Protest into Prayer

One of the great evils of Protestant tribalism is the impact it has on our prayers. There’s no way to tell, but I suspect that few Protestant churches, especially Evangelical churches, pray regularly for reform in the Catholic and Orthodox churches. 

It’s easy to neglect such prayers, so long as Catholics and Orthodox are outsiders. If they aren’t (and even if they are outsiders), then we want the best for them, and we Protestants think that it would be best if they embraced the Reformation. (I do believe it goes the other way too. Protestants can learn some things about how we can be reformed by attending to the best of Catholicism and Orthodoxy.)

Fred Sanders made the point cogently at Biola this week: When Protestants pray for Catholics and Orthodox, we’ll have to pray for them to change. Precisely. 

It is no accident that the greatest Catholic reform in centuries – Vatican II – occurred after a half-century of intense Protestant ecumenism. I wonder: To which Protestants’ prayers was Vatican II the answer? I’d like to think that Vatican II was the Lord’s answer to the prayers of an elderly Methodist woman worried about her Catholic grandchildren.

Turn that long-standing list of Protestant protests against Rome and Constantinople – those protests against the claims of the Papacy, about the role of tradition and Marian doctrines, about relics and saints and icon veneration, about justification and faith and grace and Purgatory – turn it all into a prayer list, and get started.

We have not because we ask not, or we have not because we ask amiss, doubting that the Lord will hear. Why should we doubt it? We believe that Scripture teaches us the Lord’s will for the church; we believe that God answers prayers that accord with His will; why would we doubt that He will transform His church according to His word?