"Good Fences Make Good Neighbors." Such is the line in a Robert Frost poem, and it applies pretty neatly to the protest by some Protestants that the Evangelicals are getting too cosy with Catholics. This article in Christianity Today reports that Evangelicals in Spain, Malta and Italy are worried that their fellows have fallen in love with Pope Francis.
Last month, the national evangelical alliances of Italy, Spain, and Malta—all members of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA)—wrote an 8-page open letter charging their parent organization with “moving away from its historic position” of holding the line against Catholic and liberal Protestant theology. “In recent years we have sensed that the leadership of WEA has moved away from the outlined historic position of the Alliance on unity by endorsing a more ‘ecumenical’ attitude,” the three alliances stated in December. “Unity has become a blurred term to refer to any relationship even beyond the principles that have always characterized evangelicals. Leaders have become less cautious in talking about unity with the Catholic Church as such and have tended to bypass the historic boundaries.
