His story reminded me of Cardinal Newman’s quote, “To be deep in history, is to cease to be Protestant.”
Below is an excerpt to wet your appetite, but click on the link below to read the whole story.
“At some point during my employment I had stumbled onto a Christianity Today article that depicted an “evangelical identity crisis.” The author painted of picture of young evangelicals, growing up in a post-modern world and yearning to be firmly rooted in history, encouraged that others had stood strong for Christ in changing and troubled times. Yet in most evangelical churches much of the church calendar is not observed, the Apostles Creed is never mentioned, many of the songs are written after 1997, and if any anecdotal story is told about a hero from church history, it certainly occured after the Reformation. History is nowhere to be found. The articles depicted my experience perfectly.
“[In seminary] we were learning about spiritual disciplines like prayer and fasting and I was struck how often the professor would skip from St. Paul to Martin Luther or Jonathan Edwards when describing admirable lives of piety. Did nothing worthwhile happen in the first 1500 years? The skipping of history would continue in many other classes or assigned textbooks.
“As I read my Church History textbooks and Martin Luther’s biography I was struck by how novel many of my Baptist beliefs were. Throughout the early church and even during the Reformation I learned that issues like baptism and communion were extremely important. Yet for me they had always been “open-handed” issues. After all, communion was simply eating bread and grape juice every now and then to remember Christ. Strictly speaking, baptism was not necessary for salvation and was simply a symbol demonstrated after someone had gotten “saved.” Not only did these views contradict church history but, increasingly, they did not match with uncomfortable Bible passages I had always shrugged off (cf John 6, Rom 6).”
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