Journal: Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Volume: JOTGES 33:64 (Spring 2020)
Article: Crossing The Tiber: What’s Driving The Evangelical Exodus To Rome?
Author: Philippe R. Sterling

JOTGES 33:64 (Spring 2020) p. 41

Crossing The Tiber:
What’s Driving The Evangelical Exodus To Rome?

Philippe R. Sterling

Pastor
Vista Ridge Bible Fellowship Lewisville, TX

I. Introduction

A book released in February 2016 by the Roman Catholic Ignatius Press is entitled Evangelical Exodus: Evangelical Seminarians and Their Path to Rome.1 The back cover of the book states:

Over the course of a single decade, dozens of students, alumni, and professors from a conservative, Evangelical seminary in North Carolina (Southern Evangelical Seminary) converted to Catholicism. These conversions were notable as they occurred among people with varied backgrounds and motivations—many of whom did not share their thoughts with one another until this book was produced. Even more striking is that the seminary’s founder, long-time president, and popular professor, Dr. Norman Geisler, had written two full-length books and several scholarly articles criticizing Catholicism from an Evangelical point of view.

What could have led these seminary students, and even some of their professors, to walk away from their Evangelical education and risk losing their jobs, ministries, and even family and friends, to embrace the teachings they once rejected as false or even heretical? Speculation over this phenomenon has been rampant and often dismissive and misguided—leading to more confusion than

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understanding. The stories of these converts are now being told by those who know them best—the converts themselves.

They discuss the primary issues they had to face: the nature of the biblical canon; the identification of Christian orthodoxy and the problems with the Protestant doctrines of sola Scriptura (“scripture alone”) and sola fide (“faith alone”).

One of the chapters in the book is authored by a young man who, some years ago, led worship for our church. He also received financial support from us while attending Southern Evangelical Seminary. What are the things that drew him and other Evangelicals to “cross the Tiber” and become Roman Catholic?

II. Crossing The Tiber

Francis J. Beckwith was the President of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) from November 2006 until May 2007, when he resigned from his position and from ETS. He is currently professor of philosophy and Church–state studies at Baylor University. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 2007. In the foreword to Evangelical Exodus, he relates:

After decades of assimilating Catholic thought in my spiritual pilgrimage without realizing it,...