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‘Evangelicals and Catholics Together’ — why it still matters after 25 years

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The 1994 agreement ‘Evangelicals and Catholics Together’, conceived by the American Catholic intellectual, Richard John Neuhaus (left), and prominent Southern Baptist Evangelical, Chuck Colson, still speaks to Australia. (Alex Wong / Chuck Nacke / The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images)

In his 1898 Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary, Abraham Kuyper, the Reformed theologian and future Prime Minister of the Netherlands, envisaged a working alliance between Evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics to counter what he called the advance of the “modern spirit”:

A so-called orthodox Protestant need only mark in his confession and catechism such doctrines of religion and morals as are not subject to controversy between Rome and ourselves, to perceive immediately that what we have in common with Rome concerns precisely those fundamental of our Christian creed now most fiercely assaulted by the modern spirit.

Indeed, earlier in 1879, Kuyper had founded the centre-right Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP) of the Netherlands from a coalition of Reformed Protestants and Roman Catholics. Accepting the democratic nation state, the ARP was not so much about establishing a theocracy as it was about mobilising a popular Christian front to neutralise the Enlightenment impulses of secular liberalism and socialism then shaping the Dutch polity

More than a century later, with post-war secularism making its effects known, Evangelicals and Catholics again affirmed the common fundamentals of their Christian creed. In a milestone perhaps unknown to many churches in Australia, 2019 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of a symbolic yet significant initiative — the 1994 agreement, Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium. As the brainchild of the American Catholic intellectual, Richard John Neuhaus, and the Southern Baptist Evangelical author and Prison Fellowship founder, Chuck Colson, Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) represented a fruit of the greater ecumenical movement since the 1960s.

Keenly aware of the reality that Evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics had long disagreed on many points of theology — such as the nature of the Eucharist and the nature of the Church — the drafters of ECT nonetheless appreciated the wealth of treasures shared by these two vibrant Christian traditions. In addition to 1500 years of shared history prior to the Reformation, Evangelicals and Catholics not only drew from the same Bible (with the exception of the apocryphal literature), but also the Apostles and Nicene Creeds, the early Church Fathers of Irenaeus, Tertullian and Augustine who consolidated the doctrinal foundations of Christianity, a choral canon boasting the glorious music of Mozart, Handel and Bach, and a sizable cross-fertilisation of liturgy and hymnody. In short, Evangelicals and Catholics represented co-heirs to the Western Christian tradition.

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The ECT was an initiative of the Institute on Religion and Public Life, a conservative yet ecumenical research body founded by Neuhaus in 1989. After launching its journal First Things in 1990, the Institute turned its attention to drafting the ECT statement that would articulate the common ground shared by evangelical and Catholic Christians on matters of theology, social thought and public policy.

Appealing to what Richard Baxter and C.S. Lewis famously called “mere Christianity,” the 6,500 word document drew primarily from New Testament precepts and the Trinitarian doctrine of the Nicene Creed. Affirming a common Christ as Lord and Saviour, ECT declared that “Evangelicals and Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ.” Recognising the saving power of the cross and the authority of a divinely-inspired Bible, ECT affirmed “together that we are justified by grace through faith because of Christ,” and that “Christians are to teach and live in obedience to the divinely inspired Scriptures, which are the infallible Word of God.”

At the same time as affirming a common Christianity, ECT did not seek to paper over the real and ongoing differences existing between the two traditions — most notably in their ecclesiology, doctrines of the sacraments and scriptural authority vis-à-vis church tradition. Realistic about its scope and ambition, the agreement made it clear that it could not, in itself, resolve these doctrinal disputes stemming from the Reformation.

Shifting to the Christian church’s engagement with society, the ECT recognised the enormous degree of overlap between the Catholic social teaching of the papal encyclicals and Evangelical social ethics, articulated in books such as John Stott’s Issues Facing Christians Today. As such, it called for Evangelicals and Catholics to cooperate in contending for the importance of marriage and family, the sanctity of human life at all stages of development and a free society based on a market economy with humane safeguards to protect the poor and weak from poverty or exploitation.

Prominent Evangelical signatories to ECT included: the Reformed Anglican theologian, J.I. Packer; the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, Bill Bright; the Evangelical historian, Mark Noll; and the author and cultural commentator, Os Guinness. Meanwhile, from within the Catholic fold, ECT attracted the endorsements of Michael Novak from the Institute on Religion and Democracy; George Weigel, the acclaimed biographer of Pope John Paul II and Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre; Cardinal John O’Connor of New York; and Archbishop Francis Stafford of Denver.

The significance of ECT for Australia

Although drafted in a North American religious context, a statement such as ECT is eminently relevant to nations such as Australia. Like Germany and Switzerland, Australia’s Christian heritage is largely, though not exclusively, a combination of Protestant and Catholic strands, together with a rich contribution from the smaller Eastern Orthodox communities.

The indebtedness of modern Australia to Evangelical Protestantism is well-documented in two recent volumes written by Stuart Piggin and Robert Linder, Fountain of Public Prosperity: Evangelical Christians in Australian History, 1740 to 1914 and Attending to the National Soul: Evangelical Christians in Australian History, 1914-2014. The contribution of the Catholic faith to the formation of modern Australia, meanwhile, was appreciated by historians Patrick O’Farrell in his multi-edition volume, The Catholic Church and Community: An Australian History and Edmund Campion, Australian Catholics.

To be sure, Evangelicals and Catholics in Australia, like other parts of the Western world, have historically been far from happy bedfellows. From the early divisions in the penal colony of Sydney Cove to the bitter debate over conscription in the First World War and periodic squabbles over school funding, the relationship between the two traditions has all too often been marked by mutual rancour and suspicion. It is this history in Australia, as well in the United States and elsewhere, into which ECT spoke and continues to speak.

The very rationale behind ECT, however, also spoke of the tremendous gains made in the relationship between Evangelicals and Catholics across the West with the realisation of a common mission. Again, Australia has been no exception with not only the Second Vatican Council but the decision of Prime Minister Menzies, a Presbyterian, to grant state aid to Catholic schools thawing tensions between the two traditions. Since the late 1960s, rapprochement between Evangelicals and Catholics has been aided by a convergence of shared values, standing together for received Christian theological and moral truths, human life, marriage and the family, as well as standing against secularism, moral relativism, Cold War communism, materialism and selfish utilitarianism.

With the most recent papal visit to Australia for Sydney’s World Youth Day in 2008, the ecumenical impulses of ECT came to the fore at an interdenominational meeting of Australian church leaders with Pope Benedict XVI. Addressing the Pope on behalf of Protestant and Orthodox leaders, the then Anglican Bishop of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth, acknowledged the theological differences between their traditions but emphasised common ground. Describing the Catholic church as the “rock in the rapids,” he credited it for holding fast to universal Christian convictions in the face of materialism and secularism:

Were it not for Rome’s strong insistence upon Christ as the only saviour of the world, upon the “Catholic faith,” the nature of the Triune God, the divinity of Christ, the importance of sacred Scripture and of the objectivity of Christian morality, then the life of other Christian churches would have been so much more difficult, certainly for us here in the West.

With the bishop of an avowedly Evangelical Anglican diocese commending the Catholic Church for championing the same core doctrines his own church confessed, it showed how far Evangelical-Catholic relations had progressed in a willingness to affirm publicly the faith shared in common with an old ecclesiastical foe.

Given that past sectarian strife between Evangelical Protestants and Catholics has all too frequently borne a poor witness to the Christian gospel in the wider world, the rise of modern secularism and scepticism towards the church is not without cause. Nonetheless, Evangelical Protestants and Catholics, through all their human weaknesses and failings, have nonetheless accomplished so much together in building modern Australia. From education, charity, healthcare and social welfare to art, sport, business, politics and public life, their collective contribution to this country and its ethos has been immense — along with the remarkable influences from Australia’s other faith traditions.

Remembering Evangelicals and Catholics Together a quarter-of-a-century later, we can not only discover the spiritual source of inspiration behind Evangelical and Catholic endeavour, but also appreciate the compelling case for how and why these two branches of the Christian church must work together in Australia and the world.

David Furse-Roberts is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Australian Centre of Christianity and Culture at Charles Sturt University, Canberra. He is the author of The Making of a Tory Evangelical: Lord Shaftesbury and the Evolving Character of Victorian Evangelicalism, and the editor of Menzies: The Forgotten Speeches and Howard: The Art of Persuasion ― Selected Speeches, 1995-2016.

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