it was said to be.  

In terms of tangible examples, future converts come to the realization that the Church, in fact, DOES NOT:

• Reject justification by faith and salvation through grace

• Teach that salvation can be merited by “works”

• Worship Mary and the Saints

• Remove the second of the Ten Commandments

• Prohibit or discourage one from getting deeply into personal Scripture devotion

• Believe the Pope, as Vicar of Christ, is equal to Christ, sinless, and always right

• Hold to the idea that only those in the Catholic Church can be saved

• “Kill/Sacrifice Jesus” over and over again at every Mass

• Suggest that one cannot, or should not, pray directly to God themselves

• Affirm that only a priest can forgive one’s sins

• Reflect some paganized religion vastly different from the historic early Church

• Add books to the canon of Scripture

  
  

Also, on the other hand, they are frequently shocked to learn that the Catholic Church:

• Encourages Catholics to make a serious commitment to a life-long personal relationship with Jesus Christ

• Desires Catholics to read and study the Bible deeply

• Engages far more Scripture at every Mass than the vast majority of PE sermons on a given Sunday

• Truly wants to see all people “give their heart to the Lord”

• Is immensely and historically concerned about evangelization and mission

• Is genuinely and actively serious about social justice, charity, and the human dignity of all

• Is serious about personal prayer and devotion

• Is serious and consistent about morality

Either of these lists could go on and on. But such a sampling provides a means of toppling the idea that conversion to Catholicism is strictly due to the failings of PE in modern American contexts. Instead, they show that this is only half the story. The other half is that while many in PE circles are looking elsewhere, they are winding up “crossing the Tiber,” as it were, because they are drawn to the virtues of Catholic faith and practice.

To Conclude

Converts are not becoming Catholic because they see it as the lesser-malformed of two options for Christianity. People are entering into full communion with the Church because they are arriving, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, at an understanding that doing so is to be in full communion with Christ, as a part of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic incarnate Body that He established through his Apostles and that He has given so graciously to all humanity.

They are now, more than ever (and in large part thanks to the contributions of Protestant and evangelical traditions, which did lay a groundwork for them), realizing that this is precisely the fullness of truth they have been expectantly longing for in a church.

To put it summarily, what is taking place currently is that younger people, who have come of age in an era where Catholic voices have equal access to messaging, are discovering that Catholicism allows them to be the passionately devoted Jesus-loving Christians they were encouraged to be in their PE communities or upbringings, only in manner free of the dissonant, ad hoc, and strained coherence of those communities. And, like the scholars and pastors across the decades before them (and currently), they are coming to recognize that the fullness of Christian truth that Catholics claim is only found in the Catholic Church is not a brazen or arrogant assertion, but an authentic reality—a sacred reality.   

They just had to move from behind the easel placed in front of them to discover that its canvas contained nothing more than a grossly distorted caricature. Looking upon the actual subject of that repellent illustration, they are shocked at how inaccurate it is, as they stand beholding something far more beautiful than ever imagined, much less ever understood.

If it is true that Protestant Christianity in America is facing a generational reckoning, perhaps it is time to acknowledge that this is the way the settling of accounts is to look.

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NOTES

[1] While a similar trend can be observed among various expressions of Eastern Orthodoxy, this article focuses on the Catholic trend. However, it is worth noting that this phenomenon applies to both siblings of the one Ancient Church.

[2] In that same year, ironically, Dr. Mark Noll, an evangelical religious historian, was hired to the faculty of Notre Dame University.

[3] For a look into the rationale behind these sorts of decisions, and the weight they carry, consult Evangelical Exodus: Evangelical Seminarians and Their Path to Rome, edited by Douglas Beaumont (Ignatius Press, 2016), which chronicles the testimony of several students, ministers, and academics at the seminary founded by the renowned evangelical scholar and Catholic critic Norman Geisler, Southern Evangelical Seminary. 

[4] Andrew Voigt, “Roman Catholic Apologetics Is Surging Online. Intended Audience? Protestants.” March 1, 2025. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/roman-catholic-apologetics-protestants/.

[5] Voigt, “Roman Catholic Apologetics.”

[6] A good example of this can be found in Sam Storms' brief article, found here: https://www.samstorms.org/enjoying-god-blog/post/another-protestant-converts-to-catholicism:-why. Although the author does well to mention a series of things that draw PEs to the Catholic Chruch, he offers very little engagement for the deeper “why” behind those motivating factors. For instance, he notes aesthetics as a reason people cite for converting: “Many appeal to the experience of being moved by the architecture of RC church structures, the incense, the beauty of liturgy, the mystery, the solemnity, the drama, the vestments of the clergy, the church calendar, the sense of transcendence, religious symbolism, etc.” While this is part of it, he does nothing to engage with why those things are considered important. Because if one were to read from converts themselves, it is clear that those things, in and of themselves, are not the real reason for what is discovered to be so valuable about them.  

[7] See Bradford Littlejohn and Chris Castaldo, Why Do Protestants Convert? (Davenant Press, 2023), quote taken from the publisher's preview.

[8] Littlejohn and Chris Castaldo, ii. These remarks are taken from the introduction, penned by Carl R. Trueman.

[9] Littlejohn and Chris Castaldo, ii-iii.

[10] Emphasis added.

[11] See Blake, https://eppc.org/publication/why-protestants-convert-to-catholicism/.

[12] See Ryan Reeves’ short and informative video lecture, “Catholics in America,” specifically the 3:30 mark; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F7Tbo5LMek.

[13] Mark Massa, “Anti-Catholicism in the United States,” in The Cambridge Companion to American Catholicism, ed. Margaret M. McGuinness and Thomas F. Rzeznik, 197–215 (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 208-209.

[14] Massa, 209.

[15] See “The Anti-Catholic Bible,” a tract offered by Catholic Answers, which has been given the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur (2004), for more details about Boettner’s work. https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-anti-catholic-bible.

[16] See Protestant convert to Catholicism Carl E. Olson, “Tim LaHaye: The Left Behind Series,” Catholic League (December 2004), https://www.catholicleague.org/tim-lahaye-the-left-behind-series/. and Daria Sockey, “Left Behind Is Best Left Alone,” National Catholic Register (March 10, 2002), https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/left-behind-is-best-left-alone

[17] See 44:34 mark. “Bridgewood Online//Faith & Politics//11.3.24” Bridgewood Church (November 3, 2024). The speaker casually references an Islamic leader, who will actually be a “defective pope,” while nonchalantly and falsely assuming Revelation 17-18 as a proof text. https://www.youtube.com/live/REzw2ZBPcd4?si=JVuAS7uMQhA82eZx&t=2616

[18] William Lane Craig interview, October 24, 2024. “Pope Francis and Religious Pluralism,” ReasonableFaith.org. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lg9yK6QHsE

[19] As quoted in Ruth Moon, “Conversion of Sweden’s Most Influential Pastor Causes ‘Pain and Disillusion,’” Christianity Today (March 14, 2014), https://www.christianitytoday.com/2014/03/sweden-pentecostal-converts-catholicism-ulf-ekman-word-life/