{"id":12220,"date":"2025-11-19T17:47:36","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T17:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=12220"},"modified":"2025-11-24T16:41:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T16:41:11","slug":"why-i-am-protestant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/19\/why-i-am-protestant\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Am Protestant"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Relearning Protestantism<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Sacrificing neither orthodoxy nor charity, a new apologia for the Protestant tradition offers the advantages of local and individual iterations of the faith.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Charlie Clark<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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There are times in elite circles that being Protestant feels like being a member of a dwindling endangered species. Since coming to Dartmouth in 2007, I myself have followed a predictable course from (low-church, evangelical) Southern Baptist through Reformed Baptist and Presbyterian to high-church Anglican. I may have stopped there\u2014and even retreated from Anglo-Catholicism, settling into a broad-church Episcopal parish\u2014but I have seen many, many friends and colleagues go as far or further, taking the final plunge into full communion with either the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Church. And this flow of converts is largely one-way: I can\u2019t think of any practicing Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox who have converted to Protestantism. Not one.<\/p>

Beth Felker Jones has observed the same trend\u2014even her parents are Roman Catholic converts. She writes, \u201cIn a climate where conversions away from Protestantism claim the riches of history and, sometimes, a sure account of authority, Protestantism can even begin to seem like the least interesting way to be a Christian, a kind of immature and intellectually weak faith. I am not kidding when I say that in some circles, being Protestant just does not seem very sexy.\u201d How true that is. And how welcome then is Jones\u2019s irenic and personal account of the enduring value of Protestantism as a Christian tradition.<\/p>

Jones has no hostility for the Catholic or Orthodox traditions or for converts to them. She emphasizes a common Christianity shared by all three traditions, summarized by the Nicene Creed and the good news of the Gospel. Nor does she advocate for any particular formulation of Protestant doctrine, which sets her project apart from other efforts at \u201cProtestant resourcement.\u201d Instead, Jones sets forth a kind of Mere Protestantism that attempts to be more catholic than the Roman Catholic tradition and more orthodox than the Eastern Orthodox tradition without erecting a counter-magisterium of Calvinist or Arminian or Pentecostal distinctives.\u00a0<\/p>

With respect to catholicity, Jones advocates for what she calls a \u201cProtestant ecclesiology,\u201d which \u201clocates the unity of the universal church in the church\u2019s faithful reception of the gifts God intends for us as God\u2019s people.\u201d In defense of this non-institutional understanding of catholicity, Jones points to the institutional diversity continually present in the historical church. She writes, \u201cMany would narrate history otherwise, as though there were a \u2018once upon a time\u2019 in which unity was simple and clear, without cracks\u2026. In reality, there was and is no pristine church, existing before and behind dissent, difference, and diversity.\u201d She cites examples of division within the church of the New Testament (the factions of Paul and Apollos, for example) as proof that dissent can be \u201cenfolded in the one work of God.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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While embracing diversity as a strength of the Protestant tradition, Jones is quick to qualify that toleration need not give way to relativism: <\/span><\/p>

\u201cA peaceful pluralism is not absent an account of the right and the good,\u201d she writes,\u00a0 “but that account, on its own internal grounds, will require that the right and the good come with respect for the freedom and dignity of persons as invited\u2014never coerced\u2014to enter that good.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Jones\u2019s argument is both historical and, in a sense, empirical. She writes, \u201cI believe theology must take historical reality seriously, and so I cannot accept a definition of catholicity that would exclude any instance of faithful church from belonging fully to the church catholic.\u201d But how do we identify which instances of \u201cchurch\u201d are \u201cfaithful\u201d? Essentially, Jones says we know it when we see it: \u201cWhere God gives gifts to the church\u2014especially Word and sacrament\u2014and where the Spirit of God works, there I must recognize the one catholic church.\u201d Here, Jones\u2019s argument mirrors Peter the Apostle\u2019s statement about the inclusion of the Gentiles: \u201cSo if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God\u2019s way?\u201d (Acts 11:17).\u00a0<\/p>

In a particularly bold passage, Jones describes a historically Black Protestant congregation inhabiting the former home of a Roman Catholic parish. The Catholic church removed some of the historic stained glass when it vacated the building, and the Black church has installed new windows that narrate the African American Christian experience from the Middle Passage through Jim-Crow era martyrdoms to a depiction of the Beloved Community under Christ. Jones concludes, \u201cI dare anyone to look me in the eye and tell me that New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church lacks continuity with the church historic and universal. I dare anyone to claim that church is schismatic. We need Protestantism and Protestant ecclesiology\u2026 to answer the very right feeling that none should accept my dare.\u201d<\/p>

Of course, I know many Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox believers, especially converts, who would accept Jones\u2019s dare\u2014if not gladly, then at least unreservedly. The strength of their conviction generally stems from the other side of the coin: the demand for orthodoxy\u2014God\u2019s demand for right worship and its concomitant right belief\u2014and the felt need for intellectual certainty about what God demands. Here Jones makes another quasi-empirical argument: granted the need for a reliable authority on worship and belief, \u201cThe reality of the church is not an easy locus for faith.\u201d Rather, \u201cthe church, beloved of Jesus, is rotten with sin and riddled with evil. If one is not blind to evil in the church, that church as the rightful authority for knowledge of God can only be an imposter, for the beauty, truth, and goodness we meet in the God of Scripture is not reliably present there.\u201d<\/p>

Jones is swift to clarify that this rejection of the church as our primary authority doesn\u2019t entail rejection of the church as necessary to Christian practice. But it does lead into Jones\u2019s defense of the one Protestant distinctive that is central to her argument: the primacy of Scripture. She writes, \u201cWhile this is too stark a way of putting the matter, if it comes down to a choice between trusting Scripture and trusting the church, I\u2019m going to go with Scripture. [Footnote: Have you seen the church?]\u201d Before you can say \u201cpervasive interpretive pluralism,\u201d Jones follows up this gesture toward sola Scriptura with a defense of the perspicuity of Scripture: \u201cWhat if Scripture is not quite so hard to interpret as [critics of sola scriptura imply]?… The canon has a center, about which we can discern enough family resemblance among interpretations to be able to recognize it or at least to object when we fail to do so.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

Actually, Jones adds, interpretive pluralism is less of a bug and more of a feature, because it makes room for contextualizing the gospel. \u201c[T]he universal church can thrive only if local bodies have the power to attend to, understand, and respond to local cultures, contexts, and needs.\u201d While embracing diversity as a strength of the Protestant tradition, Jones is quick to qualify that toleration need not give way to relativism: \u201cA peaceful pluralism is not absent an account of the right and the good,\u201d she writes,\u00a0 “but that account, on its own internal grounds, will require that the right and the good come with respect for the freedom and dignity of persons as invited\u2014never coerced\u2014to enter that good.\u201d<\/p>

Fundamentally, Jones\u2019s book is an attempt at outnarration. Protestantism has the best claim to catholicity, because it includes more Christians in its definition of Christianity than does the Roman Catholic Church. Further, Protestantism has the best claim to orthodoxy because it’s easier to trust Scripture than the church to get Christianity right. Committed non-Protestants will have ready answers for these arguments, but Jones may prompt prospective converts to think twice: What if what you\u2019re looking for is right where you are?<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Charlie Clark<\/b> is a writer and retractor. He lives in New Hampshire.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Why I Am Protestant<\/b> was published by IVP Academic on September 30, 2025. <\/span>Fare Forward<\/span><\/i> appreciates their provision of a review copy. You can purchase your own copy from the publisher <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sacrificing neither orthodoxy nor charity, a new apologia for the Protestant tradition offers the advantages of local and individual iterations of the faith. Review by Charlie 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