Newt's Contract with the Vatican?

When I lived in the New Orleans area, I remember hearing about the pastor of St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church (beautiful building, very "progressive" congregation) remarking to the press about his baptizing then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich decades earlier when Gingrich was a student at Tulane University. "If I knew then what I know now," he was alleged to have said. "I'd have held him under longer. Much, much longer."

While socially liberal Baptists may have hated the fact that Gingrich identified himself with their denomination, in time so did more conservative Baptists. Reports of Gingrich's divorces and infidelities were hardly welcome, even if rarely mentioned by his political allies in evangelical Christendom.

This week's Time magazine discusses how Gingrich has traded in his nominal Southern Baptist identity for a new life as a devoted Roman Catholic, joining the church of his third wife. Gingrich's personal story is hardly Cardinal Newman (or even Senator Brownback). He tells Time he's still "not intensely religious," and, with Time's Amy Sullivan tagging along, reads a novel through the prayer time before Mass.

What's more interesting though is Time's assessment of why prominent conservatives (such as Gingrich, Brownback, Robert Novak) and others are finding a home in the Roman church. For Gingrich, Time reports, it's the "depth of an intellectual tradition" that the ex-Speaker finds "comforting."

Time sees the contributions of the recently deceased Richard John Neuhaus and William F. Buckley, Jr., as providing "an intellectual haven for conservatives put off by Evangelicals who rail against experts and elites."

I thinkSullivan oversimplifies both Catholicism and evangelicalism at this point. There are streams of more robustly traditional Protestants, of course, and I would hardly think that most traditional Catholics would see their tradition in such baldly intellectual and utilitarian terms.

 And what Time misses is how evangelicals and Roman Catholics are increasingly conversant with one another, and not just at the level of Washington or Manhattan elites. What would make for a really fascinating story is how this is true among those (of both traditions) who are likely to spontaneously combust than they are to convert.

Comments

[Francis Beckwith]

Spot on, Russ.

I wish that Amy Sullivan, as well as other religion writers, would treat theology like they treat brain science and physics: it is something that takes time and patience and study to understand well. They treat religion as if it were just a notch above reality TV and politics.

[iMonk]

My first disagreement with Dr. Moore.

I think Carl Henry's hopes for evangelicalism have borne some fruit, but we can't point to a great university. We engage the culture with mostly anger and kitsch. When a thoughtful young evangelical starts exploring disciplines in academic depth, he's going to be reading Catholics. Science. Philosophy. Culture. And we can't even start talking about the arts.

My wife is an RC convert, and not for any of those reasons. She simply couldn't find the depth of spiritual formation resources anywhere else comparable to the RCC.

I agree the article itself if shallow, but we have a major deficit in this area. I'm grateful for the exceptions, but that's what they are.

We can point to Francis Collins and say he's one of us, but we know if he spoke at the local SBC church, there would be Answers in Genesis protesters outside.

[Michael Bauman]

There's one sound reason to convert from one position to another, and that's if it's true. If it's true, believe it. If it's not, don't. But Gingrich's reason, at least as reported, is shallow and unsatisfactory: He finds the depth of the intellectual tradition "comforting." It's not about comfort. It's about truth. If the Roman Catholic distinctives are true, believe them. If they are not, look elsewhere -- regardless of how they make you feel. Comfort is not the deciding factor. After all, to a fallen soul truth can prove terribly uncomfortable, and error can feel as good as a soft blanket.

[therecusant]

Bauman,

I could not agree more with your main point. However, it is difficult to draw meaningful conclusions from magazines such as Time.

Last May, Newt said that, "The other sense is that the church has had two of its most powerful popes back to back, in their intellectual ability to engage the secular world on behalf of Christ." There, at least, it appears he is explicitly drawing a connection between intellectual rigor and the historic claims of Christianity. That is quite a bit different, IMHO.

[GregK]

As somebody who's been an Evangelical, Reformed, Lutheran and a "convert" to Roman Catholicism, I would like to say that the "depth of an intellectual tradition" in RCism is an overstatement.

If you want an intellectual faith, join the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

RCism has a broader intellectual tradition, but the "Truly Reformed" are the real intellectuals out there.

[David Deavel]

GregK: The "truly reformed" are indeed deep, but generally speaking more narrow. This accounts for the Neo-Calvinists with their attempt at broadening the Calvinist tradition through the use of "Worldview" thinking. The Neo-Calvinists realized that Calvinists excelled in strictly philosophical and theological thinking, but lacked in other areas.

With Frank Beckwith and therecusant, I would hesitate to judge anybody's religious thinking (or any other kind of thinking) from TIME.

Besides, for any Catholic conversion account, it is, as Cardinal Newman said, not a subject to take up between the soup and fish courses.

[Michael Bauman]

David,
I disagree with the idea that the old-style Calvinists were not deeply worldview savvy, especially when it came to folks like Francis Schaeffer, Gordon Clark, Gresham Machen, Abraham Kuyper, Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin and Theodore Beza. The list, of course, is partial.

Recusant,
I agree thoroughly, which is why I said "at least as reported."

[David Deavel]

Michael: I partially agree with you; there is a movement of rehabilitation of old-style Calvinist scholasticism on the part of a number of people, showing that they could be very clear thinkers on a broad range of topics (I'm thinking of Steve Grabill's work on Protestant scholastics and natural law, issuing in thought on economics and politics). However, your list is all of dead people: 3 have been dead for over 300 years; Abraham Kuyper is considered a neo-Calvinist (the first?)acting in reaction to a narrowed tradition; Francis Schaeffer also was acting in reaction; I don't know enough about Gordon Clark to say much of his work. In the modern day, there are a few broad OPC types--literary scholar Susan Felch at my alma mater, Calvin College; Mark Noll; D. G. Hart; and younger thinkers like David Van Drunen and Caleb Stegall. I admire them quite a bit.

I have no brief for the neo-Calvinists, considering their experiments have mostly ended in liberal Protestantism. But the number of serious confessional Calvinists these days thinking broadly is quite small and doesn't cover the territory (understandably given their numbers and certain of their theological points) that the Catholic tradition does.

[Michael Bauman]

David,
I suppose it comes down to the fact that we place the same folks on different rosters. In the end, it's not a problem because, whomever we place on those rosters, your point is a good one.

[David Deavel]

Michael: Good enough. I wasn't trying to be argumentative--and as you point out, it's hard to figure out where a lot of figures fit on the roster.