Evangelical Is Not Enough

By: Thomas Howard

Narrated by: Bernard M. Collins

In this deeply moving narrative, Thomas Howard describes his pilgrimage from Evangelicalism (which he loves and reveres as the religion of his youth) to liturgical Christianity. He soon afterward became a Roman Catholic. He describes Evangelicalism with great sympathy and then examines more formal, liturgical worship with the freshness of someone discovering for the first time what his soul had always hungered for.

This is a book of apologetics without polemics. Non-Catholics will gain an appreciation of the formal and liturgical side of Catholicism. Catholics will see with fresh eyes the beauty of their tradition. Worship, prayer, the Blessed Virgin, the Mass, and the liturgical year are taken one after the other, and what may have seemed routine and repetitive suddenly comes to life under the enchanting wand of Howard's beautiful prose.

Howard unfolds for us just what occurs in the vision and imagination of a Christian who, nurtured in the earnestness of Protestant Evangelicalism, finds himself yearning for "whatever it is" that has been there in the church for 2,000 years. It traces Howard's soul searching and shows why he believes the practices of the liturgical church are an invaluable aid for any Christian's spiritual life. Reminiscent of the style and scope of Newman, Lewis, and Knox, this book is destined to be a classic.

©2011 Thomas Howard (P)2019 Ignatius Press

The book is great. The narrator is not.

The book itself is great. I definitely recommend you listen (or maybe just read it in paper). The author gives a great explanation of his upbringing as an evangelical and appropriately Protestant evangelicals for their faithfulness to the simple message of Jesus Christ, to evangelism, and for their knowledge of Scripture and commitment to its simple authority. He then proceeds to explain, defend, and uphold the positions of the apostolic church historic and her strengths and faithfulness to word and sacrament over against evangelicalism.

What severely detracts from this production is the reader’s emaciated knowledge of what he is actually saying, which is mostly betrayed in his inability to pronounce some of the most well known words in our English language, not even to mention the names of well known religious leaders that he butchers. It became distracting when within the first 20 minutes the reader could not pronounce oblique, piety, Jan Hus, or Billy Graham. I began to realize that he has a very unique midwestern or northern accent, which attributes to the lack of clarity. If you listen on 1.5x speed it’s much more bearable.

Other than that, the book is helpful, insightful, and is a great resource to anyone navigating the historic streams of the Christian church and delving into sacramental theology.

Good read, tiresome to listen too

I usually enjoy listening to audio books, but the narrator is PAINFULLY slow and has awkward pauses in the sentence that feel awkward. I found speeding it up to 1.25x made it sound most natural. I would recommend just reading the book.