The past 20 years or so have seen an explosion of conversions from Protestantism to Catholicism. During that time, a certain common narrative seems to be associated with these conversions (including my own ^[1]):

• Protestant is a devout Christian who knows his faith and initially has no interest in the Catholic Church.
• Some issue or event spurs the Protestant to investigate the claims of the Catholic Church.
• This leads to more and more study of the Church’s teachings, in spite of internal and external resistance to the idea.
• Through a long study of the Scriptures and early Church, Protestant begins to realize that Catholic Church is “The Church.”
• Finally, after much prayer, Protestant decides to become Catholic.

On the other hand, there has also been an even greater exodus out of the Catholic Church over the past 40 years. Some of that is people leaving Christianity altogether, but much of it is Catholics becoming Evangelical. The narrative for that type of conversion is usually along the lines of:

• Catholic grows up with little training in the Catholic faith.
• Catholic barely, if at all, practices his faith as he gets older.
• At some point, Catholic realizes that there is more to religion than felt banners and banal homilies.
• Catholic is invited to an Evangelical Protestant service and meets devout, good people who are on fire for the Lord.
• Catholic decides to become Evangelical.

Yes, I realize that there are generalizations in these narratives, but I think most of us recognize that in many cases they broadly represent reality. Norm Geisler, a prominent Evangelical, sums it up like this:

So, while we are losing a few intellectual egg-heads out the top of evangelicalism to Rome, we are gaining tens of thousands of converts out the bottom from Catholicism. The trade-off highly favors evangelicalism.

Source: Dr. Beckwith ^[2]

Even aside from the derogatory “egg-head” comment, this is an interesting analysis from Mr. Geisler. He basically admits that converts to Catholicism are intellectual, thus acknowledging that they have studied their faith, while converts to Evangelicalism are basically “falling out” of the Catholic Church without any real knowledge of Catholicism (or Protestantism) before their conversion. Even though the raw numbers today favor Evangelicalism, is this movement really to the benefit of the Evangelical’s cause?

It seems to me that, long-term, I would prefer to have converts who deeply know (and love) both their previous faith and their new one. Converts who must agonize over their conversion, studying every angle of it, are usually those who most seriously embrace it after it is done. Those who convert for basically emotional reasons (I saw on-fire people and want that for myself) are much more likely to eventually drift away. But the “egg-head” convert, with the grace of God, is going to be much more likely to spread his new-found faith to others, understanding both what is good about their previous faith and why he left it.

All in all, I’ll take the egg-heads. Sunny side up (perhaps that should be “Son-ny side up”?), not scrambled.