Back in my old Southern Baptist days, I was never really one to have "heroes" or "influences". Not really. I mean, we've all seen people on Facebook share links to this blog or that podcast or some news article by a layman of note. It just wasn't my thing. My attitude was that I could read the Bible just fine for myself, thankyouverymuch. It didn't feel like I needed someone else to write devotionals or other BS.
I was and remain fascinated by the tendency, don't get me wrong. Donald Miller, Rob Bell, Rachel Held Evans and the like. Especially the emerging Christian Left. It's just something I didn't relate to on a personal level back then.
Since becoming Anglican, though, that changed. I picked out a couple of people that I thought had interesting insights. Not many and the process taught me just how fragmented and divided Anglicanism in general is. The problem with having such a big tent approach is that it eliminates any possibility of real unity. That was bothersome at the time but, oddly enough, it wasn't fatal to my budding Anglo-Catholicism.
That tendency, by comparison, has gone into overdrive though since becoming Catholic. Quite a few writers and bloggers are in my bookmarks and I check regularly for new updates and the like.
Jennifer Fulwiler is different for me though inasmuch as she comes at life from the same place I do. First, obviously she's a convert. So right there she and I have a lot in common. But second, she comes at pretty much everything from a very rational, very intellectual reference point.
And that, I think, is one reason why her blog is so fascinating to me. She touches on the regular life stuff we all put up with. But she also writes quite a bit about matters related to Catholicism. And generally she has this incredibly raw insight into the faith that eludes a lot of her peers. And it's all predicated on an intellectual conversion to the faith similar to my own.
I didn't convert to Catholicism because of some touchy-feely, warm fuzzy spiritual experience. I did it because I pride myself on being an intellectually honest person and the Catholic Church has the most intellectually honest argument for being THE Church.
That same type of intellectual conviction underlies Jennifer Fulwiler's journey to and ongoing practice of the faith.
Anyway, she's awesome. That's the point.
Afterthoughts
My list of must-read blogs would probably include Elizabeth Scalia, except those Patheos blogs all have aggravating video ads that play stupid commercials and crash my browser. Elizabeth's got a lot of cool things to say, don't get me wrong. NOBODY says the stuff she's saying. I just simply refuse to play ball with the Patheos policy of overloading their viewers with aggravating commercials.
Yes, I realize that hosting a blog network like theirs requires a very high bill to be paid every month. But, simply put, nothing is worth the amount of frustration that I have to put up with to read any Patheos blog. So I don't bother.
Why am I suddenly influenced by other Catholics when no other evangelicals and only certain Anglicans ever captivated my interest? I think the answer to that is how the Church stresses unity and acceptance. My conversion to Catholicism was started on an intellectual basis. But other people have different perspectives. Some were cradle Catholics and don't know anything else. Some are the more fuzzy-wuzzy experrrrrrrrrience stuff that I've never placed much value on. So on and so forth.
And the reality is that they're all just as Catholic as I am. Their particulars and their backstories may be different... but in the case of Catholicism, those differences are ultimately a good thing. The Church is big enough to accommodate everybody without compromising itself. They're not all the same as me. But we all members of the same Church, we're given the same sacraments and we obey the same Pope.
THAT is unity with diversity. And it is a beautiful miracle.
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