RELIGION / JOHN DART : Pastor Blasts Trend of Goodwill Between Protestants, Catholics

Sharply challenging the push for Catholic-evangelical harmony, a nationally prominent leader of one of the San Fernando Valley’s largest Protestant churches says half the 7,000 people who turn out to hear him preach each Sunday are ex-Catholics he aggressively tries to woo away from what he regards as “a false religion.”

Catholic authorities in turn accuse him of “Catholic bashing.”

“We want to lead Catholics to Christ,” the Rev. John MacArthur said in a recent interview at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley. “I believe it is a false religion.”

His statements are unusual in this era of ecumenical goodwill, symbolized by the frequent alliance of the two groups in social morality debates and the publication of a groundbreaking statement of cooperation one year ago by leaders of Catholicism and the evangelical wing of Protestantism.

MacArthur already is known as a biblical fundamentalist pastor who regularly thunders against what he calls misguided thinking among fellow Protestants--such as the statement of cooperation. Although his salvos against the Catholic Church are not unexpected, his claim that his church is built on a steady influx of former Catholics was not generally known.

MacArthur is not simply a local pastor. He is also president of The Master’s College in Newhall and has a nationwide following for his books, seminars and radio broadcast, “Grace to You.” About 500 like-minded pastors from across the nation and eight other countries will attend MacArthur’s 16th annual instructional conference for ministers at Grace Community Church March 22 to 26.

Responding for the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese, Father Gregory Coiro countered that Grace Community Church “has a long record for Catholic bashing.”

Catholics whose relatives have joined MacArthur’s church recount tales that the new converts were taught there that they would burn in hell unless they left the Catholic Church, said Coiro, spokesman for Cardinal Roger Mahony’s office.

“It’s kind of cheeky (for MacArthur) to say they want to ‘lead Catholics to Christ,’ considering we kept belief in Christ alive and well for 1,500 years before an evangelical Protestant ever set foot on the planet,” Coiro said, referring to the centuries when Catholicism dominated western Christianity until the 16th-Century Protestant Reformation.

MacArthur has written more about Catholics lately while criticizing a groundbreaking document signed in March, 1994, by 40 eminent U.S. Catholics and evangelical Protestants. The signers urged both a truce on proselytizing in each other’s ranks and more cooperation on fighting common targets, such as legalized abortion.

The unofficial document, “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” caused little stir in Catholic circles, but created a furor among many evangelical clergy, who declared they would not stop seeking converts among Catholics.

MacArthur attended a meeting Jan. 19 in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., that essentially put pressure on document signers such as Charles Colson of Prison Fellowship, Bill Bright of Campus Crusade and others to reaffirm Protestant doctrinal distinctions and the right to seek converts everywhere.

In his latest book, “Reckless Faith,” MacArthur said the evangelical-Catholic document “threatens to split the evangelical community” by “implying that all forms of ‘Christianity’ are equally valid.”

MacArthur contends that the key Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone--as opposed to the Catholic insistence on performing good works as well--was glossed over in the document in order to blur Catholic-Protestant doctrinal differences.

Evangelicals who sought the accord with Catholic leaders wanted to have a greater moral impact on U.S. culture through a unified voice, MacArthur said. But those who downplay doctrinal distinctions “emasculate the Christian faith,” the pastor said in the interview.

During his 25 years as pastor of the nondenominational congregation on Roscoe Boulevard, MacArthur said that newcomers have always included many Catholics, both inactive and active.

“The Roman Catholic Church is as fertile a soil for evangelism as any because they already believe in God, the deity of Christ, his death and Resurrection,” he said.

MacArthur said that he does not attack the Catholic Church from the pulpit or hold special seminars on Catholicism. Rather, he said, Grace Church members tell friends and neighbors of their beliefs--”and it’s the Catholic people who respond.”

Grace Community Church has a special Spanish-speaking ministry, but MacArthur was speaking of the 7,000 who attend his Sunday morning sermons in English and about 2,500 who come to hear him on Sunday nights.

Although the phenomenon of Latino Catholics converting to Protestantism, particularly evangelical churches, has drawn much attention in recent years, there is a higher defection rate by Anglo Catholics than Latino Catholics in the San Fernando Valley, according to a Los Angeles Times Poll taken in December, 1991.

That survey found that of Latinos who were reared Catholic, three-quarters said they were still Catholic. Among non-Latino whites who grew up Catholic, only 60% identified themselves currently as Catholic.

Nonetheless, Catholics are still a large presence in the Valley--28% of residents, compared to 37% who identify with other Christian denominations--and many parishes draw as many as 10,000 worshipers to Mass on a given weekend.

MacArthur is not alone as a staunch defender of Protestant doctrine. Author Michael Horton of Anaheim, another critic of the “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” document, was one of three evangelicals who debated three defenders of Catholicism last week in Pasadena. About 1,100 people attended the two-day event at Lake Avenue Congregational Church, said a spokeswoman for Horton’s organization, Christians United for Reformation.

On the whole, however, evangelical-Catholic relations nationally and in Southern California are cordial, said Coiro of the Catholic archdiocese.

“I think most evangelicals would reject most of the hard-line posturing that comes from Grace Community Church,” said Coiro, a frequent panelist on KABC’s “Religion on the Line” radio program. “On many issues, evangelicals and Catholics are in fundamental agreement.”

Similar views were expressed by the Rev. Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and a signer of the original evangelical-Catholic accord.

“Some evangelicals want to hold to the old conflicts with Catholicism, and we do see things differently on questions about salvation and the relationship of faith and works,” Mouw said.

“There is a new openness and a spiritual renewal in Catholicism that we as evangelicals want to encourage,” Mouw said. “Our views on the nature of salvation motivate us to work at renewal in other churches, such as the Roman Catholic Church--not to try to get everyone out of the Catholic Church into ours.”