Why do children of the Reformation retreat to Rome?

Since we are not far removed from Reformation Day, it might be a good time to ponder a question that puzzles me: Why do children of the Reformation retreat to Rome?

In other words, why do evangelical Christians convert to Roman Catholicism?

It happens periodically with well known evangelicals. During the last two decades, the list has included Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, author and Baylor University professor Francis Beckwith, young pro-life leader Lila Rose and, most recently, USA Today columnist and Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers.

You may be as perplexed as I am about why these switches occur. In a podcast two years ago, evangelical preacher and writer John Piper suggested four reasons these conversions take place. He said:

Many people of those who return to Rome are hungry for seriousness and are tired of the slapstick worship services that are normative in many evangelical churches.

Many are hungry for roots, a sense of history that they don’t feel in the new church plant down the street that seems to mainly want to hide its connectedness to any tradition.

Many are hungry for intellectual and artistic richness that worship services in jeans and movie clips and bouncing beach balls and the shrines of the drum set just don’t satisfy.

Many are hungry for authority and clarity and stability and sometimes it is just easier to let the church tell you what to believe and to be unburdened by the need to work it all out.

Piper's critique of the practices of some churches is strong but would appear to be on target in parts of the evangelical world.

He closed his assessment with this encouragement to evangelicals: "Let’s pour our lives into the true evangelical doctrines and grow churches that are strong and rich and serious and relevant and powerful and biblical and that overcome the weaknesses that have pushed some people away."

Fortunately, God has provided a fresh wind among evangelicals during the last two decades or so. Increasingly, churches are being serious about corporate worship, theology, expositional preaching, ecclesiology, and community. Young men are planting churches that demonstrate the same marks.

As an evangelical church, it is good to remember the reasons for the Reformation that Martin Luther helped ignite when he nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, on Oct. 31, 1517. The truths the reformers championed -- scriptural truths that conflicted with the teaching of Rome -- are the same ones we, as evangelicals, must not forget. They are:

-- Scripture alone is our final authority, not Scripture plus an individual, council, church, tradition, experience or document.

-- Christ alone is our mediator with God, not Christ plus any human righteousness or accomplishment.

-- Grace alone is the way of salvation, not grace plus any human work or method.

-- Faith alone is the means of justification, not faith plus any human merit or infusion of Christ’s righteousness.

-- The glory of God alone is the purpose of life, not His glory plus that of any other.