In Defense of the Creed
No doubt every writer has projects he begins—or thinks to begin—and then, for one reason or another, puts aside, only to return to them later. This essay is one such project of mine. I grew up a child of the Radical Reformation, a member of a church where the people refused to accept the label “Protestant,” calling themselves “Christians only.” I knew much of my Bible, but little of what others who called themselves Christians believed. This was especially true of any church that embraced the name “Catholic.” Of those churches in particular, I knew very little, other than the fact that they were wrong. When, in due time, my ignorance gave way to acquaintance, one of the things that most impressed me about Catholic Christianity was how the entire congregation recited the Nicene Creed at every mass, every liturgy. A few years later, when, in one of life’s many ironies, my reading of such Old Western Men as C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton had led m