Evangelicals & Catholics Together

The late Chuck Colson and the late John Richard Neuhaus were very good friends.  Chuck Colson had been President's Nixon's attorney in the midst of Watergate, and went to prison because of some of his activities.  Around that time, he converted to Christianity (described in his book, Born Again), and later became a leading evangelical through his efforts in Prison Fellowship.

John Richard Neuhaus was a leading Lutheran minister who wrote a prominent book, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (1984). On September 8, 1990, John Richard Neuhaus was received into the Catholic Church, and a year later he was ordained a priest.  His decision threw his friend into perplexion. For a time, I confess, I was vexed over his decision. It took months for me to realize that he was the same man who was a brother to me as a Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor. In fact, in some ways I learned to admire him all the more, because he had the courage to do something he believed in deeply, though it might cost him dearly in terms of support and relationships.  http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/januaryweb-only/103-51.0.html?start=2

In an article Colson wrote in 2009, he gave the lion's share of credit to the formation of the project, which became known as Evangelicals and Catholics Together, to Fr. John Richard Neuhaus, who had just passed away. By 1994, they, and other leading Evangelical and Catholic scholars, had not only formed this project, they issued its first statement, Evangelicals & Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium.

This statement built upon some of the earlier discussions between Pope John Paul II and Billy Graham.  The statement emphasized a unity between Catholics and Evangelicls, which, though imperfect, centered upon many essential agreed upon truths - and yet did not deny at the same time (in truth) some important disagreements between Evangelicals and Catholics. Still, it asserted, not all differences are authentic disagreements, nor need all disagreements divide. Differences and disagreements must be tested in disciplined and sustained conversation. Thus began an ongoing series of "disciplined and sustained conversation" that resulted in several statements by the ECT project, which I plan to review in this blog. (I have a Facebook Group dedicated to this purpose, http://www.facebook.com/groups/206783002679350/; If you want to join that Group, let me know.)

On a personal note, this effort is very important to me, because I was raised a Catholic, left that faith tradition in my early teens, and became a born-again Evangelical in my late teens.  I have lately been reconnecting with my Catholicism while retaining my Evangelicalism.  The efforts by Evangelicals and Catholics Together speaks to me on a deeply personal level.