It was a cool summer evening in Rock Springs, Texas. We were at the halfway point of the yearly Bible camp my local congregation co-sponsored right around mid-summer. Amidst the loud noises, the hustle and bustle of activities, and the storied camp traditions that I was participating in for the first time, I was a nervous and despairing wreck. Though I had no idea at the time how to describe it, I struggled severely with scrupulosity and was convinced that I was damned to the Eighth Circle of Hell. Only a Damascus Road moment would cure me of this burning fear.
That evening, we were treated to a magnificent show. Each of our camp groups participated in a relay race-like competition, where those who had gained the most points would sit closest to the stage for the final performance. My group won the best seats in the house, centre of the second row. All of a sudden the performance, an interpretive dance where Christ comforted a millennial girl caught up in the soul-crushing trouble of social media culture, began in the back of the pavilion, which aimed to teach us that “the first shall be last and the last shall be first.”
After this, we all broke off into our individual youth groups for more intimate, personal praise and worship sessions, during which our youth minister very sternly asked us to examine ourselves and to think about what was keeping us from fully devoting ourselves to Christ. We all publicly confessed and then returned to the pavilion. On the way back, I was on the verge of tears, begging God to help me overcome my sense of pride and fully surrender myself to Him and His grace. We got back to the pavilion, and the lead youth minister from San Angelo read us Philippians 2:5-11, exhorting us to not let Judgement Day be the first time we got on our knees to pray to Christ, and inviting us to all kneel down before our invisible Lord.
I fell prostrate, begging Christ to take my burden from me, to take away my control from me, and to take up His throne in my heart, and reign in my life from there. At that moment, I felt a gush of wind and recalled to mind the words of John 3:8, “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” I stood up from this moment, and all of my fears and anxieties washed away. I felt new. I felt reborn. I felt like I was really a Christian. I knew I had been saved.
Imagine my shock when, two short years later, I would be on the verge of becoming an atheist.
…
I was born into the Restorationist sect of evangelical Protestantism that is self-styled the "church of Christ," which itself was born out of the Stone-Campbell movement of the Second Great Awakening. My childhood consisted of rather frequent church hopping. Between receiving my birth certificate and my high school diploma, my family had been members of four different congregations. We went to Singing Oaks church of Christ in Denton starting when I was in eighth grade.
The Restorationists are unique among the evangelicals in that they practice acapella-only worship. They also traditionally hold that baptism by immersion is regenerative of the soul and that a believer may lose his salvation (much to the chagrin of their Southern Baptist neighbours). The über-conservative fundamentalists within the tradition hold to even more unique doctrines, such as the strict prohibition on Sunday school classes and strict adherence to members receiving from a single cup during communion, both deriving from a very hardline view of sola Scriptura and their particular reading of certain Biblical passages. The most notable fundamentalist teaching is that the Restorationist tradition is the restored New Testament church and that, unless one belongs to a church of Christ congregation that is free from what they consider to be error, you cannot be saved.
For most of my formative years, I belonged to more moderate congregations which only held to baptismal regeneration and acapella worship. Though I was by no means a fundamentalist, I was nevertheless raised to be devout. I made the decision to be baptized when I was nine. One evening service when I was around ten, I began to weep bitterly during a hymn about the Passion, thinking deeply about the loving mercy of Christ. Around the time I was in middle school, I began to think about preaching (though admittedly not too intently).
By the time I got to high school, I was beginning to get that teenage unrest that most WASPy Americans seem to get: I was starting to get bored with my tradition and was starting to be interested in others. For a while, I explored Mormonism because my then-girlfriend was Mormon, though that ended once I learned that they were anti-Trinitarian. I also looked into Catholicism because my grandmother was Catholic, but my first experience at Mass was a bit lackluster and turned me off to the faith. It wasn’t until that fateful night at Camp Eagle that I experienced a deep, burning desire for our Lord in the church of Christ, and decided that I wanted to become a minister and an apologist.
My passion for God was not met with strong theological formation, though. The congregation my family attended did not place a strong emphasis on theology but tended to place more emphasis on quasi-charismatic spiritual experiences, so my theological catechesis consisted of self-teaching from various non-denominational apologetics YouTube channels. This led to some hilarious contradictions, such as a staunch adherence to sola fide and a Pelagian denial of original sin. On top of that, I had a strong desire to feel spiritual, despite being a somewhat stoic teenage boy. This could only lead to disaster, and towards disaster is exactly where it led.
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The summer after my sophomore year I worked as a preaching intern at my congregation. I got the same job again during the summer after my junior year. Around December of 2016, I started having doubts. As an apologetics fanatic, it shocked me to learn that anybody could possibly be unconvinced by what I considered to be abundantly clear proofs of the truth of the Christian faith. On top of this, I began noticing that I didn’t have the passion for the faith that I had had two years prior. Back then I basically believed in eternal security, and was starting to doubt if I had ever really been saved in the first place. Then, one cold night, it all came crashing down.
I was sleeping on an air mattress during my junior-year band trip. It was ferociously cold in the hotel room so as to battle the swampy Orlando heat, and I lay wide awake. It was dark, and all of my roommates were asleep but me. I prayed but felt nothing. I lay there, wide awake, staring into inky nothingness, begging God to give me some sign that He was there; some tiny inkling that He was listening. I needed only a Divine sneeze and all my worries would be gone. I begged, from the bottom of my heart, with the same fervent intention as that cool midsummer’s eve two years prior, to hear a gentle whisper in the night. Nothing came.
One evening after the trip, in the early summer, I retired to my bedroom for a mid-afternoon depression nap. I awoke from my dreamless sleep, not knowing when I had drifted off, and my first thought was “That was it. That is what death is. There is no God.” I realized what my mind had conceived and panicked.
As the summer progressed, I developed a reluctant agnosticism. I wanted desperately to believe in God because, without Him, my life was meaningless. Arguments did nothing, though, and I never got the warm fuzzies I thought I was supposed to have. My apologetics had dashed my faith on the rocky shores of doubt and, if I couldn’t have reasons to believe, then feelings would do me no good. On top of this, I had to preach a sermon at the end of the summer on a Sunday morning, before my entire congregation, on how my faith in God had been shaped by my experiences with childhood cancer. I was a young man most pitiable.
Fortunately, my agnosticism eventually waned near the end of the summer, either out of necessity or because the dark night of the soul I was experiencing finally lifted. It hadn’t left me unscathed, though. I was no longer satisfied with my denomination. I had heard too many horror stories about the fundamentalists from my parents, and my centrist congregation was impotent to prevent me from very nearly falling off the high cliff edge of agnosticism into the bottomless pit of atheism. Something needed to change, but I didn’t know what.
One of the last sermons I remember hearing during my senior year was a sermon on the need for revival in the churches of Christ. The preacher told us that once every three days a Restorationist congregation either shuts down or merges with another, and that there was disaster coming if something didn’t change. At that moment, without meaning to, I remembered Matthew 16:18, “Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.” It was my go-to verse when talking to Mormons about the idea of a Great Apostasy. At that moment, I thought that if my denomination was dying, it may be high time to start really looking into other options. Until then, I hadn’t decided whether or not I should explore my other options but, in that instant, the door to that path was brutally kicked off its hinges. At that moment, though I would still attend Singing Oaks for a little longer, I no longer considered myself a member of the church of Christ.
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Around the beginning of my senior year, we began a youth group class on the history of Christianity. It was formatted as a semester-long church tour of different denominations, going chronologically from Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy through the many different Protestant traditions leading to Restorationism. I was excited about this opportunity and made sure to wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the field trips to Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Dallas and St. Mark Catholic Church in Argyle. Something in these places spoke to me. I had a sense of wonder towards the unfamiliarity of it all, but also a longing for the sense of antiquity and orthopraxy I felt deep within me at these places. The shift from a song service with all eyes on the forty-five-minute sermon and a ten-minute break for communion in the middle to a liturgical ritual with focus on the forty-five-minute communion rite just seemed obviously correct to me. The early Church gathered on Sundays mainly to partake of communion, after all. My prejudices against ritual worship faded away: if I could find fulfillment in a routine worship service where we all often sang the exact same songs every Sunday, then surely I could find fulfillment in an organized liturgy.
For better or worse, after my visit to the Catholic parish, I stopped attending youth group. I still attended major congregational events, signed up for Bible camp, and participated in the baccalaureate service at the end of the year, but I had given up on weekly attendance. I wasn’t even going to Wednesday night Bible classes. I had officially become unchurched.
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At that time, my godfather was campaigning for state representative, and I was helping with his campaign. He told me about his campaign manager, Joseph, a college student at the local university that I would be attending the next year. We very quickly became friends and, while religion came up in passing, we never really talked about it.
Why, then, I randomly decided to message him and ask him where he went to church, is a mystery. He told me that he was Catholic, and I told him that I was unconvinced by the church of Christ and that I had been considering Catholicism. About an hour into our conversation I asked him to explain the Catholic view of the Blessed Virgin and, for the first time ever, I had gotten an intelligent, convincing explanation of Catholic dogma. We continued talking for the next few months, and I kept getting this idea that I was probably going to convert to Catholicism. However, every time I looked into taking the steps toward converting, I got scared. Would I become an idolatrous Mary-worshipper? Would I be working for my salvation? How could I believe that the communion wafer became the literal body and blood of Christ? I looked again into Orthodoxy, but I ran into the same problems I had with Catholicism: prayers to saints, denial of sola fide, and belief in the real presence. These guys were just Catholics without the Pope!
I decided to do a bit more searching. I went to the local Missouri-Synod Lutheran congregation one Sunday. I had been to a few Catholic Masses prior to this, and the first thing I remember seeing was a man dressed in a cassock and surplice lighting candles with the long brass candle lighter. I saw older congregants making the Sign of the Cross during the liturgy. I noticed a similar feeling to this congregation that I felt at St. Mark’s and Holy Trinity, but there was something missing. These guys are just Catholics without the Pope and Mary!
I then went to the local First Methodist congregation, and it was a lot of the same. The sense of liturgy was still there, but there was even less of that feeling that I had gotten looking at Catholicism and Orthodoxy. That, coupled with the scandals that I knew came out of the Methodists regarding doctrine was enough to bring me to a similar conclusion: these guys were just Catholics without the Christianity!
Concurrent with all of this, I kept thinking about sola fide, and finally wrestled with a question I had as a Protestant, but never really addressed: if I believe that faith alone saves, but that if you don’t have works then you don’t truly have faith, to what extent do I actually believe in faith alone? Aren’t I just bringing in works through the back door? Maybe that doctrine wasn’t the deal-breaker I had thought it was…
…
One summer day before I started UNT, I went to campus to meet with the pastor at St. John Paul II University Parish. I didn’t know where to go, but I didn’t see any viable option outside of Catholicism. Besides, I had gone to Bible studies with Mormons, and that didn’t turn me into a Latter-Day saint. What could be the harm in doing some more research?
I began the Rite of Christian Initiation in Adults (RCIA) in September 2018. I hadn’t started going to Sunday Mass and still wasn’t attending any Protestant services, but I never missed an RCIA session. The more I learned about Catholicism, the more convinced I became. No longer was Catholic doctrine this pseudo-Christian paganism I had heard so many Protestants describe it as. This, to me, seemed like Christianity but historical, intellectual, and defensible. This seemed more and more believable.
But, there were still two little problems: I didn’t know if I could believe that Mary was sinless and that the Eucharist is the literal Body and Blood of Christ, and if I couldn’t believe in those two things then I couldn’t become Catholic. I was sitting in my dorm one evening in December of my first year of college, and I began doing research on these two teachings. It shocked me to find out that one Martin Luther, the founder of the feast of Protestantism himself, held to both of these positions. On the sinlessness of Mary, he said “God has formed the soul and body of the Virgin Mary full of the Holy Spirit, so that she is without all sins, for she has conceived and borne the Lord Jesus.” Touching the real presence of Christ in communion, he sat down at a table to debate Uldrich Zwingli on the issue. Underneath the tablecloth, he had written “hoc est enim Corpus Meum” – “This is My Body” in Latin – and whenever Zwingli would deny the True Presence, he would gesture back to the sentence to indicate that the words of Christ had not changed and that Zwingli’s argument was moot.
How is it, I thought, that the Catholic position could be wrong if Protestantism was the belief set that had strayed from its roots? Sure, Luther didn’t believe the same theological premises as the Church teaches regarding these issues: he held to consubstantiation instead of Transubstantiation. But, I reasoned, if the substance of the issue was not in question, then I could eventually come around to the particular understanding that the Church held to as to how and why these things happened and were true.
One day soon after, I was walking with Joseph around campus asking more questions on the faith, and he flatly said “Jackson, all of this comes down to one basic question: do you believe that the Catholic Church was founded by Jesus Christ?”
Back in high school, I was (unfortunately) seen as somewhat of the resident theologian both in youth group and in school. One day, during English class, after reading the Canterbury Tales, one Pentecostal student asked me “What do you think happened to all of the people at that point in history? Everybody was Catholic, so did they all just go to hell?” I responded, “No, of course not. The truth could not have been truly lost, because Christ said that ‘thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.’ The church could not have fallen away.”
It wasn’t until that moment that it hit me. I hadn’t yet studied the Church Fathers. I was dealing with most of this all at a surface level, and it wasn't until later that I came to a more sophisticated understanding of these various issues. But at that moment it all clicked: if I believed that the Church was never lost and that the Catholic Church was the only Church that existed for most of history, then I had to believe that the Catholic Church was the True Church. Once I had come to that, I realized that I could either submit to Christ in His Church, whatever my hang-ups or lack of knowledge may have been, or I could deny the Church and thereby deny my Lord.
I looked at Joseph and I said “Yes. Of course, I do.”
…
A few weeks later I participated in the Rite of Welcome and made the firm resolution to continue with my instruction until I could be received into the Catholic faith at Easter. A few weeks into Lent, I went to a Eucharistic retreat, at the end of which the attendees were invited to give their testimonies. After a few people went, I got up. I don’t remember what I said, because it was rather impromptu, but I do remember how I opened it: “I’m not a Catholic, but at Easter, I will be.” The immense joy I felt in saying those words was indescribable.
April 20, 2019, finally came around. The Easter Vigil was finally here, and I would finally be received into the Church. Those last two weeks leading up to it felt like an eternity, and I was getting antsy. We catechumens and candidates sat in the front row with our sponsors and godparents, and I was laser-focused the entire Mass. This was it. This was what I had been waiting for. This was the culmination of two years of searching and unrest.
At my confirmation, I was led to the altar in the campus chapel our parish was using at the time and, with outward gravity and inward ecstasy, I received my new name at confirmation as the priest anointed my forehead with oil and said: “Jackson Reed John, be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.” When Communion came, I trembled as I walked back up to the altar, kneeled down, and received the Body of the Lord Jesus on my tongue, hearing the priest say “Corpus Christi”: the Body of Christ. As I stood up the choir began singing the ancient hymn O Sons and Daughters, belting out the very words that my heart was chanting: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
Finally, after so much doubt and anxiety, I was home.
…
It is not as if faith has been easy for me since becoming Catholic. My very next semester, I struggled with questions of faith and works in salvation. When coronavirus hit, I began having atheistic doubts again. However, I never stopped going to confession. I never stopped going to Mass. I never stopped seeking God and, eventually, my doubts would pass. I had to learn the important lesson that intellect can only take you so far and, at some point, you have to put the books down, pick the beads up, and pray. Since developing a solid prayer life, I have not doubted, and to this day I don’t think I could even if I tried.
Throughout all of this, I made so many close friends. My first time at St. John Paul II Parish, I was received into the welcoming arms of all of the students there. It was as if I wasn’t a new student and a prospective convert, but as if I had always been a brother. I had a group of friends that truly became brothers and sisters, that were and are closer to me than family. Though my actual family took great exception to my conversion, they slowly accepted it and have come to embrace me in my walk with Christ, and for that I am grateful to them for their long-suffering and patience, and to God for giving them and me the graces needed to understand and love each other. God also gave me the graces to reach out to those who I had wronged and who had become my enemies, and to reconcile with them and repent of my trespasses against them, not just to Christ in confession, but also to them. I became a thoroughly changed man.
By Christ’s mercy, I am a new creation. Aided by the prayers of so many Saints gone before me, I intend to walk with Christ and join their ranks, aiding my fellow Christians by my own prayers and adoring God for eternity in the bliss of His unending Glory. Girded with the strength of the Sacraments, I have continued to and ever try to grow in my Catholic faith and, God-willing, I will continue growing in the Faith until my body yields up the ghost into the hands of the Eternal Father. I was not born Catholic but, through Him, and in Him, and with Him, I firmly intend to die one.
To the Most Holy Trinity, to the Manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ crucified, to the fruitful Virginity of the most blessed and glorious Mary, ever a virgin, and to the holiness of all the Saints be ascribed everlasting praise, honour, and glory, by all creatures; and to us be granted the forgiveness of all our sins. World without end.
Amen.
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