"Why I Am Protestant," by Beth Felker Jones: A Review

Why I Am Protestant
By Beth Felker Jones
IVP Academic | 2025 | 146 pages (paperback) | $18.99

In a recent issue of First Things, theologian Brad East provocatively declared that confessional Protestantism was on its last statistical legs, writing that “the original Protestant vision, articulated and enacted by the first generations of Reformers, is on life support. It barely registers in surveys.” He invited readers to imagine a world in which any option that stands between the Catholic tradition and non-denominational evangelicalism has been wiped out. “Is such a world possible? It is. In fact, we are living in it right now. Ours is a world without Protestantism.”

Not all scholars are ready to call time of death on the experiment started by Luther, Calvin, and Cranmer. In an article for Mere Orthodoxy, Daniel K. Williams engaged with East’s article and countered that confessional Protestantism has never accounted for more than a small minority of the global Christian population, so “its small size today is less a sign of its decline than a confirmation of the limited reach it has always had.” Nevertheless, it is certainly true that the current vibe shift (to borrow a trendy phrase) seems to favor Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Pentecostalism—really, anything other than confessional Protestantism.

Into this interesting cultural moment steps theologian and author Beth Felker Jones with her short volume Why I Am Protestant, part of an ecumenical dialogue series from IVP Academic. The perceived unpopularity of Protestantism influenced Jones’ decision to pen this work. She explains, “I wanted to write this book for a long time: a book that rejoices in shared Christian faith across Christian traditions but is also very clear and unapologetic about Protestant conviction. This book stands up for Protestantism in a time where it is easily dismissed” (22).

Reading those words, you might be tempted to think this is a standard polemic in the long tradition of pro-Protestant, anti-Catholic literature, but that would be incorrect. Jones acknowledges that her book “doesn’t provide a comprehensive account of Protestantism” and “doesn’t claim to provide the right account of Protestant history or theology.” This is more of a personal meditation than a public apologetic. “It simply narrates my own way of sorting through some key theological matters of Protestant Christian faith and life” (3).

Her irenic tone is exactly what one would expect from an ecumenical dialogue project. Jones insists that, “The shared faith of Christians across traditions—including Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant—is far and away more significant than the matters separating those traditions” (6). Nevertheless, Jones sees important differences between the Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions. (She spends less time engaging with the Eastern Orthodox and other Christian groups, though they are certainly mentioned.) But in a move that separates this from many pro-Protestant treatises, Jones emphasizes differences of ecclesiology rather than soteriology.

“Roman Catholicism understands catholicity as resting in unity with Rome under the authority of the pope, as the bishop of Rome,” she explains. “A Protestant vision of catholicity locates the unity of the universal church in the church’s faithful reception of the gifts God intends for us as God’s people” (24). Crucially for Jones, this means the church is wider than even some Protestants tend to acknowledge, and regarding any faithful Christian as outside the church is a serious offense against the unity demanded by Christ.

“While other traditions locate the apostolic nature of the church in church leaders (e.g., apostolic succession, the pope), the Protestant church seeks apostolicity in faithfulness to Scripture” (32), she writes, stating that the Protestant principle of sola scriptura “recognizes that knowledge of God must come from Scripture and not from the church, and trusts that Scripture is the revelation needed by a corrupt and broken church” (42). Here we find another theme that runs throughout this book: the less hierarchical model of Protestant ecclesiology, according to Jones, is more honest about the true state of the church, which is broken and sinful.

Jones is not opposed to an institutional church, noting that “the visible unity of the church is vital to an ecclesiology that can sustain us in this broken world. The church can’t be what it’s supposed to be and do what it’s supposed to do unless it is recognizable in the world” (52). But her view of the church as an institution can be quite negative, for she often equates it with the sinful actions of its leaders. Jones attributes her belief in sola scriptura to a need to check the negative tendencies of a church that is tainted. “I see no way to claim the church as essential without at the same time being utterly wary of it. While this is too stark a way of putting the matter, if it comes down to a choice between trusting Scripture and trusting the church, I’m going to go with Scripture” (85).

No one would (or should) disagree that the church’s leaders have committed innumerable sins over the centuries, and in an age when church scandals are regularly exposed, it is no surprise that Jones’ desire to guard against abuse is a driving force behind her ecclesiology. However, I believe she is somewhat in error when she asserts, “While acknowledging God’s work outside Roman Catholicism, said Catholicism also teaches that the Roman Catholic Church is without sin. I find Roman Catholic belief in the sinlessness of the church untenable in the face of reality” (51).

In fact, while Catholics do confess papal infallibility in matters declared ex cathedra and acknowledge the binding nature of ecumenical councils, they do not claim that even the pope is free of sin, and their faith in the Catholic Church as an institution is not dependent on the complete purity of the bishops’ actions. They see a difference between the character of the Church and the character of the Church’s members.

This sets up an interesting dichotomy that was in my mind as I read Why I Am Protestant: the contrast between the church as an institution or as the totality of its members. The structure of the institutional church should be determined not simply by the failings of its leaders, but by its eschatological reality as the bride of Jesus Christ which dispenses the gracious gifts of God to the world.

Despite these quibbles, I agree with Jones that Protestant ecclesiology is more in line with Scripture than Roman Catholic ecclesiology. However, I am less certain of her repeated claim that all three main branches of Christianity—Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant—share the same gospel. While she acknowledges differences of emphasis, Jones writes that “in broad strokes, [the good news of the gospel] is shared across the three Christian traditions” (15).

I am not the type of Protestant who suggests no one outside my own tradition has understood the gospel or inherited eternal life, but I am surely not alone in wondering if we can really affirm that, “Protestants and Roman Catholics share the gospel” (70). I would argue it depends on whether we are talking about individual Roman Catholics or the institution of the Roman magisterium. I have known plenty of Catholics who understand the true gospel, but the Council of Trent declared Protestants anathema for their teachings about salvation by faith alone and the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. I therefore find it hard to say that I “share the same gospel” with an institution that has declared my views heretical.

The Protestant reformers likewise did not believe they shared the same gospel with the Roman magisterium, which they associated with the spirit of antichrist, but Jones insists the difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic understandings of the gospel is largely a matter of emphasis rather than substance.

“I would never claim that Protestants have sole access or even privileged access to the gospel of grace, but perhaps Protestants exist to highlight that grace, to remind ourselves and our fellow gospel Christians—in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox and all other Christian traditions—that we live by gift and die in gift and will rise again one day as gift of the graciousness of Christ our Lord.” (104)

It is certainly true that Roman Catholics believe in the necessity of grace for salvation. Those who follow closest in the footsteps of Augustine of Hippo may even agree with some of Martin Luther’s early evangelical formulations. But there can be no doubt that Protestants and Catholics disagree on the nature of justification and sanctification, the operation of grace, and the type of righteousness which avails before God. These differences were made quite clear in the declarations of the Council of Trent and have never been revoked. Nevertheless, I could be misunderstanding the way that Jones uses terms like ‘gospel’ and ‘grace.’

Jones writes that “there are important ways in which it is ecclesiology and not the doctrine of justification or the definition of the gospel that makes me Protestant.” This contrasts with how Martin Luther viewed his disagreement with Rome: his objections initially arose not due to some deficiency in the church’s hierarchy, but because that hierarchy was not being forthright about the gospel taught in Scripture. Only when his concerns were met with opposition by the pope did Luther’s faith in the church’s ecclesiology falter.

Still, this is Jones’ personal account, and what motivates her can be different from what motivated Luther. In line with her general concern throughout the book, she states that Protestant ecclesiology is “more adequate to naming the sin of the church than is Roman Catholic ecclesiology.” However, she also acknowledges that Protestant ecclesiology is “more adequate to the good of the gospel, in which grace overflows into works for the sake of the world God loves” (70).

Near the end of the book, Jones writes, “That I’m not Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox is not finally about some conviction that those traditions are fundamentally, propositionally wrong” (113). This is in the spirit of ecumenical dialogue, but it is less clear whether such statements are “very clear and unapologetic about Protestant conviction,” as she declared her wish to be at the outset (22). If Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are not “fundamentally, propositionally wrong,” and if they “share the gospel” with Protestants,” then was the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation worthwhile, or is there any reason to be defending Protestantism now?

I sympathize deeply with Jones when she says, “I must believe that the church, when viewed in the kingdom’s light, is not a playing field with sides, where some must lose for others to win” (115). She is correct that at the end of time, these differences will not matter. We will all be one as Christ intended, saved by the same precious blood, united in the same holy waters. When viewed in light of the kingdom of God, very little we do on this earth seems to matter—yet, people gave their lives for the sake of the church’s function here on earth, because they believed it was through the church that the word of God is proclaimed to humanity, and through its sacraments that the means of grace are delivered.

I appreciated Why I Am Protestant for presenting a different perspective on why Protestant theology is valuable. The concerns Jones raises are important and must be addressed, and as she notes, the purpose of this book is to testify to her own feelings and experiences. This is not the be-all, end-all justification of Protestant belief. Yet, for myself, I cannot help feeling that nothing less than a genuine offense against the gospel could justify dividing Christ’s visible church, and that in denying that sinners are credited with righteousness for Christ’s sake alone and by his work alone, our Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters have done just that.

Thank God, then, for the grace which justifies Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant alike, for Jones is correct that none of us are ultimately saved by the perfection of our doctrine, but our union with Jesus Christ by grace through faith.