Author Peter J. Leithart is passionate about ending the divisions within Christianity and wrote The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church to show how divisions hurt all of us, to give his vision of a possible end point for a united church, and to suggest steps to reach unity.  His passion is both positive and not so.

He does not see Protestants returning to the Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches and emphatically rejects Catholic doctrines of transubstantiation, the papacy, Immaculate Conception, Mary’s assumption, redemption, the use of any revelations or inspirations other than the Bible.  He envisions “Reformational Catholicity” as the end point of reunion, a high church with plenty of stained glass and hymns, with fixed (or semi-fixed) liturgy, with doctrine stripped of everything that we Catholics believe today that Protestants do not.

I am no expert of Protestant beliefs or worship services, thus am guessing based on simplified doctrine, but the Presbyterian confessions and doctrinal statements stated on their web page were similar to Leithart’s envisioned dogma.

The best points of Leithart’s book were his diagnoses of the evils brought forth by the endless splitting and re-splitting of churches into denominations.  He points out that:

• Much like no-fault divorce, when it’s easy for disagreeing factions to simply separate than to honestly search for reconciliation and agreement, we will see continuing divisions and splits.
• Multiple denominations, many with similar beliefs but different worship or leadership structures, foster church shopping, where would-be worshipers flit from church to church, looking for just the perfect place that doesn’t upset or challenge.
• The agreement to play nice, get along, be respectful and agree tod isagree means never confronting error or sin between churches
• We dilute the force of Christ’s message by being soft, too nice, water down the beliefs and soon forget to call sin, sin.  We become secularized.
• Disunity is bad for us spiritually and bad for our country.  (He focuses on American Christianity.)
• Disunity grieves God.

I was interested in his sections describing “Reformational Catholicism” and was glad that I was reading on a Kindle to look up some of his words and names.  The book prompted me to read and research some of the mainline churches and their backgrounds and doctrines.

Leithart is convinced that the Catholic church is in serious error on many fronts.  For example he does not believe that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood under the species of bread and wine, the doctrine we Catholics call transubstantiation.  He rejects this as unnecessary and as non-scriptural.  Yet he is offended, angered and appalled that our Catholic church reserves the Eucharist to members, to those who share our belief that we are receiving Christ himself, not merely a spiritual facsimile.  He insisted that the answer to denominations was not to return to Rome or to collapse into any existing church but to synthesize a new church, which carried forth the truths from the Reformation into a universal (i.e., catholic) church.

Leithart gives only a few steps to reach unity.  Mostly he recommends forging local ecumenical groups, where the focus is on the common beliefs and actions in the town, less so on the overall denominational leadership.

Overall the book was challenging, with interesting ideas and for me, some new insights into Protestant thought.  However Leithart’s fervor was tiring.  He wrote as though preaching, loud supplications, as though to drown out disagreements by the sheer number of words and repetition.  I almost quit reading but felt I owed it to see why he believed so strongly and what he proposed doing to solve the problem.  While he didn’t have many solutions, the overall discussion was well worth reading.

3-4 Stars (3 for the lack of solutions and sheer volume, 4 for the ideas.)

I received this from NetGalley in expectation of a review.