3. The Waxing And Waning Of Catechesis
3 The Waxing and Waning of Catechesis
Believe me . . . the Church of God will never be preserved without catechesis.1
John Calvin
As the quote at the head of this chapter makes clear, Calvin, like the other great catechetical figures in Christian history, was persuaded that a faithful catechesis was absolutely essential to the healthy continuance of Christ’s church. As the first decade of the twenty-first century now draws to a close, Christians of all sorts once again seem intent on testing this thesis.
Although there are signs of catechetical renewal in certain circles—particularly among Catholics and Anglicans—most of the evangelical Protestant world still lags behind, and meantime the consequences of an uncatechized church are readily apparent. Survey data gathered over the past decade or so consistently reveals high levels of biblical and theological illiteracy among self-identified American evangelical Christians. Beyond the “hard data,” however, we see evidence all around us of serious unhealthiness in too many of our congregations.2
For some time voices have been warning of “the coming evangelical collapse.” In a 2009 article by that title, Michael Spencer suggested that among the reasons for the coming demise is the following:
We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they should feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey Scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.3
His argument is really a modern-day counterpart of Calvin’s: without catechesis, the church cannot be sustained. We know, of course, that Jesus promised that the church he was building would endure, that the gates of hell cannot prevail against it (Matt. 16:18). But throughout the two millennia of Christian history, the health of Christian communities has, in fact, often been linked to the presence or absence of serious catechetical ministries.
In this chapter, we will look at three seasons in church history during which catechesis flourished—among ancient churches of the second through fifth centuries, within the continental and British Reformations of the sixteenth century, and among the English Puritans of the seventeenth century. In each of these seasons, we will highlight one feature of catechesis that especially marked catechetical ministry at that time, giving particular attention to a notable catechist of the period. This is not intended to be a full-scale survey of the history of catechesis. Others have undertaken that task and for more details we would refer readers to their works.4
After looking at these three seasons of catechetical flourishing, we will consider some of the many factors that have contributed to the decline of catechesis after such seasons and to its relative absence in our own times.
Here, in brief, is the overview of the three seasons of flourishing we will be considering:
Period
Notable Feature
Notable Catechist
Ancient churches of the second through fifth centuries
Development of the catechumenate
Augustine of Hippo
Continental reformers of the sixteenth century
Golden age of the catechism
Martin Luther
English Puritans of the seventeenth century
Pastoral duty of family catechizing
Richard Baxter
Development of the Catechumenate
By “catechumenate,” we refer to what might be called a sort of school of the Faith—sometimes more formal, sometimes less so—in which, during the early Christian centuries, new believers were prepared for baptism and thus welcomed into the full life of the church. Our knowledge of the catechetical practices of this age is drawn from a variety of sources. These include early catechetical manuals or other documents, such as the late firstor early second-century Didache of the Apostles, Irenaeus’s Demonstration of the Apostolic Teaching, and the third-century The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus. We also have catechetical lectures and other materials from such ancient catechists of the church as Tertullian, Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Gregory of Nazianzus, Ambrose of Milan, and Augustine of Hippo.
The notion that there needed to be a journey toward baptism, one that included a lengthy period of instruction, will no doubt seem strange to many contemporary evangelicals. After all, we read in the book of Acts of numerous converts who, in most instances, were baptized almost immediately after their professions of faith. But within the first several centuries of the church’s history, after Christianity had for the most part left Jerusalem and the synagogues behind, it became increasingly the case that those coming to faith in Jesus Christ came with little knowledge of the God of Israel or of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Such conversions to Christ were truly radical, worldview-altering, life-transforming journeys. These were quite different experiences, therefore, from most of the conversion accounts and baptisms recorded in the New Testament. There we read of three thousand observant Jews who were baptized on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2). We read of the Ethiopian eunuch who, while studying the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, was assisted toward faith in Christ by the Spirit-prompted teaching of Philip (Acts 8). We read, in the same chapter, of many Samaritans coming to faith. They would have regarded at least the books of Moses as sacred and authoritative. We read later (Acts 10) of the gentile Cornelius coming to faith, together with friends and members of his family. He and his household were already “devout and God-fearing” (Acts 10:2). So too was Lydia, generally regarded as the first believer on European soil (Acts 16:14). Indeed, the Philippian jailer and his family stand alone in the book of Acts as having come to faith and to the waters of baptism with no apparent background in the faith of the Jews. This family, though, did have the benefit of significant instruction from Paul and Silas prior to their baptism.
As the Gospel spread to primarily gentile and pagan peoples, the church came to regard conversion to Christ as so revolutionary that it requires a significant time of instruction and drilling in other spiritual activities prior to the conferring of baptism upon new believers. The development of the catechumenate reflected this view.
Evidence strongly suggests that the basic idea of a catechumenate was in place by the second century, but the practices that would mark the journey toward baptism developed over time and varied from place to place.5 There seems to have been movement from less formal to more formal structures, corresponding to the shifting realities of the church as a whole. By the fourth century, Christians no longer represented a persecuted minority in the Roman Empire. This generally meant greater emphasis on structure and hierarchy in most aspects of congregational life, including the ministry of catechesis. Whereas in earlier days the principal catechists might have been mature believers, whether elders or not, in the more formalized church structures the catechist was typically a pastor or the bishop. The numbers of those needing to be catechized also greatly increased as persecution decreased. Instructing larger numbers of would-be Christians led to more formal settings. Small group interactions in the home of a believer gave way to lectures held within church buildings.
A Catechumen’s Journey
The following represents the outline of a catechumen’s journey toward baptism. It is based on evidence drawn from descriptions of the catechumenate as conducted in several settings in the fourth and fifth centuries. Not all of what follows would have occurred exactly the same way in each of these settings, but the composite picture that emerges reflects at every point practices typical of the era.
Those who were interested in becoming Christians were brought by a friend, or sponsor, to church leaders. The leader, typically a bishop or pastor, would interview the inquirers to discern both their current spiritual condition and motives for wanting to join the church. Sponsors would testify on behalf of the inquirers about their sincerity and resolve. In some cases, a person was disqualified based upon style of life, or was asked to leave a profession that was deemed incompatible with being a Christian. For some catechists, improper motives might also be taken as grounds for refusal. Inquirers would often receive some general introduction to the Christian faith, perhaps in the form of an overview of the Bible’s redemptive story.6 Afterward, if all parties agreed, inquirers would then become catechumens.
Catechumens became “hearers of the Word,” worshiping with believers each Lord’s Day and participating in other opportunities for fellowship and instruction. In some cases, the catechumens were regarded as Christian believers of sorts already, but not yet counted fully among the faithful. The liturgy of the church was generally divided into two major sections: a service of the Word and a service of the Table. All were welcome to take part in the service of the Word. There they would hear the Scriptures read and explained and would join in the prayers and hymns. Typically, catechumens would then be dismissed with prayers of blessing prior to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. In some cases, this dismissal was marked by a formal closing of the doors—recalling God’s closing of the door on Noah’s ark—thus reminding the catechumens that they were not yet truly among the saved. The celebration of the Eucharist was reserved for those who had been baptized.
During the catechetical journey, catechumens were expected not only to be hearers of the Word, but also doers of the Word. The new life into which they were entering was to be characterized by love and good deeds. Faithfulness in hearing, doing, and in prayer would all be taken into account when the catechumens finally put their names in as candidates for baptism. The sponsors would once again give testimony on behalf of the catechumens with regard to all these areas. If the candidacy was approved by church leaders, the catechumens would then enter a final, more intensive phase of catechesis.
In this final phase of catechesis, the candidates for baptism might be called by one of several titles—electi, illuminati, competentes (“the qualified”: common in the West), or photizomenoi (“the enlightened”: common in the East). This final phase was increasingly scheduled to correspond with the season of Lent, the period of reflection and repentance that prepared believers for the celebration of Holy Week. During this final phase (if it had not already occurred earlier in the process), the competentes were often marked off within the congregation. Standing or sitting in a special location during the liturgy, they were now the visible objects of much prayer and attention. They would gather daily to pray and be prayed for. The daily prayers would include prayers of exorcism—that God would deliver these souls from every influence of evil. They would engage in certain ascetic exercises, including fasting. And they would be catechized, now more formally, by the pastor or bishop.
The daily instructions would often include an exposition of the ancient Creed7 and of the Lord’s Prayer. The Creed was “handed over” (traditio sym-boli) to the competentes by means of oral, line-by-line presentation, repetition, and exposition. The Creed was not to be written down, nor were the competentes to rehearse the Creed in the presence of ordinary catechumens, let alone outsiders. It was a treasure reserved for this stage of the journey, and not before, just as baptism was reserved for those who had already passed through this stage and the Lord’s Supper was reserved for those who had been baptized. This holding back of treasured teaching and rites was an application of the disciplina arcani (“discipline of secrecy”). This principle and practice seemingly was based upon the proverb forbidding the casting of pearls before the swine (Matt. 7:6) as well as upon Jesus’s practice of teaching in parables. As Jesus explained to his disciples when asked why he taught in parables, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given” (Matt. 13:11). Only as Jesus, on request, explained, his parables would understanding dawn, and only as the Faith was explained, step-by-step, to the competentes would its full significance for their lives be grasped.
Sometime before the actual baptism, perhaps a day or several days earlier, a candidate would profess the Faith by repeating the words of the Creed that she had committed to memory and upon which she had been meditating for many days. This was the giving back, or returning, of the Creed (redditio symboli). Augustine’s own conversion was encouraged in part by his having heard the story of the profession of Victorinus who, like Augustine himself, was an African and a noted rhetorician. Augustine reflects upon this episode in his Confessions (which are, from beginning to end, written in the form of prayer).
At Rome those who are about to enter into your grace usually make their profession in a set form of words which they learn by heart and recite from a raised platform in view of the faithful. . . . So when he mounted the platform to make his profession, all who knew him joyfully whispered his name to their neighbors. There can have been none who did not know him, and the hushed voices of the whole exultant congregation joined in the murmur, “Victorinus, Victorinus.” They were quick to let their joy be heard when they saw him, but just as quickly came a hush as they waited to hear him speak. He made his declaration of the true faith with splendid confidence, and all would gladly have seized him in their arms and clutched him to their hearts.8
Between the redditio symboli and the actual experience of baptism, there was typically a final round of catechesis. Included now would be some instruction about the elements of the baptismal ritual that would ensue in a few days’ time. In some cases, the competentes would be catechized about the spiritual meaning of the baptism they were soon to experience. In other cases, however, these things were kept hidden from the candidates until after the actual experience had occurred; prior to the event, it was deemed necessary only that they knew the minimum about what to expect.
This divergence of practice represents a debate about application of the disciplina arcani. Such catechists as Chrysostom and Augustine seem to have believed that candidates would be better served by being catechized about the mystery of baptism prior to the experience. Cyril of Jerusalem, on the other hand, represented the other opinion. In a postbaptismal catechesis on the mysteries of the sacrament (mystagogy), he explained his rationale as being built “on the principle that seeing is believing.”9 William J. Harmless summarizes Cyril’s apparent convictions on the matter:
Cyril believed that the discipline of secrecy [disciplina arcani] simply enshrined a good pedagogical principle: that in matters of mystery, experience must precede explanation. Cyril trusted that being stripped naked, dunked, then oiled from head to foot was itself splendid catechesis. Only after his initiates had drunk in and savored the rich, elusive power of such symbols did instruction assume its proper place. Only then would the resonances of theological reflection have sufficient poignancy.10
As the quote from Harmless suggests, the baptism itself would have numerous ritual components. The following description is of baptisms under the ministry of Augustine.
Men and women would typically be separated for the ceremony because they would be baptized naked. The ceremony would be held during the great Easter vigil. At some point prior to their disrobing, the candidates would face the west, extend their hands, and renounce the devil and all his works. Then, facing the east, they would repeat their profession of the faith. The baptismal fonts were designed in such a way that “living water” would flow into them. The water should not be standing, stagnant water, for it represented the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit. The fonts typically held enough water to facilitate full immersion, though it is unclear how the candidates were actually immersed. Before entering the font, candidates would strip off their old clothes—goatskin sackcloth, which they trampled under their feet. There were three immersions, each one preceded by a question about faith in the persons of the Trinity, to which the candidate would respond, “credo”—“I believe.” The newly baptized were anointed with oil, and the presence and power of the Holy Spirit was invoked over them. They were prayed for with the laying on of hands.
The competentes were now neophytes. Emerging from the font, they were clothed with new robes of white linen, which they wore for the next eight days. Special sandals were also worn to keep their feet from touching the earth. Then all who had been part of the baptism ceremony would return to the main basilica where they would be greeted by the faithful in a spirit of joyous celebration. Now, for the very first time, the neophytes would experience the ritual speech, prayers, and actions of the Lord’s Supper. “The neophytes experienced all this—seeing, hearing, partaking in ‘what took place on the altar’—without comment or catechesis. Augustine’s silence was deliberate.
He would not take up the deeper implications of Eucharist—‘what it is, what it means, and the great mystery it holds’—until the next morning.”11
While there was some disagreement among catechists of the era regarding whether or not baptism should be explained prior to the event, there seems to have been consensus about withholding catechesis regarding the Lord’s Supper until after it was experienced. Postbaptismal catechesis typically centered upon explanation of the mysteries of the sacraments (mystagogy), and could last for several days or weeks. The neophytes were now greatly celebrated and strongly challenged. They were new creatures in Christ and now, by God’s grace, they must earnestly aim to live as such.
Evaluation and Consideration
Of course, much of the above may seem to a contemporary evangelical believer in North America like a journey through foreign lands. But we would suggest that some of these catechetical practices are worthy of deep consideration, if not outright emulation. In particular, we note three aspects of the ancient catechumenate that could encourage enriching practices in contemporary efforts of catechetical renewal.
First of all, the deliberate concern for the spiritual readiness and ongoing development of those becoming Christians deserves our attention. If we take seriously the task of discipling people for Jesus Christ, such attention is really necessary. Discipleship involves meeting people where they are and helping them go where they must go. All of this envisions faith as a journey, an idea apparent in both Testaments of the Bible (more on this in chapter 7). Those making disciples serve as guides in this journey, and this means that we need to know where we are going. We will also need to know the health and condition of our fellow travelers. Such knowledge is necessary for every aspect of our preparation and leadership—what sort of nourishment will be needed, what challenges may arise to hinder the journey, and what stops and adjustments may be necessary along the way. The plan of the ancients may seem a bit too elaborate for us, but perhaps they were actually far ahead of the game, relative to us, in terms of understanding the nature of the Christian pilgrimage as a significantly new way of thought and life.12
Secondly, we see great value in the holistic approach to instruction that is reflected in how and where catechesis occurred. Thoroughness of plan and performance is integral to the discipling of inquirers. Helping people become like Jesus surely involves every aspect of our humanity, and the ancients knew it. Thus their catechetical vision required the engagement of eyes and ears, minds and hearts, hands and feet. We will say much more about the wisdom of such a vision throughout the course of the book.
Thirdly, the combination of sobriety and celebration that attended the journey of a catechumen toward full inclusion in the life of the church is surely a model for us moderns to match. Many evangelicals today have unwisely dismissed the notion of rites of passage, perhaps fearing a fall into the trap of empty ritualism. But who says that our rituals must be empty? The Bible itself prescribes potent rituals—evident, again, in both Testaments. It is up to church leaders to keep such ritual acts filled with meaning in their own minds and in the minds of congregants. We will be addressing this also at various points throughout the book.
The Reformers and a Return to Roots
With the strengthening of the relationship between the church and the state came the rise of a medieval “Christian society.” This had profound impact on the catechumenate as it had been previously experienced. With the masses suddenly becoming a part of the church, “the early Christian community was now transformed into a crowd of nominal Christians (a transformation described as a real tragedy by Chrysostom in his famous sermons at Constantinople).” 13 Infant baptism became normative and was only rarely followed up with the intended catechizing of children in the faith. The rigorous catechizing of individual adults coming to faith in Christ likewise became a very rare occurrence. The literacy of those filling the cathedrals was often very low, and access to the Scriptures was very limited in any case. Those deeply desirous of growth in the spiritual life may have sought it through a personal disciple-elder relationship. The monastic life was one expression of this. Otherwise, what catechetical work did occur was typically done in very large scale.
Education then took place largely through sermons (which were often faithfully transcribed for wider use, e.g., the sermons of Chrysostom), liturgical hymnography (which contained doctrinal and scriptural themes), Christian art (frescoes, mosaics, and icons which told in imagery the story of salvation), liturgical commemorations (the cycles of feasts and fasts, the sanctoral), liturgical processions, and pilgrimages to holy places and monasteries (especially for confession and spiritual counsel with holy fathers or startsi).14
While much potential good can surely be seen in such efforts as those noted above, especially the attention paid to the liturgy and its formative and instructional potential, the practice of serious and sustained catechesis for both newer and older believers was largely abandoned.
It was after a prolonged time of relative neglect, then, that this vital area of catechetical ministry received renewed attention from the Reformers. Indeed, it could well be argued that the Reformation itself was a response to centuries of catechetical decline. A largely uninstructed church had been fertile soil for serious error in terms of doctrine, experience, and practice. Luther and his contemporaries fought hard to reform the church in these areas. After efforts to do so from within the structures of the church of Rome had been met with severe opposition, newly emerging evangelical churches became the laboratory for new—or better, renewed—approaches to pastoral and evangelistic ministry and the nourishing of personal faith.
Indeed, it would be doing a great injustice to the Reformers to suggest that they were desirous of being innovators. Theirs was a call to return to the plain teachings and practices of the Scriptures. For Luther, Calvin, and others, this actually meant a return to sound procedures of the ancient fathers of the church. They were persuaded that the church of Rome had long abandoned the ways of their forebears in many vital respects. The medieval church had brought forth countless innovations, but they made for what the Reformers saw as superstitions rather than an understanding of God’s Word and ways and of the demands of discipleship. These Reformers were set on rediscovery of the true sources of the Faith.
The Reformation principle of sola scriptura needs to be understood in light of this. It was not a rigid plea that “Scripture alone,” exegeted directly, should shape the church’s faith, without regard for the biblical insights and teachings of the early fathers. Rather, the real sense of the phrase was that Scripture must hold fundamental and inviolable primacy in matters of faith and practice, over and against the often distorted and distorting traditions of the institutional church. The ancient fathers were not always correct, either, and their teachings must also be judged in the light of the Scriptures, as should the teachings of church leaders at all times and in all places. Under that same, sure, and certain light, the Reformers were persuaded that their own teachings had more in common with those of the fathers than did the teachings of the church of Rome at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Calvin argues this very point in several places, including his introductory remarks to the Institutes of the Christian Religion and his written debate with Cardinal Jacobo Sadoleto. Stressing that the Reformers’ emphasis was thus on a “return to the sources,” David Steinmetz writes:
The goal of the Reformers was not to supplant a dead or dying church with a new Christianity, as though God had written “Ichabod” over a moribund Christendom and repudiated his covenant. Their goal was a reformed Catholic Church, built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles, purged of the medieval innovations that had distorted the Gospel, subordinated to the authority of Scripture and the ancient Christian writers, and returned to what was best in the old church. As they saw it, it was this evangelical church, this reformed and chastened church, that was the church catholic. It was the innovators in Rome who could no longer pretend to be genuinely catholic and whose claim to be the custodians of a greater and unbroken tradition was patently false.15
For the central figures of the Reformation, a chief concern was a return to the simplicity and power of the biblical Gospel. This, above all, had been obscured due to departure from the principles and practices of the Scriptures and the earliest Christian traditions of church life. The Gospel must be made known and understood as well and as widely as possible. Thus, while Spanish and Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries of the sixteenth century traveled to distant lands to baptize multitudes who had never before heard of Christ, “the continental reformers, by contrast, confined their efforts to territories in the very heartland of Christendom where universal baptism prevailed, yet where, in Luther’s view, while a seamstress might teach her daughter the trade, ‘now even the great learned prelates and bishops themselves do not know the Gospel.’”16
The Golden Age of the Catechism
Restoring the Gospel would require many things. The Scriptures would need to be available in the vernacular language of the people. The people would need to be educated so that they could read and understand those Scriptures. The liturgy would need to be clear, comprehensible, and in accordance with the Scriptures. God’s Word must be preached and taught faithfully and diligently. And catechesis must be returned to a place of prominence in the churches. With this last concern in mind, the Reformers would utilize a relatively new form of technology—the movable type printing press introduced in Germany by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439. The ministry of catechesis would be advanced by the publication and distribution of great numbers of printed catechisms. More than one hundred thousand copies of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism were printed over the forty years following its first publication.17
Luther began to produce sermons and pamphlets centered on instruction in the basic elements of the Christian faith as early as 1516.18 In 1520, he produced for his own congregation the Brief Form of the Ten Commandments, of the Creed, and of the Lord’s Prayer. In 1525, he asked two friends to produce a simple catechism for children. But neither this effort nor a subsequent effort undertaken by his friend Philipp Melanchthon in 1528 came to fruition. Finally Luther took the task upon himself. After visiting parishes in Saxony during the fall of 1528, Luther could wait no longer for something to be done. Both Luther’s small and large catechisms were published in 1529. He explains all this himself, with typical flourish, in the preface to the Small Catechism:
The deplorable conditions which I recently encountered when I was a visitor constrained me to prepare this brief and simple catechism or statement of Christian teaching. Good God, what wretchedness I beheld! The common people, especially those who live in the country, have no knowledge whatever of Christian teaching, and unfortunately many pastors are quite incompetent and unfitted for teaching. Although the people are supposed to be Christian, are baptized, and receive the holy sacrament, they do not know the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, or the Ten Commandments, they live as if they were pigs and irrational beasts, and now that the Gospel has been restored they have mastered the fine art of abusing liberty.19
The aim of the Reformation-era catechisms was, according to the Scottish theologian T. F. Torrance,
to give a comprehensive exposition of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the context of the whole Counsel of God and the whole life of the people of God. They sow the seed that germinates in the soil, brings forth living fruit, and provides good grain for use in the next generation. They shape the mind of the historical Church, building up its understanding of the Faith and directing its growth and development so that throughout all its changes from age to age it ever remains the same Household and Habitation of God built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief cornerstone. . . . the Catechism is designed, not for the self-expression and self-culture of a particular Church, but to serve the Communion of Saints, so that all who use it may worship one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and be schooled in one Faith in the unity of the whole Church of God past and present.20
The Content of the Catechisms
The catechisms of Luther, as indicated by the comments above, were structured around the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the sacraments—“articles of faith common to all Christians,” as Calvin put it.21 This pattern would mark nearly every major catechism produced by Christians of all camps in the succeeding centuries. It is obvious that Luther by no means understood himself to be an innovator in selecting this content. Rather, he was persuaded that he could not base his own catechesis “better or more plainly than has been done from the beginning of Christendom and retained till now, i.e., in these three parts, the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Our Father. These three plainly and briefly contain exactly everything that a Christian needs to know.”22 He says elsewhere, “As for the common people, however, we should be satisfied if they learned the three parts which have been the heritage of Christendom from ancient times, though they were rarely taught and treated correctly, so that all who wish to be Christians in fact as well as in name, both young and old, may be well-trained in them and familiar with them.”23 In the preface to his Small Catechism, Luther inveighs against anyone who refused to be catechized in these three summaries:
If any refuse to receive your instructions, tell them that they deny Christ and are not Christians. They should not be admitted to the sacrament, be accepted as sponsors in Baptism, or be allowed to participate in any Christian privileges. On the contrary, they should be turned over to the pope and his officials, and even to the devil himself. In addition, parents and employers should refuse to furnish them with food and drink and should notify them that the prince is disposed to banish such rude people from his land.
We will consider the wisdom of this pattern of catechetical content more fully in a later chapter. For now, we examine only Luther’s claim: that these “three parts”—the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer— represent the central catechetical content inherited from the ancient church. Is the claim a valid one? Let us note that Luther was far from alone in holding this conviction. A quick glance at any of the catechisms that emerged in the era—for example, Calvin’s Geneva Catechism, the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563, and, perhaps surprisingly for some Protestants, the Roman Catechism that emerged from the Counter Reformation work of the Council of Trent— all featured the same elements as their foci. The trend has continued with catechisms ever since. From leading reformers, to English Puritans, to church leaders in colonial America, to recent practice among those churches where catechesis remains central—Lutheran and Reformed, Anglican and Roman Catholic—we observe the widespread use of the old formularies of the faith. And such use is spoken of as a matter of course. As the twentieth-century Jesuit educator Josef Andreas Jungmann puts it, “Without a doubt, the old traditional formulation of Creed, Our Father, Ten Commandments, Sacraments, must determine the plan in some way. It would be a mistake to substitute a scientific schema for this mature, old, and traditional classification.”24
In fact, as we saw in our survey of the ancient catechumenate, the practice of catechizing in the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the sacraments was clearly in place very early in the life of the church. The late firstor early secondcentury treatise The Didache of the Apostles includes instruction in the sacraments and also the command that believers should pray the Lord’s Prayer three times daily. Including the Ten Commandments in formal catechesis, on the other hand, was not typical until medieval times. However, the sort of ethical instruction that the Ten Commandments provided in the catechisms of the Reformation era was evident in the earliest of catechetical endeavors. The Didache, along with other ancient texts, takes up this ethical concern under the doctrine of the “two ways.” It begins with these words: “There are two ways: the way of life and the way of death. And there is a great difference between these two ways.”25 This viewpoint is rooted in the teaching of both Jesus (e.g., Matt. 7:13–14) and the Old Testament (e.g., Ps. 1:6). This is ethical instruction through and through. The way of the Lord, in simplest terms, is the way of loving God and neighbor—the double commandment of love given in Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, which, Jesus explained, summarizes all the commandments of God (Mark 12:29–31).
In his fifth-century Enchiridion, Augustine argued that every Christian must be instructed in three things—faith, hope, and love. In his manual of instruction on these three “theological virtues” (which form a familiar biblical triad; e.g., 1 Corinthians 13; Colossians 1; 1 Peter 1), Augustine offers expositions of the Creed (this is training in faith), of the Lord’s Prayer (training in hope), and of the double commandment of love (training in love). Including the Ten Commandments in the catechism, then, should not be seen as an innovation of either the medieval or Reformation-era churches but simply as an expansion and application of the doctrine of the two ways and of the two great commandments, going right back to the founding of Christianity.
The catechetical pattern that has marked historic catechisms was chosen not only because it was deemed ancient or traditional. It was considered to be a wise and comprehensive primer containing, as Luther put it, “exactly everything that a Christian needs to know.” In his shorter preface to the Large Catechism, Luther calls these three “the most necessary part of Christian instruction,” embodying the ancient fathers’ summing up of “the doctrine, life, wisdom, and learning which constitute the Christian’s conversation, conduct, and concern.”26 Augustine, as we saw above, regarded these three summaries as essential in cultivating faith, hope, and love in the lives of believers. Such teaching touches humans at the levels of their heads, hearts, and hands—that is, in terms of cognition, affection, and behavior. To say it yet otherwise, the three summaries provide training in doctrine (“truth taken into the mind and heart to live by”), experience (“the conscientious pursuit and conscious enjoyment of fellowship with the Father and the Son”), and practice (“the specific and habitual response of obedience to the doctrinal truth one has received”).27
A recent document published by the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops describes this comprehensive concern well: “The scope of catechetical content is cognitive, experiential, and behavioral and it requires development in ‘the threefold dimension of word, memory, and witness (doctrine, celebration, and commitment in life).’”28 We will consider this comprehensive pattern much more fully in chapter 6.
John Calvin published two catechisms that were also based upon the same general concerns. The first of these, published in the French language in 1537 under the title of Instruction in Faith, was an attempt to offer a simplified version of the first edition of the Institutes. He recognized that the Institutes (though only containing six chapters at that time, there would be eighty chapters in all in the later 1559 edition) was beyond the grasp of children and the majority of laypeople.29 This first catechism was published in Latin in 1538, but it also turned out to be too lengthy and complex for most children. So in 1541 he produced a second in the French language, which was released in Latin in 1545. This catechism, drafted in the question-and-answer format that Luther had advanced, became known as the Geneva Catechism.
Both of Calvin’s catechisms chiefly featured expositions of the same three foundational items—the Decalogue, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer—together with teaching about the sacraments. With the second catechism, however, Calvin reversed Luther’s order by treating the Commandments after the Creed. This shift reveals an important distinction in the theology of the two great reformers. For Luther, the first and fundamental use of the Law was to reveal to us our sinfulness.30 The Creed, on the other hand, represented an outline of the Gospel. Thus Luther’s preferred catechetical order typifies the Law-Gospel paradigm that has been critical in Lutheran theology to this very day. Calvin shared with Luther in affirming humanity’s full depravity and so also believed that the Law therefore functions as a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ (Gal. 3:24). But Calvin also believed that once the Gospel has raised us to new life, we, now indwelt by the Spirit of God, must walk in God’s ways, which the negatives of the Decalogue implicitly indicate. The commands of God are thus not only evangelists pointing us to Christ. They are also guides to a God-pleasing Christian life. By placing the Decalogue after the Creed in his second catechism, Calvin revealed his emphasis on the so-called “third use” of the Law.
The Heidelberg Catechism, published in 1563, had been commissioned in an effort to help unify Lutheran and Reformed churches of the German Palatinate. There are several features of the catechism that give evidence of such an effort—including a downplaying of the more distinctively Reformed doctrines of the divine decrees, election and predestination, and an attempt to find common ground on the Lord’s Supper. One of the more notable ways in which the ecumenical intention of the catechism can be seen is in its approach to the Decalogue. In what we deem a biblically sound and indeed brilliant stroke, both Luther’s evangelistic use of the Law and Calvin’s educational use of it are brought together. First, the Law is summarized by means of the double commandment of love and used to help us realize that all of us fall far short of obedience and thus are bound in misery and sin. Next, the Creed is exposited as a Gospel summary of God’s great answer to humanity’s great need. But then the Law appears once again, this time in the form of command-by-command exposition, as the guide to a life of grateful response.31
While the Lutheran churches continued to use Luther’s catechisms as their primary teaching tools, the Heidelberg Catechism soon supplanted the Geneva Catechism as the most popular among Reformed churches. Its popularity continues to this very day in some Reformed churches. In theologically conservative Presbyterian churches in our time its significance is typically second only to that of the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
The use of printed catechisms was a staple among the growing communities of the Reformation, including the Anglicans in England and Presbyterians in Scotland. Since 1549 the Anglican Prayer Book has contained a brief but businesslike children’s catechism in question-and-answer form, to be mastered by candidates for confirmation (the service at which persons baptized in infancy profess personal acceptance of their baptismal commitment to Christ). It is neatly drafted in five sections: (1) the baptismal covenant; (2) the Creed; (3) the Decalogue and the two Great Commandments; (4) the Lord’s Prayer; and (5) the two dominical sacraments (added in 1604). Until the early twentieth century children were regularly required to learn this catechism by heart—unfortunately without it always being adequately explained. As we noted earlier, the use of catechisms was not so strong among Anabaptist groups, but there is evidence of it on occasion there as well.
Rote memorization of catechisms without a lively, interactive relationship of didactic exchange between catechist and catechumens was not of course the Reformers’ intent, and warnings against such lapses into the merely mechanical were frequently sounded. Indeed, the Anglican Prayer Book prescribed that children be catechized every week by the clergyman in the parish church at the second Sunday service with their parents looking on. It appears that for the best part of a century this was duly done, but the poor spiritual quality of many clergy plus the obstinate certainty of many parents that learning the Faith with precision was really needless meant that, having briefly waxed in the mid-sixteenth century, catechesis in England was waning again. When the Church of England, outlawed by Parliament in 1645, was reestablished in 1660, this continued to be the story, by and large.
All-age Catechesis: A Short-lived Puritan Experiment
There is, however, a little more to say. The core of the Puritan movement that broke surface in the late sixteenth century was a close-knit community of clergy whose goal was the conversion and discipling of the English nation, primarily through preaching and teaching the life of faith in Jesus Christ. They catechized children very seriously. One of their mid-seventeenth century leaders, Richard Baxter, pastor of Kidderminster parish church from 1641 to 1660 (with a five-year absence as an army chaplain during the Civil War), saw the catechizing of whole families—that is, of everyone in the parish—as a vital ingredient in this pattern of institutionalized parochial evangelism. In The Reformed Pastor (1656), which became a bestseller among clergy, Baxter describes how he and his assistant regularly gave an hour’s instruction to up to sixteen families each week. They used the Westminster Shorter Catechism as a text, interacting with children first, then adults, and ending with exhortation. And, writes Baxter, “Few went away without some seeming Humiliation, Conviction, and Purpose and Promise for a holy life.”32
The impact of Baxter’s catechetical ministry in Kidderminster was by all reasonable measure profound. Reflecting upon this work more than two centuries later, Bishop J. C. Ryle wrote, “When he came to Kidderminster, he found it a dark, ignorant, immoral, irreligious place, containing, perhaps, 3,000 inhabitants. When he left it . . . he had completely turned the parish upside down.”33 Ryle continues his evaluative remarks with Dr. Bates’s comments that before Baxter’s ministry “the place . . . was like a piece of dry and barren earth; but, by the blessing of heaven upon his labour, the face of Paradise appeared there. The bad were changed to good, and the good to better.”34
Concerning the renewed observance of the Lord’s Day that occurred in that town, “It was said, ‘You might have heard an hundred families singing psalms and repeating sermons as you passed through the streets.’”35 When Baxter had first arrived in Kidderminster, “There was about one family in a street which worshiped God at home. When he went away, there were some streets in which there was not one family on a side that did not do it; and this was the case even with inns and public houses.”36
So deep was the grounding in the things of God that among the poor common folk were now found those who “understood the whole body of divinity,” and “some were so able in prayer that few ministers could match them in order, fullness, apt expressions, holy oratory and fervour.”37
Baxter himself attributed all this fruit—which represents not a brief episode but rather a ministry that spanned nearly two decades—chiefly to his system of catechizing households.38 Ryle sees great significance in the fact that in his pastoral work Baxter had focused on things essential and concerned himself with passionate care of souls. “While some divines were wrangling about the divine right of Episcopacy or Presbytery, or splitting hairs about reprobation or free will, Baxter was always visiting from house to house, and beseeching men, for Christ’s sake, to be reconciled to God and flee from the wrath to come.”39
Even in the pulpit, Baxter’s preaching was largely catechetical in nature. In his introduction to Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor, J.I. writes,
A schoolmaster by instinct, Baxter usually called himself his people’s teacher, and teaching was to his mind the minister’s main task. In his sermons (one each Sunday and Thursday, lasting an hour) he taught basic Christianity. “The thing which I daily opened to them, and with greatest importunity laboured to imprint upon their minds, was the great fundamental principles of Christianity contained in their baptismal covenant, even a right knowledge, and belief of, and subjection and love to, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and love to all men, and concord with the church and one another.”40
This commitment to the fundamental principles led Baxter to give special attention to preaching on the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. Such work, Baxter reckoned, “takes a long time. And when that is done they must be led on . . . but not so as to leave the weak behind; and so as shall still be truly subservient to the great points of faith, hope and love, holiness and unity, which must be still [i.e., always, constantly] inculcated, as the beginning and end of all.”41 Baxter’s “main contribution to the development of Puritan ideals for the ministry” was to “upgrade the practice of personal catechizing from a preliminary discipline for children to a permanent ingredient in pastoral care for all ages.”42
These persistent and passionate labors of Baxter proved to have staying power in the hearts of the catechumens. After his absence of more than five yeafrom external authority in rs, he was able to write,
Though I have now been absent from them about six years, and they have been assaulted with pulpit-calumnies, and slanders, with threatenings and imprisonments, with enticing words, and seducing reasonings, they yet stand fast and keep their integrity; many of them are gone to God, and some are removed, and some now in prison [i.e., for nonconformity], and most still at home; but not one, that I hear of, are fallen off, or forsake their uprightness.43
Nearly a century after Baxter’s ministry in Kidderminster had ended, George Whitefield, having visited that township in December of 1743, wrote, “I was greatly refreshed to see what a sweet savour of good Mr Baxter’s doctrine, works and discipline remain to this day.”44
Through the impact of The Reformed Pastor Baxter’s example was widely followed until 1659, when the Restoration process began and “confusion buryed all.”45 Baxter’s leadership, and family catechizing with it, were at that point totally eclipsed, and no attempt to revive his catechetical pattern of procedure has ever been made.46 Throughout the Christian world fresh thought and new beginnings are long overdue.
The Waning of Catechesis
The passion for catechesis that was apparent in the Reformation commitment to publish and distribute catechisms, and in the Puritan echo of that zeal that could be seen in the ministries of men like Baxter, in time would wane. In the introduction we identified some of the reasons for this under the heading Obstacles. We noted in particular the impact of, first, the turn away from external authority in Western culture, and, second, of the resistance to authoritative instruction within the Christian community. In addition to these forces, we would suggest that the following additional factors may have contributed to bringing us to the unhappy state of affairs in which we now find ourselves, in which catechesis is but a little-known and seldom-used strategy in our churches.
1. A Movement from Reformational Piety to Evangelical Pietism
At the time of the Reformation, when catechizing blossomed afresh, and on through the Puritan era an unmistakably theocentric concern held sway, finding expression in both the congregational teaching and the personal piety of the period. The proper question was seen to be, “What has the God of grace revealed that his servants should learn in order to honor him?” In the late seventeenth century, however, the first signs of a cultural shift from God-centeredness to human-centeredness began to appear in churches all over Europe. European pietism, which broke surface in the wake of Puritan piety, borrowing indeed a good deal from Puritanism in both its English and Scottish forms, was shaped by this shift. The German pietism of Spener and Franke, following Arndt; the Dutch pietism of Voetius, Witsius, and à Brakel; the English pietism of the Wesleys and Whitefield; the Norwegian pietism of Hauge; and the Moravian pietism of Zinzendorf, along with parallel developments elsewhere, sought to maintain vital spiritual life in the face of the devotional deadness of state churches.
Within the pietist world of experiential biblicism, however, a world in which life-transforming adult regeneration by the Holy Spirit was well understood and real personal fellowship with the Father and the Son really flourished, three specific shifts gradually occurred. Each went unnoticed at the time but was far reaching in its effects. First, the Reformation tag sola scriptura, which had originally meant “no authority over the Bible,” came to mean “no authority except the Bible.” Second, the godliness of the individual, rather than the glory of God in the church, became the primary focus of interest. Third, the study of the Bible directly came to be thought of as a much more trustworthy source of truth and wisdom for serving God than any aspect of the church’s historical heritage. Slowly but steadily, therefore, the sense of the significance of the church and in particular of the churchly catechetical process evaporated, and the practice itself began to wither on the vine—less perhaps in Presbyterian and Reformed circles than elsewhere, but to some extent everywhere. And in any case, the question now being asked was, “How much (that is, how little!) do I need to know in order to be saved and live for God?”—which made the range of theological themes covered in the older catechetical forms seem excessive and superfluous. We inherit today much of this mindset under the label of “evangelicalism.”
2. The Tendency toward Particularism in Catechesis
Historically, catechesis focused on grounding believers in the essentials of the Christian faith. Alongside this there has always been a need to proclaim that faith against the backdrop of competing ideologies. In the ancient church, that usually meant declaring the Christian vision vis-à-vis pagan beliefs and practices. As the church experienced divisions over the centuries, however, it became increasingly common for Christian communities to use catechesis to compete with other Christian communities. Thus catechesis has sometimes degenerated, if we dare to put it thus, into a polemic against other forms of Christianity rather than remaining a primarily positive proclamation of the Gospel and its implications for living. At the time of the Reformation, Protestants and Catholics sometimes used their printed catechisms to disparage each other. As Protestantism further splintered in subsequent generations, catechisms tended to become even more particularized. In many cases, this meant that secondary doctrines were promoted to the status of primary. For many, this made the vision of using a catechism for grounding believers in the Faith far less appealing.
In his Introduction to the Heidelberg Catechism, Lee Barrett writes:
All too often in our history confessional divisions have spawned conflict, bitterness, and even violence. By the late sixteenth century, the proliferation of confessions of faith more often than not sowed seeds of discord rather than concord.47
Along these lines, T. F. Torrance quotes Horatius Bonar (1866; regarding distinctions between catechisms of the Reformation and the later Westminster catechisms).
It may be questioned whether the Church gained anything by the exchange of the Reformation standards for those of the seventeenth century. The scholastic mould in which the latter are cast has somewhat trenched upon the ease and breadth which mark the former; and the skilful metaphysics employed at Westminster in giving lawyer-like precision to each statement, have imparted a local and temporary aspect to the new which did not belong to the more ancient standards. Or, enlarging the remark, we may say that there is something about the theology of the Reformation which renders it less likely to become obsolete than the theology of the Covenant. The simpler formulae of the older age are quite as explicit as those of the later; while by the adoption of the biblical in preference to the scholastic mode of expression, they have secured for themselves a buoyancy which will bear them up when the others go down.48
3. The Decline of Sound Catechetical Practices
Ironically, the very technological advance that helped to reinvigorate catechesis at the time of the Reformation may well have helped to bring about its demise in the centuries following. The ability to print and widely distribute catechisms was an opportunity that the Reformers (and the Catholic counter-reformers after them) would not and did not miss. But we can see how this could and did have a serious downside. We recall that in the ancient church the basic ingredients of the catechism (that is, the content in which baptismal candidates were instructed) was never to be written down. This meant a full engagement of the mind was essential. It meant too that the relational dynamics between instructor and instructed could not be neglected. The catechist, for example, would declare the articles of the Creed line by line. The candidates in turn would repeat the lines until they were seared into the memory. The process also involved exposition of the lines. There were sponsors as well, members of the faithful with whom candidates could rehearse and discuss what they were learning. Once these things were in printed form it became very easy for the relational and holistic dimensions of catechesis to be lost.
Though the Reformers themselves warned against this, and though later pastors like Baxter worked tirelessly to avoid such problems, in the end it became all too easy in too many places for catechesis to be diminished to a mere memorization of the questions and answers in the printed catechisms. This of course is wholly inadequate for real learning to occur, and it would not be long before serious educators would quite rightly point this out and call loudly and long for something else.
Often, this new educational critique of poor educational practices in the church has been greatly informed by those who are not primarily concerned with a distinctively Christian education. In the twentieth century, for example, the influence of leaders and thinkers like John Dewey upon nearly all aspects of American education has been profound. This influence has made a deep and lasting mark upon evangelical efforts in education.
4. The Widespread Adoption by the Churches of the Sunday School Model
Just as there were unintended and unhappy consequences of the printing press upon catechesis, similar things might be said regarding the Sunday school movement. This lay-driven ministry began in 1780 when the Englishman Robert Raikes, at his own expense, gathered some Gloucester children together on Sunday morning to teach them reading and writing, to introduce them to religion, and reform their morals. It was really more of a compassionand outreach-oriented parachurch endeavor than what we might properly call a Christian education program. But, finally overcoming initial skepticism from members of the clergy, churches on both sides of the Atlantic began adopting the Sunday school model as the chief vehicle for their Christian education efforts. This was the clear trend in North America by the early nineteenth century.
For all the wonderful things God has accomplished through the Sunday school movement, however, there are at least two ways in which this new approach to education in the churches negatively impacted ministries of catechesis. First, because the ministry was from its outset driven by lay members, pastors soon began withdrawing themselves as key players in the teaching ministries of their churches. The gain of having more laymen and laywomen take up the charge of helping to instruct, especially the youngest members of the congregations, was matched, on the negative side, by a diminishing of the vision of the pastor as teacher of the flock, something that was so basic and fundamental to the Reformers and to the Puritans. Grateful as we should always be for the exceptions, the fact is that many pastors have basically handed off their educational duties to others—typically to good-hearted members of the congregation who often have far less theological training or sensitivity than themselves.
A second unintended consequence of the Sunday school movement is linked to the formation of Sunday school unions. These unions were formed to help keep this lay-driven movement sustained and supplied, especially with teacher training and curriculum development. The unions represented ecumenical efforts to advance the Sunday school agenda. Baptists and Presbyterians, Methodists and Episcopalians found themselves working together for a common cause. This of course was praiseworthy in many respects. But this also meant that continued use of catechisms—which had been widely used in early Sunday school endeavors—sometimes became problematic. For example, Question and Answer 74 in the Heidelberg Catechism reads as follows:
Q: Are infants also to be baptized?
A: Yes, because they, as well as their parents, are included in the covenant and belong to the people of God.
Obviously such thinking was unacceptable to Baptists and members of certain other denominations (see point 2 above for background here). Partly in order to avoid such doctrinal controversies, the Sunday school unions came to advocate that only the Bible should be used for instruction. This likely sounds like a very reasonable thing to most evangelical Protestant ears. And great efforts were made to introduce a consistency and comprehensiveness in the use of the Bible. But is it really possible to avoid teaching doctrinal controversy by teaching the Bible? In order to come as close as possible to achieving this goal, it was inevitable that the focus of the biblical teaching would shift from doctrinal emphases and would arrive at last at the teaching of Bible stories. While the teaching of Bible stories is surely a good thing, this has often been done in a way that separates the particular stories from the broader story of God’s redemptive dealings with humankind. This in turn can easily mean that attention is taken away from the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ to mere rehearsal of episodic events, often followed by a moral admonition: “We see how Jonah got himself in trouble, so we had better not. . . .” “Mary gave herself wholly to the Lord, and so should we. . . .”
A child who has grown up even recently in an evangelical Sunday school will likely be very familiar with the stories of Noah, Moses, Jonah, and Mary. But that same child will be far less likely to be able to recite the Apostles’ Creed or enumerate the Ten Commandments. Here then is yet another great irony. In what was deemed an effort to preserve and promote unity (by removing the historic catechisms from being part of the Sunday school curriculum), attention to those historic summaries of the faith that had previously served as a unifying force among Christians of nearly all traditions was undermined.
5. An Emphasis on “Growing the Church” That Is Often Simplistic andLacking in Holistic Concern
It seems clear that much of what has occurred in recent decades under the broad heading of “church growth” has been driven largely by the desire to reach as many people as possible for Christ. This noble aim is fed by a biblically appropriate evangelistic passion. But in practice this has often meant that while we are concerned that people come to the church, we have not thought deeply enough about what they will become in time within the church. And this is complicated further by the very human tendency to look for examples of what seem to be “successful” churches and then to simply copy their behavior. By no means do we mean to imply (for example) that all so-called “megachurches” have sold their souls for the sake of numbers. Rather we are concerned that churches of all sizes and shapes need to take more seriously the fact that our commission is to disciple the nations, not merely to draw large crowds to ourselves. When we focus merely on the latter, we may assume (perhaps mistakenly) that we need to lower the bar of expectations to prove attractive to the masses. A rigorous catechetical experience would surely seem unwise by this standard.49
6. The Impact of the Proliferation of Denominations and ofNondenominational Churches
The fact is that Protestantism is currently more fractured than ever (there are reportedly more than thirty-nine thousand Christian denominations in the world as of this writing—the overwhelming majority of them Protestant—and the number is rising daily).50 While many of the denominational splits may have been necessary at the time they occurred (some divisions are inevitable: 1 Cor. 11:19), there can be no doubt that many more have been simply the result of well-meant but wrongheaded and hard-hearted choices. Tragically, we have not taken seriously enough Jesus’s commands and prayers for unity (John 13:34–35; 17:23) nor Paul’s emphatic pleas for the same (Eph. 4:3). On top of this, there is the proliferation of nondenominational and independent churches. With so much obvious diversity and so little apparent unity, even where catechesis is taken seriously among Protestants it can often seem like a scene from the era of the Judges, when “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 1:25). We who know we really must catechize seem to be constantly reinventing the wheel. This is all the more troublesome in an age when the experience of so many is so transient. As people move freely from town to town, even those evangelicals who underwent some form of catechizing in one church community are very unlikely to find anything significantly similar in whatever new church they may settle into. Against such a backdrop, it should not surprise us that many Protestant pilgrims finally tire of this experience of rootlessness and aimlessness and find themselves attracted—even against their theological convictions—to communities which, by contrast, seem to be havens of stability, such as Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches.51
Conclusion
For all the reasons stated above, and doubtless for many others, the idea of a rigorous catechesis has fallen out of favor in most evangelical communities.
Nevertheless, the evidence of great need for such instructional and formational ministry in our time is compelling. So too is the evidence that catechetical ministry done wisely and well can be profoundly potent for good. Beginning with the next chapter we therefore turn to proposals for rediscovering or renewing a faithful catechesis in contemporary congregations.