‘Evangelicals and Catholics Together,’ Twenty Years Later

By Published on November 17, 2015

The ecumenical initiative known as Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) began more than two decades ago with a stroke of insight by Chuck Colson and Richard John Neuhaus. Their bold intention was to advance unity and fellowship among Christians by establishing a serious theological dialogue between Evangelicals and Catholics, the two largest Christian groups in North America.

Both men were concerned that religion in general and Christianity in particular were being increasingly relegated to the margins of public life in the United States. Religious faith, the most comprehensive and foundational of all realities, was being consigned to the provincial arena of private devotion and sectarian belief. Colson and Neuhaus argued, however, that the Christian faith is indispensable to understanding and addressing the great issues of the day. Evangelicals and Catholics needed to be fully engaged in the complex social, cultural, and political questions that the nation faced — illuminating them with the truth of the gospel. They concluded that if a common and public witness was to thrive and bear lasting fruit, it needed to be founded on a joint commitment to theological and spiritual unity, a unity for which Christ himself prayed (John 17). This fraternal union in Christ was the cornerstone on which ECT was founded.

But there was another element central to the founding of ECT. Tensions between Evangelicals and Catholics had been proliferating in various parts of the world, particularly in South America. Colson and Neuhaus feared that “animosities between evangelicals and Catholics threatened to mar the image of Christ by turning Latin America into a Belfast of religious warfare.” They hoped that a sincere and comprehensive collaboration between Evangelicals and Catholics — a collaboration that honestly faced theological differences — could also offer a useful word to the brethren in South America. A sincere ecumenical dialogue would serve to overcome the “stereotypes, prejudices and conventional ideas” that had been entrenched for decades and, indeed, for centuries.

 

Read the article “‘Evangelicals and Catholics Together,’ Twenty Years Later” on firstthings.com.

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