Rome and the Evangelicals Since Vatican II

Since the middle of the twentieth century, Catholics and Evangelicals have talked, signed statements together, and crossed from one communion to the other. Allison and Castaldo describe a gap that “turns out to be considerably narrower than is often popularly supposed, but a gap there remains,” in the words of Anthony Lane.1 The two tables below set the main events in order.

Table RCC18

Dialogues and Declarations

DateEvent
1962–1965Second Vatican Council. The Council opens the Roman Catholic Church to dialogue with other Christians.1
March 29, 1994Evangelicals and Catholics Together. A joint statement published in First Things affirms common ground in the faith and common witness in the world. The statement is a joint witness, not a settlement of the differences over justification.2
1997The Gift of Salvation. A second Evangelicals and Catholics Together statement addresses justification directly.2
October 31, 1999Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. Signed at Augsburg by the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation. The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod called it “a fraud and betrayal of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”1
November 20, 2009Manhattan Declaration. Catholic, Orthodox, and Evangelical leaders issue a joint call on life, marriage, and religious liberty.3
Table RCC19

Crossings

DateEvent
1845John Henry Newman publishes his Essay on the Development of Doctrine and enters the Roman Catholic Church.1
1993Hahn’s conversion narrative appears, the first of the Evangelical-to-Catholic stories that Allison and Castaldo list.1
1994Howard’s conversion narrative.1
1996Currie’s conversion narrative.1
2009Beckwith’s conversion narrative.1
2011Conversion narratives by Coren and Smith.1
2015Pew Research Center. As Allison and Castaldo summarize it, more than six former Catholics for every convert; 41 million Americans (13 percent) have left the Church, 16 million of them for Protestant churches, while 7 million (2 percent) are converts.1

Rome at a Glance   Short Pointers

Notes

  1. Gregg R. Allison and Chris Castaldo, The Unfinished Reformation: What Unites and Divides Catholics and Protestants after 500 Years (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), introduction and ch. 1. The conversion narratives and the Pew figures are given as Allison and Castaldo summarize them. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
  2. “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium,” First Things, May 1994 (statement dated March 29, 1994); The Gift of Salvation (1997). ↩ ↩
  3. Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience (November 20, 2009). ↩