Leader of evangelicals returns to Catholicism

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), May 12, 2007

DALLAS (AP) -- The head of the Evangelical Theological Society has returned to the Roman Catholic Church and, as a result, has stepped down from his post with the evangelical group.

Francis J. Beckwith, associate professor of church-state studies at Baylor University, said his resignation as president and as a member of the society was effective May 5.

The Evangelical Theological Society was formed in 1949 to promote conservative Bible scholarship and now has more than 4,000 members. "The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant," its doctrinal statement says.

In a statement Tuesday, the society's executive committee said Beckwith's decision to leave was the right one, in light of theological differences between evangelicals and Roman Catholics. The committee cited Catholic teaching about the infallibility of some pronouncements of a pope on church dogma and the Catholic inclusion of the Apocrypha in the church's Scriptures.

But they also noted that evangelicals and Catholics have been working to forge closer ties and they will continue to participate in those efforts.

Beckwith was accepted back into the Catholic Church on April 29, at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Waco, Texas. He said he was persuaded to return to Catholicism after a friend suggested he read the Early Church Fathers and Catholic works on justification, about how sinners are transformed to a state of holiness.

A New York native who grew up in Nevada, Beckwith attended Catholic schools as a boy and earned his bachelor's degree from Fordham University, a Jesuit school. Baylor, a Baptist school, has many Catholic faculty members, and Beckwith says he expects no change in his status there.