An Author Interview from Books At a Glance
Why does the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century still matter? Has Rome changed, or have the two sides come together enough to say that the Reformation is over?
I’m Fred Zaspel, editor here at Books At a Glance, and these are the kinds of questions Daryl Hart takes up in his new book, Still Protesting: Why the Reformation Still Matters. And he’s here to talk to us about it today.
Darryl, welcome, and congratulations on your new book!
Hart:
Thanks, Fred, nice to be with you. Thanks for having me.
Zaspel:
What is it you are still protesting?
Hart:
Still protesting Roman Catholicism. I have worked in conservative circles in the United States, intellectual conservatism or political conservatism or all of the above, for about the last 15 years. First at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Wilmington, Delaware, and now at Hillsdale College. And I have had many colleagues and very good friends who were Protestant and became Roman Catholic. In fact, one of my first conferences for ISI, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, we were meeting in Oxford, England at the university at one of the colleges and a student from Hillsdale whom I met at the reception before dinner, said that to be a true conservative is to be a Roman Catholic. And I just never encountered that before. She had grown up Pentecostal, had come to Hillsdale and that was her experience. Then I had a number of very good colleagues and friends at ISI to whom I dedicated one of my books, two of whom were Protestant, probably more mainline than evangelical, and became Roman Catholic. And now at Hillsdale I have a number of, again, very good colleagues, very pleasant relations with them, who have gone from Protestant to Roman Catholic. And students here at the college do that.
Now, I didn’t write this address that per se because I don’t want to start any kind of fight here on campus; we have very good working relations. On the other hand, some of my Protestant colleagues and I are concerned about students who become Roman Catholic, because we think that the Roman Catholic church teaches a lot of error and it teaches a false view of salvation. I think we could maybe get into this, I do think there are true Christians in the Roman Catholic Church and I think it is possible for a person to be a true believer and hear parts of the Gospel in the Roman Catholic Church, but there is so much other stuff going on in Roman Catholicism that the Reformers of the 16th century first encountered and that still continues to go on. Despite whatever you make of the Counterreformation, the Council of Trent and efforts since then to reform the Roman Catholic Church, I think there are still just basic divides between Protestants and Roman Catholics that need to be reaffirmed, re-examined, studied. And again, I write this as much for Protestants as anything because I think, myself, I just wasn’t that aware of Roman Catholicism before starting to work with these people and starting to reflect on it more. In writing the book and reflecting on Protestantism in contrast to Roman Catholicism, I think I have become a better Christian and a better Protestant. I think I understand much better why the Reformation is so dear, why the truths of the Gospel are so dear, now, and the great legacy of the Reformation.
Zaspel:
Okay, some may just write this off as Catholic-bashing. But you make an important distinction between illegitimate prejudice and theological conviction. Describe for us the difference.
Hart:
As a historian who teaches religion in the US, and I’m teaching that this Fall, there’s a strong strain of anti-Catholicism throughout American Protestantism. And, in fact, if you look at the arrival of Irish Roman Catholics in the 1840s in places like Boston and Philadelphia, you see riots happening there that could resemble the riots in Belfast in the 70s and 80s. Serious violence, serious destruction of property, and even casualties. And it’s based on the idea that Roman Catholics weren’t fit for becoming true Americans. I’m also working on a book right now about Roman Catholics and American Conservatism. Rome, up until Vatican II had a real ambivalence about the kind of political institutions that the United States has. And in some ways there were legitimate differences between, say, Roman Catholic understandings of church and state, and the American founding understanding of church and state, but those are political considerations that really don’t bear on the sorts of questions that Luther, Calvin, and the Council of Trent addressed in the 16th century. It would be naïve to think that politics weren’t involved in the Reformation; of course they were, because so many of the Protestant churches became state churches, Church of England, the churches in Germany, the churches of Geneva or Zürich, other places, were also state churches. There was established religion there; but still, politics wasn’t at the heart of the Reformation struggle the way politics has been, I think, at the heart of an anti-Catholicism in the United States. I do think that when you think about theology, worship, church government, aside from politics, it’s still possible to make a case for opposing Roman Catholicism on those grounds but still recognizing Roman Catholics in the United States as full participants in the national order and structures of life.
Zaspel:
A few minutes ago you mentioned some friends and in your book you mention Christian Smith as an example of one who comes from even a Reformed background and has moved to Roman Catholicism. Why is Roman Catholicism attractive to some protestants? And is there a sense that Rome is winning in the conversion exchange with Protestants?
Hart:
My sense is that they are. Although, I think maybe the people who convert to Rome are more visible or more vocal about it.
Zaspel:
Yeah, I wondered that, too.
Hart:
And maybe there are more outlets. For instance, one of our – and I don’t want to make this too much about Hillsdale, because I don’t want to get into any trouble with the college – but one of our inter-varsity student workers, I think now he’s going to be full time, told me the end of last year that there are a lot of conversions of Roman Catholic students to Protestantism. But again, you just don’t hear about it on campus, and I think that could be the case that these are nominal Roman Catholics. Usually my encounters with serious credo Roman Catholics is that they don’t convert; and I respect them very much for that. But I think for, say, someone like Christian Smith…there’s a website called, Called to Communion which has a lot of guys who were either going to reformed seminaries, or who were even reformed pastors who have become Roman Catholic. And I think part of it is that Protestantism seems inferior because there are so many different denominations, there is so little coherence. I also think evangelical is on the ropes now, given the support for Trump by American evangelicals. I sort of understand that, but even before President Trump, there was a sense that evangelicalism was – and I share this view in some ways – that it’s a mile wide and an inch deep. So it didn’t have the kind of serious theological reflection, the serious liturgy that Rome represents.
Zaspel:
Yeah, but Roman Catholicism is hardly monolithic, either, is it?
Hart:
Right. Right, but there they can appeal to the Vatican and the papacy as still giving it a kind of order, at least a cover of order. Which is there on paper, just as the US Constitution supplies a measure of order for the United States. But when you think about what it means to be American, and you think about even the diversity of laws and local jurisdictions in the United States…we talk about unity… We are a United States, we have a State of the Union Address, and yet people can see in it what they want to see. And I do think there is a lot of wishful thinking going on. But, I guess, also, there is this appeal of the history of the church. A line that I address in one of the chapters, which is a common one, that Roman Catholicism is the church that Jesus founded – I hear that a lot. And they go back, almost in a Protestant way, to Matthew 16 when Jesus says to Peter, on this rock I will build my church. Even the New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat, I’ve heard talk about his recent book about Pope Francis. And I like Douthat a lot, I think he’s a really smart guy and argues for his faith in a very inhospitable environment. He does it in a remarkably important way; but he will even trot out that verse the way Protestants will trot out John 3:16 or something, as if that solves the historical question. Which is much more complicated when you look at the history of the rise of the papacy and the Bishop of Rome. But for some reason, some academics, some people who have gone to seminary, still agree with that argument in a way. Again, I think there’s probably a lot of personal need going on. As is the case with most everyone when they adopt a belief, even true belief, there’s a lot of stuff going on; it’s hard to isolate all of this. But I think, in the conservative circles, and this is something I don’t get to in the book but I’ve become increasingly aware of it, that as people are becoming critical of liberalism or neoliberalism and the kind of licentiousness and moral relativism of the West and the relationship that that has to capitalism and whatnot, there’s been a lot of Roman Catholic critics of the West and liberalism. And again, I think Rome represents a conservative alternative to the way America has gone. Whether this is going to erupt in some kind of anti-American sentiment among Roman Catholics, I think it’s happening among certain intellectuals. People teach politics; people teach philosophy; you can find this on certain websites. The bishops, themselves, in the United States, and the Pope, himself. If you look at what Pope Francis said about the United States when he visited in 2015, you would think there was not an inch of difference between what the United States stands for and what Rome stands for, at least on certain things. But, increasingly, there is this alienation from political and economic trends in the United States, and Rome, especially its history, offers an alternative to that.
Zaspel:
Describe what a professing evangelical gives up if he converts to Roman Catholicism.
Hart:
I’ve actually struggled with that lot, because my sense of the converts to whom I have spoken, is that they don’t give up much. This is where I think this is why the Reformation really does matter. The converts that I’ve talked to a little bit, and inferred from other things they have written is that this is an upgrade. You’re basically going from Christianity 1.0 to Christianity 7.0, but you don’t really give up what you had, you’re just getting more features, more bells and whistles, seemingly. You still have faith in Christ; you’re still going to heaven; but now you get the saints, now you get the calendar, now you get sacrament every week and I’m trying to say that’s not the way it works. When you go from being a Protestant to Roman Catholic you go from being a saint…Everyone who is a Protestant technically is a saint, that’s the way Paul addresses Christians in the New Testament, they are all Saints… You go from that to basically, at best, going to purgatory. I don’t know any other way of saying that because you have all these sins that still afflict you and you hope, according to historic Roman Catholic teaching, you hope you don’t die in mortal sin; because if you die in mortal sin you’re not going even to purgatory.
Zaspel:
Right, there’s no chance.
Hart:
This is where the doctrines of salvation and this is why disassociating anti-Catholicism from politics is important. The theological differences of the 16th century are, to use Bernie Sanders’ phrase, huge. And I don’t understand why this doesn’t trouble more people because it seems to me if you’re going to become a Roman Catholic, you really have to be on your watch all the time about sin. To his credit, one of the Roman Catholic journalists whom I admire and follow, Michael Brendan Dougherty, who writes now for the National Review, I heard him give a podcast with Robert Wright at Bloggingheads.tv; and Dougherty said that he really is careful about what he does before he travels by plane, because if a plane goes down, he doesn’t want to die in mortal sin. To his credit, he is thinking that one through, but I think a lot of evangelicals who convert aren’t really thinking in those terms. They seem to think, they’ve already got Jesus, and now I can get more – I can get Mary, I can get the saints, I can get the calendar, I can get not just two sacraments but seven sacraments. So, it just seems to all be, as I said, an upgrade. And I just don’t think that’s a fair way of depicting the divide between the Reformers and the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century.
Zaspel:
I think that’s an insightful way to state the difference and what you’re giving up, from being a saint to facing purgatory, for sure, at best. That’s quite a give up.
Give us a brief overview of you book, perhaps chapter by chapter, so our listeners can know what to expect.
Hart:
The first half of the book, as I recall, really tries to walk through, on the basis of the 16th century debates, the most important aspects of Protestantism. I don’t go through all of the solas, but I do try to get to Justification by Faith, the importance of sola Scriptura, how that functioned in the debates of the 16th century, reform of worship and the trying to eliminate idolatry and blasphemy from worship that the reformers were interested in, as well as church government. Here, as a Presbyterian, I look very kindly, as you might expect, on Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Ordinances, but the debate between having bishops and having presbyters was a substantial one. And this is where I don’t like taking the easy shots at Rome given the current scandals among either priests and now even cardinals. I don’t like to do that because I just think it’s too easy, and I think we’re living at the time when it’s easy to make hay of the foibles of public figures. But, on the other hand, I do think it’s important to think about how few checks and balances there are on an episcopal form of government. When you give bishops that kind of power over dioceses, when you give a pope that kind of power with universal jurisdiction, where do the challenges come from? And I see, on websites now, a lot of Roman Catholics really wondering what the Lady can do in the current climate, and they’re asking for the bishops to reform themselves. This is exactly, in some ways, what Luther and other Protestants were up to in the 16th century, but they went farther.
The second half of the book basically takes up some of the most common arguments for Roman Catholicism, such as church unity, such as the church is old. I’m forgetting some of the other ones, but takes some of the most common arguments and tries to parse them and show that they are not nearly as airtight as they might seem to be. There’s one about beauty, and worshiping, and again this is the idea of having beautiful places to worship and places that elevate your thoughts. In some ways I understand that. Any time I visit Europe or go to any major city and see some of the older churches, there, you think, man, that’s a really attractive building, wouldn’t it be great to worship in there, especially compared to many Orthodox Presbyterian churches. I’m a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church; we’re a fairly poor, not by world standards but by American standards, fairly poor church so we oftentimes worship in rented spaces in school buildings. The church here in Hillsdale, we bought an old train station that has in addition to it that used to function as a kind of sports facility. It doesn’t have the aesthetics that you might have in historic churches, even churches from the 1970s; but you don’t go into the building, necessarily, to be brought up into the Holy of Holies or to ascend Mount Zion, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews says, you go in there to worship God in spirit and in truth and it is the spiritual presence of Christ that really makes worship happen. So, trying to argue against that kind of beauty is difficult but I think it’s still an important argument to make. So those are some of the arguments I try to make in the second half of the book.
Then the book concludes with an interaction with a really great book by Ken Woodward, a longtime reporter for Newsweek, who covered religion. He is Roman Catholic and he wrote a book called The Making of Saints, and it’s really eye-opening about the way that Rome developed the whole process of canonization, beatification; and it’s not pretty; it’s just not attractive. For something that’s supposed to be that holy and that sanctified to have that kind of political process going on with it, and that kind of history, is just another wake-up call for people to think about what they mean by sainthood and what it means to be saved. So that’s how the book ends.
Zaspel:
We’re talking to Dr. Darryl Hart about his new book, Still Protesting: Why the Reformation Still Matters. It’s insightful, it’s engaging, it’s relevant, and its subject matter is massively important for every believer. This is not just another of the same kind of books on the question of the difference between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. We are very happy to commend it and hope you get a copy!
Darryl, thanks so much for your good work and for talking to us today.
Hart:
Thanks for having me, Fred, good to talk to you.
