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D r a g n e t
Common Ground
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This Rock
Volume 5, Number 4
 April 1994 
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At a New York news conference held during
Holy Week, Evangelical and Catholic leaders unveiled "Evangelicals
and Catholic Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium."
The document, which carried 40 signatures, expressed the two sides'
fundamental theological agreements and their common social concerns.
Citing Pope John Paul II's 1990 encyclical Redemptoris Missio,
it expressed the hope that, if the Second Coming is delayed, the new
millennium beginning in 2001 will be "a springtime of world missions."
Catholic signers included Cardinal John O'Connor of New York,
Archbishop Francis Stafford of Denver, Fr. Avery Dulles, historian
James Hitchcock of St. Louis University, philosopher Peter
Kreeft of Boston College, constitutional lawyer William Bentley
Ball, Keith Fournier of the American Center for Law and
Justice, and Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute.
Protestant signers included J. I. Packer, well-known author
and an editor at Christianity Today; John White, president
of Geneva College and former president of the National Association
of Evangelicals; Bill Brigh, founder of Campus Crusade for
Christ; Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting
Network (now the Family Channel); and Larry Lewis, head of
the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board.
The principal drafters of the document were Fr. Richard John Neuhaus,
a former Lutheran minister, now a Catholic priest and head of the
Institute on Religion and Public Life; Chuck Colson, Protestant
author and founder of Prison Fellowship; Kent Hill, former
director of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and current president
of Eastern Nazarene College; and George Weigel, a Catholic
who is president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
"Evangelicals and Catholics Together" proclaims, "This
statement cannot speak officially for our communities. It
does intend to speak responsibly from our communities and
to our communities. In this statement we address what we have
discovered both about our unity and about our differences."
"The two communities in world Christianity that are most evangelistically
assertive and most rapidly growing are Evangelicals and Catholics.
In many parts of the world, the relationship between these communities
is marked more by conflict than by cooperation, more by animosity
than by love, more by suspicion than by trust, more by propaganda
and ignorance than by respect for the truth. This is alarmingly the
case in Latin America, increasingly the case in Eastern Europe, and
too often the case in our own country. While we are gratefully aware
of ongoing efforts to address tensions among these communities, the
shameful reality is that, in many places around the world, the scandal
of conflict between Christians obscures the scandal of the cross,
thus crippling the one mission of the one Christ."
The document lists common beliefs, including the Trinity, that Christ
is Lord and Savior, and that the Scriptures are the inspired, infallible
Word of God. It also declares that we are justified by grace through
faith which "is active in love." Also listed are differences
in belief between the two communities, including the nature of the
Church, the sole authority of Scripture (sola scriptura),
apostolic succession, the sacraments as means of grace, the Eucharistic
sacrifice, baptismal regeneration, and devotion to Mary and the saints.
It is admitted that Protestants have disagreements among themselves,
yet "on these questions, and other questions implied by them,
Evangelicals hold that the Catholic Church has gone beyond Scripture,
adding teachings and practices that detract from or compromise the
gospel of God's saving grace in Christ. Catholics, in turn, hold that
such teachings and practices are grounded in Scripture and belong
to the fullness of God's revelation. Their rejection, Catholics say,
results in a truncated and reduced understanding of the Christian
reality."
A later section urges the two communities to work against social problems
such as abortion, pornography, and the faults in public education. "We
will do all in our power to resist proposals for euthanasia, eugenics,
and population control that exploit the vulnerable, corrupt the integrity
of medicine, deprave our culture, and betray the moral truths of our
constitutional order."
The final section perhaps will be the most controversial in the document.
It states, "The question of Christian witness unavoidably returns
us to points of serious tension between Evangelicals and Catholics.
. . . Today, in this country and elsewhere, Evangelicals and Catholics
attempt to win `converts' from one another's folds. In some ways,
this is perfectly understandable and perhaps inevitable. In many instances,
however, such efforts at recruitment undermine the Christian mission
by which we are bound by God's Word and to which we have recommitted
ourselves in this statement."
"It is understandable that Christians who bear witness to the
gospel try to persuade others that their communities and traditions
are more fully in accord with the gospel. There is a necessary distinction
between evangelizing and what is today commonly called proselytizing
or `sheep stealing.' We condemn the practice of recruiting people
from another community for purposes of denominational or institutional
aggrandizement. At the same time, our commitment to full religious
freedom compels us to defend the legal freedom to proselytize even
as we call upon Christians to refrain from such activity. . . .
"[I]n view of the large number of non-Christians in the world
and the enormous challenge of our common evangelistic task, it is
neither theologically legitimate nor a prudent use of resources for
one Christian community to proselytize among active adherents of another
Christian community."
A new science fiction series, Babylon
5, is taking a consistently more respectful attitude toward
religion than others have taken. For example, the recently canceled
Star Trek: The Next Generation was peppered with anti-religious
remarks. In one episode ("DataLore"), Captain Picard proclaimed
that humans are merely bio-chemical machines. In another ("Who
Watches the Watchers?"), he declared that a race of proto-Vulcans
had "wisely abandoned their religion" some time earlier--the
implication being that it was good to abandon any religion, not just
a bad religion.
Babylon 5, set on a space station of the same name, takes a different
approach to religion and does not portray the future as a secular,
humanist wonderland. In one episode, the station hosts a symposium
on religions in which each alien race gives a public presentation
of its world's dominant religion. When the time comes for Earth's
presentation, the station commander introduces alien dignitaries to
a receiving line of human religious leaders, including a Catholic
priest, a Protestant minister (Bible in hand), a rabbi, and a Muslim.
A later episode centers on whether the station's doctor should perform
surgery on an alien child belonging to a race that believes its souls
will escape if an incision is made. When the doctor goes ahead and
secretly performs the operation, against the commander's orders, he
prays to God for the child's life.
Babylon 5 does not present Christianity as the universal religion
of mankind (or of other races), but it treats religion in a consistently
respectful manner. It has shown characters with serious religious
differences staying faithful to their convictions--refreshing
both for science fiction and for television.
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