“I’m looking into the Catholic Church.”
“What do you know about Orthodoxy?”
As a campus pastor, I have heard these sentences dozens of times from Gen Z students. In each situation, the student grew up in either big-box evangelical or poorly catechized Reformed churches. Despite my best attempts, to date, I have dissuaded only one student from converting to Orthodoxy or crossing the Tiber.
Why are students drawn to Rome or Constantinople? Of course, the answer is slightly different for every student. But, generally speaking, my students are attracted to the (alleged) monolith, both in culture and history, of the Catholic church in contrast with the fragmentation of American Protestantism. They like the history, structure, aesthetics, and “vibe” of Catholic mass or Orthodox Divine Hours. They are attracted to the robust sacramentalism of transubstantiation, against evangelical memorialism or even anti-sacramentalism. They find the idea of “communing on Christ” to be beautiful.
Adjacent to these factors is the aesthetic appeal. Stained glass windows, iconography, incense, processional mass, chanting — these elements are nothing like their strip mall evangelical churches with coffee bars, generic art, highly produced worship songs written after 2015, and therapeutic-leaning, barely-expository messages.
One student told me, “It’s real. What they are doing is the stuff that matters, and the smoke machines at other churches just don’t compare.”
Compared to their evangelical upbringings, the Roman church feels grounded, old, authoritative, and stable in ways that a seeker-friendly, non-denominational church cannot. Beyond the theological, Roman Catholicism meshes well with the post-2016 rightward “vibe shift” happening especially among men, along with the very real trends toward revival and renewed interest in spirituality among Gen Z.
Rome leans hard into practical “do’s and don’ts” of life, a baptized version of Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life.” The BBC and others report that men are attracted to the “masculine” ethos of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Social media memes extol the honor of the Crusades, “TradLife,” and “red-pilled,” or “based” Christianity in Rome. Included in this masculine edge are all the “daily habits” of the liturgies, catechisms, and Confessions.
Shopping for a New Experience
As a Presbyterian minister, I am both fascinated and alarmed by this trend in the students I care for. In doctrine and practice, Catholicism and Orthodoxy have significant errors. While I welcome renewed interest in faith and history, I take my ordination vow seriously that the Westminster Confession and Catechisms represent the most accurate distillation of our “faith once delivered to the saints.”
How do we encourage the good in this new fervor, without condoning moves to traditions that are unbiblical and deviate from historical faith? When talking with these students, I lead with, “Though we share many foundational truths with them, there are significant theological and historical problems with the Roman Catholic Church.”
From there, I address some of the larger concerns, including justification by faith alone, Real Presence, the authority of Scripture, Mariology, and the adoration of the saints. Every time, students listen, but I can tell they remain unconvinced. For months I have wondered why, and in polling my cadre of RUF campus ministers, it seems that we are all seeing the same phenomenon.
Every student’s reasons are unique, and “cultural shifts” can be a catch-all phrase for blogs, podcasts, and think pieces that make the Roman or Eastern Orthodox churches seem attractive. But one factor that I think the Reformed world misses is the underlying expressive individualism and consumerism at play.
When a college student says, “I’m considering Catholicism,” their stated reasons are logical and historical, or aesthetic and mystical (more common with Orthodoxy), but the air we all breathe is consumerism and expressive individualism.
Western minds have been trained from infancy to pursue beliefs, behaviors, and communities that empower personal authenticity, optimized experience, and consumer happiness. Self, identity, and consumption are the driving cultural values. All too easily, this consumerism shifts to the Church. Then, as Augustine says, the mind rationalizes and the will acts upon what the heart wants. And right now, Rome offers a new experience.
My hunch is that students are really interested in Catholicism or Orthodoxy because of its “aura” and “lore,” to use Gen Z lingo. The aura is the mysticism: the smells and bells, “groundedness,” history — all a contrast to the ephemeral light shows of average evangelical non-denominationalism. The “lore” is the history of the Catholic church: saints, heirs of Saint Peter, the mythology of being the one true church. This lore is even stronger with Orthodoxy. Even among our PCA covenant kids, their faith feels rote, ahistorical, just another flavor in common American evangelicalism.
The main Reformed argument against these traditions is they contradict Scripture, which should defeat any counterargument. But the students I talk to simply do not care. Scripture is supplemental and secondary to experience. Young people are replacing one emotional experience — the “worship high,” “camp high,” motivational sermon, or therapeutic theology — for another emotional experience (Mass or Divine Hours).
If this is true, then no matter how biblical we are, no matter how robust we are in our theological apologetic, we will almost always lose them because we are not moving their hearts. Students who were not biblical or theologically motivated from the start will not be so motivated when they convert to Catholicism.
As Gavin Ortlund has persuasively shown, Reformed theology is systematic, biblical, and historical. But despite what they say, these students want the vibes, lore, and aura.
Ready to Respond
How do we respond? We could fight fire with fire. Two problems with this: first, the average PCA church cannot (theologically and practically) offer the experience of the Mass or Hours; and second, it just feeds the problem. Like kids on a beach, the next pretty shell makes them drop all others. Here are a few thoughts, sharpened by interactions with other campus ministers:
1. A rigorous theological response is important, but it is probably going to fall on deaf ears without adequate “pre-work” to prepare ears for it. This pre-work involves helping students see how they may be trading one “spiritual experience” for another one, which indicates they are still spiritual consumers, and not true disciples of Christ.
2. Students need to encounter Christian piety and practice that is rigorous in cruciformity, but rooted in the imputed righteousness from Christ by faith alone. We must counter the “Be a man” secular virtue ethic with Reformed sanctification. Call disciples to “leave their nets” and follow Jesus with mortification of sin and calls to holiness, but rooted in the assurance of salvation by faith in Christ.
3. Behind a student’s consideration of Rome are a number of deeper questions worth exploring:
-
- How do we know the truth?
- How is Christ present among his people?
- How does our culture unconsciously form us as consumers and individuals?
4. More constructively, show that many of the enticements of Rome are available (and better!) in historic, Confessional Protestantism. You can enjoy the presence of Christ without re-sacrificing him. It is possible to have a robust ecclesiology without hierarchy. The Reformed tradition offers a systematic theology that is historically rooted in the teaching of the early church fathers. Confessional Presbyterianism is much older than 1980s evangelicalism.
5. Be prepared to address historical issues. The modern Roman Catholic Church is at best a post-600 AD invention, and most of it post-1100 AD. Know the Council of Trent and Vatican key statements well enough to show students where Rome is wrong with history and Scripture.
It’s a well-known trope in campus ministry that as much work as parents and churches do to prepare students for the atheist philosophy or biology professor, the bigger threat to their faith in college is the cute guy or gal across the hall who smiles and winks. Years of catechesis immediately go out the door.
The same is true for church theology. A parishioner’s assent to TULIP stands no chance against the first hit of incense and awe in a European cathedral. Vibes, aura, and lore will win out over systematic theology, no matter how strong. If we want to care for students looking south or east of Geneva or beyond Hillsong, we must recognize they are often motivated by experiential concerns more than doctrinal concerns. We must, as Augustine and Calvin always remind us, warm hearts. We all know the Reformed story is better. Let’s show that to students.
Jonathan Clark serves as campus minister for Reformed University Fellowship at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.