This continued to be my spiritual life through high school and into college: A Jewish-Christian religion harkening back to the Nazarene and Ebionite sects from the first centuries mentioned by the church historian Eusebius in the fourth century. As I approached college, problems began to arise. In the course of my studies, I began to learn things no one had ever told me before. The books I read by NT Wright and Joseph Ratzinger displayed even more familiarity with Jewish tradition than I had. In fact, Christian claims to antiquity were much better founded than I had ever imagined and accounted for the Jewish origins of Christianity. Doctrines and practices which I had questioned, like the Trinity and the practice of Communion, were described by Christians like Justin Martyr in the second century! And they claimed an unbroken succession of authority which came from the Messiah himself, while we claimed ours from rabbinical sources who did not even recognize our legitimacy.
Written Story
I wrote anti-Catholic tracts and opened a post office box with the intent of distributing them. I spent long hours in the library researching local Catholic history compiling a “spiritual map” of my community…I marked each Catholic church with an “X”.
I was born into a Muslim family in Kurdistan in northern Iraq. I was the 5th child of a large family. The Arab culture and the religion of Islam were the dominant influences, overshadowing the three other nations in Iraq, the largest of which are the Kurds.
I was a child of the manse. My father was a Presbyterian minister and my mother the director of Christian education. I had a good Christian upbringing and after college served as a lay Presbyterian missionary in Caracas, Venezuela.
I was quite young the first time I saw him, so I don’t remember where it happened. But I do remember being terrified by the sight: that tortured man, thorn-crowned,
“I was a ‘baby’ Christian struggling to live as one, becoming more and more aware of my sinfulness, as well as my inability to make the needed changes.” Marilyn Grodi discusses her journey home.
The founder of The Coming Home Network discusses his conversion from being a Presbyterian pastor.
Musical legend Dion DiMucci’s life radically changed when he turned down a fateful plane ride with Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly.
An excited Southern Baptist associate pastor, Gray Bean, eventually saw the logic of his Protestant doctrines falling one by one. Now he is a Catholic priest!
“The more we studied, the more the beauty, majesty, weight and history of the whole of the Christian world seemed to open up to us. We had not really left our core beliefs behind at all – indeed we love and greatly appreciate what we had been given in our Presbyterian communities – we had only fleshed them out in a real sense.”
Episcopal minister, Steven Anderson, shares his story of conversion along with the logical and biblical reasons why he became Catholic.
Former Methodist and Lutheran seminarian, Jim Anderson is an employee of the Coming Home Network. He made the journey home to the Catholic Church while attending Protestant seminary.
Stunned when a leader in his evangelical church announced that he was returning to the Catholic Church of his youth, Dow Escalante began to study Catholicism to see where his friend went wrong. Little did he know, that Church history and Scripture would bring him Home, too.
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