In recent weeks, we’ve been looking at the Bizarro World of Catholic evangelism of evangelicals. However, that movement occurs in both directions. Today, let’s see why Catholic and evangelical converts say they are ‘crossing the Tiber.’ Along the way, we’ll see if we can’t spot commonalities in their conversion testimonies—and also see what their leaders make of all this movement.
(This post first went live on Patreon on 4/4/2025. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available now! Series tag for all Catholic-Evangelical Cold War posts.)
SITUATION REPORT: Evangelicals are ‘Crossing the Tiber’ thanks to Catholic evangelism
Last month, The Gospel Coalition (TGC) ran a post with an eye-catching title:
Roman Catholic Apologetics Is Surging Online. Intended Audience? Protestants.
Oh noes!
And as we’ve seen aplenty this week, Catholic evangelists have brought evangelism to evangelical flocks. They invite evangelicals to “cross the Tiber” to Catholicism. (They use that phrase because the Vatican lies across the Tiber River from the center of Rome.) It’s a cute phrase, at least! I like it better than “religious switching,” though that of course is far more descriptive.
“Religious switching” describes the movement of any religion’s believer out of that religion and into another—or into atheism, agnosticism, etc.
I first began noticing this movement of believers within Christianity a few years ago, but now it’s become impossible to ignore. There are simply a lot of evangelicals finding themselves drawn to Catholicism. Overall, they’re not making a huge difference to Catholicism’s collapse in the West. The overwhelming switching movement of Christians continues to be out of Christianity. Likewise, the overwhelming movement in Catholicism is leaving it for some other Christian flavor. But enough evangelicals are crossing the Tiber that evangelical leaders are taking notice.
As one might expect, a vast gulf exists between the testimonies of these converts and what their Dear Leaders say is the reason for this switching. We’ll check that discrepancy out in a few minutes.
But Catholics cross that metaphorical river as well—to join evangelicalism
For decades now, I’ve heard far more stories about Catholics leaving Catholicism to join evangelical groups. Perhaps because evangelicalism lays far more emphasis upon evangelism, Catholics have traditionally been far more likely to hear evangelicals’ evangelism pitches than to offer their own.
I myself converted from Catholicism to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), and then to the United Pentecostal Church, International (UPCI). Before my conversion, I held very fervent faith—yet it would not have occurred to me to use evangelism on anybody. I vaguely knew that historically, Catholicism had spread throughout much of the world because of Catholic evangelism, but I didn’t consider evangelism part of a layperson’s duties. Afterward, of course, I knew that all Christians should evangelize.
In my conversion, I certainly wasn’t alone. Testimonies abound online about former Catholics who joined evangelicalism. Their testimonies usually include their Catholic credentials—infant baptism, Catholic Sunday School, confirmation, Mass (Sunday morning service) attendance, Eucharist (taking Communion), confession, and all the rest. I’ve no reason to doubt their sincerity.
But evangelicalism called to them far more loudly than Mother Rome.
And the Tiber proved to be a very minor obstacle overall for them.
What evangelical-to-Catholic converts say made them switch…
Over on Reddit, we find a good number of evangelical-to-Catholic converts. A couple of years ago, one of them asked Catholics why they thought people were converting to their flavor. One such convert cited more intellectual curiosity. Another cited a less tenuous, more solid-feeling link with the earliest Christians and church leaders. Still another says his wife converted because of “the beauty of apostolic succession,” which is kinda the same thing.
(In Catholicism, they believe that their Pope and bishops can trace their authority in an unbroken chain all the way back to the Apostles from the Bible. Because Protestants broke from the Catholic Church, they lack apostolic succession. In a literal sense, Protestants made their own whole new succession lineage.)
Another convert thought that Catholic Mass, particularly when said in Latin, felt more “sacred.” Of note: In 2023, the Pope seriously restricted the custom of Latin Masses. These were—and still are—a flashpoint culture-war issue between him and American hardliner Catholics, who generally appear to be converts from equally-hardliner Calvinist/Reformed evangelical groups. Cradle Catholics don’t seem to care about Latin Mass much. So we’ve found a hardliner here!
In another Reddit post, the Original Poster (OP) listed what he considered were “good reasons” for him to convert from Calvinist/Reformed evangelicalism to Catholicism: “The Eucharist, Apostolic succession, the one True Church, the Magisterium, the view on Baptism, the Liturgy.” One reply comes from another convert, who needed “somebody with more gravitas than me to be the decider of theological questions. That’s the Magisterium of the Church.”
A blog post on the Catholic site Catholica echoes these reasons. Chris Newton converted to Catholicism from evangelicalism because of the Catholic Church’s claim to authority over Christianity. In evangelicalism, of course, it seems like no two Christians hold the same opinion about much of anything.
… And what Catholic-to-evangelical converts say made them switch
One former Catholic, Jola, says: “What I lacked, however, was peace with God. I questioned the purpose of life and felt a deep sense of unhappiness.”
In a 2023 Reddit post on the subreddit r/TrueChristian (yes, that is its name, and no, its users are not using the term sarcastically or ironically), we find a bunch of Catholics who became evangelical.
An evangelical commenter gives “the normal story” of the Catholic converts at their nondenominational church, which is:
[T]hey were raised nominally Catholic and either wandered off or got turned off in their teens and twenties. Then someone invited them to our “seeker sensitive” church which explained the Gospel in a way they could understand.
That’s pretty much what happened to me, except it wasn’t so much explaining “the Gospel” as it was scaring me half to death with threats of Hell and Rapture. (This is called “fire insurance evangelism,” and evangelicals complain a little at its effectiveness compared to the lovey-dovey stuff—but they still use it.)
Another convert cites the friendliness of one Methodist church as a big motivator of conversion. Another got preyed upon by evangelicals at just the right time.
A number of these Catholic-to-evangelical conversions claim to have happened due to reading the Bible. Elsewhere, one commenter says his wife converted because her parents couldn’t answer the theological questions she had after reading the Bible. (But then we run across evangelical-to-Catholic converts who criticize evangelicals for leaning on their own understanding, which is Christianese for interpreting the Bible’s verses in a way the judge doesn’t like.)
Another guy says he converted because he began to read the Bible during his mother’s brush with cancer; he thinks his god magically healed his mom as a result.
(See also: The wearisome immorality of miracles; “Thank You God” by Tim Minchin.)
Why evangelicals and Catholics think people switch
An Orthodox guy thought Catholics were “absolutely clueless about their faith,” which made them more vulnerable to evangelical evangelism. (Amusingly, he also said he barely considered evangelicals Christians at all: “It’s more of an American Abomination – a ‘Children of the Corn’ version of the church.”)
Still another Catholic thought evangelicals did a better job of settling their converts into church communities with lots of activities and perks for members. And an evangelical-to-Catholic convert wrote a whole blog post filled with criticisms of Catholic culture and customs, but please note that he still converted to Catholicism!
A Catholic site, Catholic Culture, appears to believe that Catholics become evangelical due to a lack of Catholic evangelism and the general decadence of much of the Western world.
However, one evangelical thinks evangelicals become Catholic because they think the Bible “is no longer important” and want thrilling experiences in church instead of Jesusing properly like he does.
Almost none of the Catholics thought evangelicals had a better bead on theology or Bible literacy than they did—even if they also thought that most Catholic believers weren’t well-versed in any of it. But they did praise evangelicals for doing way more evangelism and having catchier sales pitches, as well as very flashy practices and devotions and lots more to do at church.
Meanwhile, evangelicals grudgingly praised Catholicism for maintaining a sense of grandeur and history, as well as maintaining scholarship in the earliest Christian leaders and theologians. They criticized Catholic leadership for brooking no disagreement in the ranks and making little room for differences in opinions, which of course are the bedrock of Protestantism as a whole.
Commonalities between Catholic and evangelical conversions
I like testimonies. I don’t care what they’re even about. It’s fascinating when someone makes a big shift in any direction. I like knowing what motivated them to do it. But I also like seeing how their minds categorize that shift, what led up to it, and how to describe life afterward. People are a fascinating mix of often-contradictory emotions and needs and aptitudes. The way we arrange the stories we tell about our lives reveals so much about us.
When I read the testimonies of both Catholic and evangelical converts, I come away with a lot of common elements:
- An overwhelming desire to Jesus properly
- Reading/studying the Bible
- Not being able to counter the new flavor’s take on Jesusing
- Feeling a certain way about the new flavor’s new or old traditions
- Feeling a certain way in the church itself or during its services
- Marrying someone of a different Christian faith, then miraculously deciding to convert to their flavor (but it totes wasn’t the spouse’s doing)
- Taking their original faith super-duper-mega-seriously, then moving across to an equally hardline group
What really seems to drive people to the new flavor seems to be a feeling of something being missing in their old one. It creates restlessness and dissatisfaction; it drives people out of their comfort zones to seek answers.
Let me share with you a quote from The Last Unicorn about what it’s like for some people once uncertainty blossoms inside them:
From that first moment of doubt, there was no peace for her [the unicorn]; from the time she first imagined leaving her forest, she could not stand in one place without wanting to be somewhere else. She trotted up and down beside her pool, restless and unhappy. Unicorns are not meant to make choices. She said no, and yes, and no again, day and night, and for the first time she began to feel the minutes crawling over her like worms. [. . .]
But at last she woke up in the middle of one warm night and said, “Yes, but now.”
Eventually, all the doubt coalesces into the bravery to take a leap into the unknown.
A special note about how culture-war lies can backfire
In my reading, I ran across a bunch of evangelical-to-Catholic converts who mentioned having heard various urban legends about Catholicism. One convert even once thought Catholicism was a cult.
As I’ve mentioned before, old-school hardliner fundamentalists had a huge war with Catholicism. They painted Catholicism as pagan, heretical, heathen, and even demonic! In terms of false accusations, only Creationists do more lying about real science. Since Catholics generally didn’t talk back, fundamentalists lied freely and often.
When one of those lies about Catholics explodes in an evangelical’s face, that drains their Faith Pool. They lose at least two faucets feeding faith-water into it:
- The one saying their faith and god are the very embodiment of truth
- Their trust in the leaders who told the whopper
Once one lie gets exposed, it opens the door to wondering what else is a lie. Unfortunately, lies are like vermin: there’s never just one in the house. That is how I became the only pro-choice fundamentalist I knew—for a few hours until I deconverted completely, anyway. And I deconverted due to many of the same reasons I stopped being (scare quotes) “pro-life.”
After that, a crystal-clear truth wrote itself across my heart:
Nothing true needs lies to prop itself up. The moment you uncover a lie, know that the liar knew they needed a lie to sell their idea to you. Do not adopt ideologies containing any lies.
One of the worst things any group leader can do is lie about the outgroup. The bigger the lie, the more doubt the flocks will entertain once it’s exposed.
When evangelism wins: The devil we don’t know may matter more here
Whatever is beyond our knowledge, it has to be different at least than what we have now. Perhaps it’ll even be better, especially when what we have now is no longer sustainable.
We already know what we’re already doing isn’t quite pushing our thrill buttons. Maybe something else is needed. And here along comes the something else, along with a sales pitch saying it will totally do the trick!
But for many, that doesn’t work either. And they start restlessly seeking something else. That’s what happens when you see people leaping from one religion to another and another and another and another. They aren’t generally tempted to go back to a former thing, because they already know that thing didn’t work.
That’s why I never thought about going back to Catholicism or the SBC after I deconverted. Each successive new thing had already demolished the previous one. It is as “The Apostate” wrote long ago:
Want to blow molinistic excuses for the problem of evil out of the water? Calvinists have already done the work. Want to undercut Sola Scriptura? Catholics have that covered. Want to illustrate the absurdity of the Trinity? Ask those Jehovah’s Witnesses that come to your door next Saturday. Want to show how evolutionary theory isn’t compatible with Christianity? Look no further than Answers in Genesis. What do all of these groups have in common? They all use the Bible to knock down each other’s theological systems.
That is how Christianity as a whole is. They all interpret the Bible as best they can, and they all think their own quirky take on Christianity is the most correct one.
Once someone starts feeling that restlessness, it just takes a slight nudge to get them to take that leap into the unknown. The fact that all of these evangelism-minded flavors use generally the same nudges doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the sheep thinks the new flavor will be different from the old one. When that turns out not to be true, it’s not a problem! There are many hundreds of general flavors more to try—and they all say they’re the right one.
As the bards once sang, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Oh yeah, I’m sure they won’t ever get fooled again.
NEXT UP: As the SBC gears up for its Annual Meeting, we detect hints of panic regarding their Cooperative Program’s health. See you soon! <3
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Right-wing Christian leaders still trying to make the new bad news sound great - Roll to Disbelieve · 04/14/2025 at 4:01 AM
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