Former denizens of evangelical arenas are finding new homes in the age-old sanctuaries of Catholicism.

It took Mark Shea four tries to become a Catholic.

Raised without any religious instruction, Shea had embraced evangelical Christianity as a college student at the University of Washington in the late 1970s. “There was a little non-denominational group that came together on the dorm floor next to mine,” Shea says. “We got together for Bible study, Saturday night praise and worship, that sort of thing.”

Shea took his conversion to Christianity seriously, reading the Bible regularly and embracing the doctrines of his new faith with vigor. Over the next few years, though, he found that there were things that troubled him about evangelical Christianity, such as the way interpretations of scripture seemed to vary from congregation to congregation. Shea’s way of dealing with his doubts was to read voraciously. As he did so, he found himself increasingly embracing Catholic answers to his questions.

His path to Rome, however, was not a smooth one. During his first RCIA class, Shea was wrestling with some of the things he had done in college. “The priest sort of dismissed it. ‘Storms of youth, my lad,’ he told me. But I really wanted to know what the church taught about this.” Shea ultimately left the program.

He didn’t last much longer in his second attempt at RCIA. “The catechist was trying to explain the Exodus story, and he compared it to the American story of Paul Bunyan digging the Grand Canyon,” Shea says. “You weren’t meant to take it literally. I was pretty sure that this was not what the church taught about the Book of Exodus. I decided the class wasn’t helping me.”

In his third RCIA program, “the guy was scrupulously orthodox,” Shea recalls. Alas, he was also a terrible teacher. “He was reading something about the temptation of Jesus in the desert and said that ‘Jesus was not tempted interiorly,’ ” Shea says. “I raised my hand and asked him what it meant to be tempted if you weren’t tempted interiorly. He got this deer-in-the-headlights look and just re-read the same passage.” Shea dropped out of the class soon after that.

“Finally, in frustration, I did what evangelicals do,” Shea says. “I formed a study group.” Calling themselves the Seattle Catholic Study Group, Shea and a group of friends slowly worked their way through a catechism and various church documents. They focused particularly on doctrines that have divided Catholics and Protestants, such as the authority of scripture and prayer to Mary and the saints. In the end Shea and many others in the group were convinced that what the church taught was true.

Shea and his friends showed up at the office of a local priest and asked to be received into the Roman Catholic Church. The priest was a bit flummoxed to find himself presented with a group of evangelicals quoting church teaching. “I didn’t realize at the time that this was a ‘don’t try this at home’ kind of thing,” Shea says. After some extensive questioning, the priest agreed to receive them into the Catholic Church 10 days later on the Fourth Sunday of Advent in 1987.

Shea has gone on to become involved in the Catholic apologetics movement, writing a number of books, including By What Authority: An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition (Our Sunday Visitor) and This Is My Body: An Evangelical Discovers the Real Presence (Christendom Press). Shea’s story resembles a number of other high-profile evangelicals who have converted (or, in some cases, “re-verted”) to Catholicism over the last two decades. They include scripture scholar Scott Hahn, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, literary critic Thomas Howard, and radio host Al Kresta.

Given the popularity of books and programs on conversion stories, such as Patrick Madrid’s Surprised by Truth series and EWTN’s The Journey Home, one could be forgiven for thinking that the conversion of evangelical Christians to Catholicism is a growing trend. The available evidence, however, suggests that there has been movement in both directions.

According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s 2007 Religious Landscape Survey, roughly 8 percent of Catholics were raised in other Christian denominations. This compares with 9 percent of evangelical Christians who were raised Catholic.

While high-profile conversions may make the news, the data suggest that the church loses more members than it brings in. “For the Catholic Church, four people leave for every one who joins. That is a much higher ratio than for any other religious group,” says Greg Smith, senior researcher at the Pew Forum.

At the same time Smith believes it is important not to downplay the magnitude of conversions to Catholicism. “Roughly 2.5 percent of American adults have converted to Catholicism. That is a huge number of people.”

Fast friends

It is easier today than ever for evangelicals to consider entering the Catholic Church as the historic animosity between the two communities is on the wane.

“Vatican II was critical,” argues Mark Noll, an evangelical historian who teaches at the University of Notre Dame. “The fact that the Catholic Church was encouraging the faithful to read scripture and talking about the church as the ‘people of God’—which sounded like the Protestant idea of the ‘priesthood of all believers’—started to erode some of the prejudices that evangelicals had about Catholics.”

Noll notes that Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have been highly regarded in the evangelical community. “Their writings are very focused on the person of Jesus Christ and very attentive to scripture. That’s important to evangelicals.”

Politics has also played a role. After Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, evangelicals and Catholics often found themselves on the same side of a burning political issue. During the 2004 presidential campaign, Noll says, one evangelical leader wryly observed that “we used to be afraid that John Kennedy would follow the pope. Now we are afraid that John Kerry won’t follow the pope!”

The rapprochement between the two communities was strengthened by the 1994 statement Evangelicals and Catholics Together, drafted by a group convened by Charles Colson of Prison Fellowship Ministries and Father Richard John Neuhaus, founder of the journal First Things. Neuhaus, a former Lutheran minister, had converted to Catholicism in 1990 and was ordained a priest a year later. He died in 2009.