Why I Am Not a Roman Catholic: A Friendly, Ecumenical Explanation

Anyone in the Christian church today who is paying attention knows that Roman Catholics are on the march to win converts. But what may be surprising is that many of the persons targeted for conversion are not unbelievers and secularists but rather Christians in other traditions, particularly evangelical Protestants. Those involved in this mission are themselves often converts from evangelical churches, and they are zealous to welcome other believers "home" to the Church of Rome. This book provides a variety of reasons to think twice before taking the plunge and swimming the Tiber. Among them are some historical considerations that are often ignored or even suppressed by the zealous evangelists for Rome. There are also dubious claims by John Henry Newman, the famous nineteenth-century convert, that are often advanced without sufficient critical scrutiny. Moreover, converts not infrequently take on the role of amateur theologians and advance highly simplistic claims about a variety of theological matters in popular books that are remarkably successful in terms of sales and publicity. This volume examines these and other similar claims and subjects them to the critical analysis they demand.