John Paul II and Evangelical Christianity

Thanks to Mark, Rick, and all the other MOJers for welcoming me onto the blog, especially as a "separated brother."  I am mostly interested in reading others' thoughts about Pope John Paul II, but let me offer one modest contribution on an issue of particular interest to me, as a Protestant who studies how cultural shifts have affected law and public life.  One of the most important changes in American Christianity in the past generation has been the growing cooperation and respect between Catholics and evangelical Protestants.  Evangelicals were once the group most suspicious of Catholics -- most suspicious, for example, of Al Smith and John Kennedy as presidential nominees.  But now they more and more read books by Catholic writers, cooperate with Catholics on moral-political issues, and regard at least many of their Catholic brethren as authentic, not just nominal, Christians -- that is, as believers with a "personal relationship with God."  The increased openness goes the other way too, from Catholics to evangelicals.  (I wish that the interest of evangelicals would extend more to aspects of Catholic social thought that challenge some modern "conservative" positions on economics, but that's another subject....)

My main point is to suggest the powerful role that John Paul II played in these changes.  Evangelicals developed a considerable respect for him that did much to increase their respect for the Church and for Catholic life in general.  (Think of the flags at half staff that Michael S. reports throughout Protestant Oklahoma.)  One obvious factor was the Pope's leadership on social and moral issues important to evangelicals:  how he spoke against communism and put opposition to abortion and euthanasia in the framework of the Culture of Life.  Evangelicals, with their emphasis on "scripture alone," have a real need for intellectual frameworks like this that emerge from the Church's tradition of moral reasoning.

But a second factor in the Pope's appeal, I think, is that he reflected some fundamentally "evangelical" qualities, the parts of the Christian faith that evangelicals treat as central.  One Mennonite writer, for example, described the appeal of the Pope's "personal witness":  "John Paul showed us it was possible to be committed to the sacraments and the institutional church, and the same time to be committed to personal conversion and the Scriptures in the way that evangelical Christians have always been."  During the Pope's final hours last  weekend, I was in Chicago for family reasons and had occasion to talk with many evangelical friends of my parents and family.  Several of them emphasized that they could tell from the Pope's life and statements that he had a deep "personal relationship with God" in Christ.  I imagine that evangelicals are saying this far more of John Paul II than of any other Catholic figure in modern times.

It was, of course, a wildly inaccurate stereotype for evangelicals to suggest that Catholics as a rule didn't have a personal relationship with God (as it is also an inaccurate stereotype to say that evangelicals never do any hard thinking about Christian faith but merely read the Bible mechanistically).  There is obviously a rich Catholic history of personal conversion and personal spirituality.  Nevertheless, Catholicism and evangelicalism each have their distinctive strengths and their distinctive risks; and an institutional, sacramental church runs the risk of overlooking the personal aspects of Christian faith.  John Paul II both proclaimed and exemplified a vibrant personal faith.  He both called Catholic laypeople to personal faith and dispelled the stereotype that Catholics did not have such faith.  I believe that this, as well as his stands on moral and social issues, attracted evangelical Protestants to him.

As I remember, George Weigel's biography also refers to John Paul II as an "evangelical" Pope because of the way he proclaimed the Christian gospel in all corners of life -- taking it physically to all parts of the world in his travels, and applying it to so many areas of life in his writings.  The news reports this weekend mentioned the Pope's statement that he had wanted to follow the model of St. Paul as well as St. Peter -- that is, to act as a missionary to the world as well as a shepherd to the flock.  He surely did.