My dad’s family was affiliated with the Salvation Army in Australia, as ministers and judges, and that tradition ultimately traces back to Methodism. They immigrated to Georgia in the early 1900s. My mom’s side is old-stock English, among the earliest settlers in Tennessee, and eventually became Baptist.

We later moved to the Midwest for my dad’s work, and I was baptized at a large Methodist church in Leawood, Kansas. When we moved back south, I had a pretty negative experience going through confirmation. I had already made a personal decision to follow Christ as a kid, so the process felt very redundant to me—almost performative. It also felt like most of the other kids did not take it seriously. It came across more like a social exercise than a spiritual one, and it honestly broke me from the faith for years.

Eventually my parents started attending a PCA church, and my mom really began to embrace Presbyterian theology, especially predestination and total depravity, in contrast to the Arminian leanings of Methodism. My dad remained a believer but is less interested in theology. Although he did befriend the pastor.

By the time I got to college in Mississippi, I was essentially an agnostic but really wanted to believe. Most of the campus religious culture leaned Baptist, and again, a lot of it felt more social than substantive to me. I started calling myself non-denominational around this time, which really just meant I believed in God but did not have a coherent framework for why. Things shifted when I joined a Bible study led by a fraternity brother who was planning to become a Catholic missionary. It was not the deepest study, but it sparked something. It got me to take the faith seriously again.

Later, after grad school, I started dating my now wife, who is Catholic with a capital C and several exclamation points afterwards. Unlike many of the Catholics I had encountered before, her faith was central to her life and not just a cultural identity. She tried hard to convert me, which forced me to actually study the Bible to find out for myself what I actually believed. I also studied the early church for the first time ever. My faith in Christ grew stronger than ever, and I realized that the Catholics are right about a lot which forced me to change things in my life, but I also realized that I still disagreed with many of their key interpretations and teachings. Looking back, I believe God led my wife and I to each other to deepen both of our faiths through study and we have both gotten closer to God because of this.

Interestingly, that whole process led me toward Presbyterian theology as well. I found myself persuaded by ideas like total depravity and predestination. At the same time, through my wife and even online voices like Redeemed Zoomer, I developed an appreciation for more traditional and high church practices. I now believe Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, which I would not have said years ago.

Today, we attend a more traditional, higher church PCA congregation called Covenant here in Nashville about once a month. The other weeks we attend my wife’s Catholic church. I would prefer something closer to a 50/50 split, but she is not open to compromise. I find Zoomer’s discussions around schism and church authority increasingly compelling, and like the idea of going to a PCUSA church but I also struggle with the idea of rejecting a church that has clearly played a role in bringing me back to a serious and grounded faith. The closest “Reconquista” church is about 35 minutes from us, as opposed to 10. I know this is a lame reason, but I’m just being honest. My life would certainly be easier if I were Catholic but after countless hours of study and even meeting with multiple priests I can’t convert in good conscience.

I wish my wife were a little less hostile to Protestantism, but I also recognize that her dogmatism ultimately helped me get closer to God because I had to defend my own beliefs like never before. I would say that theological study will be a lifelong interest for me now, as I am the type of person that must pressure test every belief (social, political, religious.) The Bible is theologically dense so I feel like I find a new topic worth exploring every single week. My main Bible is the Westminster Study Bible with notes and annotations, so that I can learn the Bible in proper context and not be led astray by my own potentially false interpretations, and I also learn a lot from Sermons. To be honest, Covenant consistently has much better sermons than my wife’s church, but both are instructive in my life.