Is There Such a Thing as a Nominal Catholic?

One of the features of Billy Graham’s ministry was the way that he was able to unite evangelical churches in mission, such as through the coordinated follow-up after his campaigns. Another way this cooperation has endured is through the Lausanne Movement.

Lausanne was founded by Rev Graham. In 1974, over 2300 participants from 150 nations gathered in Lausanne, Switzerland, for the first International Congress on World Evangelization. Since then the Lausanne Movement has continued to enable evangelical Christian leaders to work together, and it runs global consultations from time to time on various issues that affect churches around the world. The most recent one was a consultation on the issue of Christian nominalism. Three focus groups were formed, looking at nominalism in Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant/evangelical people groups. Invites were sent to 55 delegates from around the world, and one came to me due to my work with people from a Roman Catholic background.

I was hesitant to attend because I don’t like referring to Roman Catholics as nominal. You cannot call someone who sat through 13 years of Catholic religious education classes at school, had their children baptized in the Catholic Church, and then paid $10,000-$100,000 in private Catholic school fees for their children to also receive 13 years of classes nominal. I expressed these concerns to the organizers… but they invited me anyway

So what happened? Read More