ABSTRACT
This chapter charts the transformation that has taken place in evangelical attitudes towards the Roman Catholic Church, from a relationship initially marked by competition and conflict, to one characterized by a growing sense of mutuality in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Using three chronological snapshots, early evangelicalism, the nineteenth century 'Protestant Crusades', and the era of the new evangelicalism, Vatican II and the culture wars, it traces the long-term developments in evangelical-Catholic relations. As a Christian movement which displays a strong kinship with the Reformation, in particular the authority of Scripture and salvation by faith through grace alone – alongside an emphasis on individualism and private judgment – evangelicalism has frequently regarded itself markedly at odds with Roman Catholicism. Evangelicals have sometimes admired the piety or missionary zeal of Catholicism, or the aesthetics and materialities of sacramental worship; or recognized common ground in supernaturalism, or on moral and ethical matters.
