Last Updated on Monday, 04 May 2009 04:39 Written by Greg Sunday, 03 May 2009 22:07

This will be the last of my undergraduate productions posted on the site.  It is an annotated bibliography rather than a paper, written for my senior seminar in missions.  By my senior year, the Restoration Movement's failure in its unity agenda was a source of significant internal discord.  As I was finishing a degree in missions and assimilating my experiences in Latin America with a view to the mission work on the horizon, I realized that that discord was playing out ever more in reference to the question of Protestant-Catholic relations in the Latin American mission field.  This being compounded by the relativism of a generally postmodern environment (don't tell the Harding trustees--they don't know), I felt an acute need to study the topic of Catholic-Protestant cooperation in missions.

My thoughts on this subject might be of particular interest to those who have helped send us to evangelize people who are Catholic in one sense or another.  The fact that I was pursuing and continue to pursue a practical unity platform between our mission work and that of the Catholic Church may create anxiety in some.  If you are one of those people, then know we share that sentiment.  My point of departure, however, is that my anxiety of about disunity is far greater than any other.

The bibliography does little to spell out my own thinking on the subject, and, indeed, it has been some years since I wrote it.  Having reread it, however, I was struck by how formative it has been for my thinking--far more so than I had expected.  Many of the points raised in the works summarized therein have become the timber of the framework that sustains my thought and practice at present.  I'll spell that out briefly below.  As for the bibliography, it was not exactly comprehensive at the time, and it is dated now.  It contains a fair representation of important issues, though, so it would be thought provoking for both those who think I have no business seeking unity with Catholics and, on the other side of the fence, those have wondered why their church sent missionaries to a "Christian" country.

That I would think unity with Catholics possible also implies a lot regarding my beliefs about issues that divide Protestant churches.  To put it practically, I would have nothing to do with a mission work to "evangelize" Methodists, for example.  But the fact is that in Churches of Christ most understand themselves apart form other Protestant denominations in precisely the same terms as they understand themselves apart from the Catholic church.  This necessarily raises the question of why I would go all the way to Peru to "evangelize" Catholics--what's the difference between Methodists or Baptists or Pentecostals and Catholics in this scheme of things?

I answer in two ways.  One, I do not confuse the "correcting" Churches of Christ have often engaged in with evangelism.  I would share the news about God's Kingdom with a nominal member of the Church of Christ as quickly as with a nominal Catholic and call it evangelization in both instances.  Evangelism, to the extent that it is aimed at the generation of faith, is the proper terminology for proclamation to anyone who wears a name associated with Christian beliefs without actually holding them.  While it is true that well over ninety percent of Arequipa's population wears the Catholic name, my experience also tells me that a vast number of those does not have the relationship to God through Christ that I understand to be essential to the gospel.

Two, there are aspects of the version of Catholicism found here that merit a prophetic voice, by which I mean something far different than merely correcting other Christians on the great number of things about which I might disagree with them.  I understand prophetic mission as a proactive call to repentance directed primarily toward those who would be God's people, and very few of the differences among us merit such a call.  While there are plenty of conversations I am willing to have about those issues when the opportunity presents itself, they are not important enough for me to make a prophetic ministry out of them.  The worship of Mary is, however.  It is actual idolatry that I witness here, and that is far too grave to overlook when considering a person's relationship to God.  So, even for the very devout--those full of faith--there is need to hear the true message of God, which they cannot have heard if they are worshipping Mary.

As grave as the situation is, however, those who claim to follow Christ must ask how we can cooperate in glorifying God.  This is not less so when the most urgent problem is the glorification of another but more so.  Given the history of dispute and the touchy issue of “sheep stealing” that evangelistic work naturally entails, this is a fascinating study in Christian unity.  Because it is where the sheep stealing issue must be overcome, and because it offers the most practical means to cooperation in the fundamental purpose of Christianity, I continue to believe that the mission of God is where unity will happen.  It is, somehow, where we will find the common ground to meet for the inevitable dialogue.

Catholic-Protestant Unity in Missions