---

The evangelical pope?
No one would mistake John Paul II for an evangelical Protestant. But he contributed to a dramatic warming of relations between evangelicals and Catholics that may mark a turning point not only in American politics but in the history of Christianity.

...''When John F. Kennedy made his famous speech that the Vatican would not tell him what to do,'' Bauer told USA Today, ''evangelicals and Southern Baptists breathed a sigh of relief. But today evangelicals and Southern Baptists are hoping that the Vatican will tell Catholic politicians what to do.''

The deep suspicion that in 1960 characterized evangelical attitudes toward Catholics - and Catholic attitudes toward evangelicals - has moderated considerably. What has changed? Why have the changes taken place? And how did Pope John Paul II contribute to those changes over the past quarter-century?

The most obvious indication of change is political. Catholics who attend church regularly and who embrace traditional moral stances on abortion, gay marriage, and other issues, voted almost as strongly for the Bush-Cheney ticket as churchgoing white evangelical Protestants who embraced the same traditional positions.

What Timothy George, founding dean of the Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala., once called an ''ecumenism of the trenches'' - that is, an ecumenism forged in political action - has forever altered evangelical-Catholic relations in the United States. Catholics and evangelicals who advocate conservative convictions on chastity, family, and community have found each other as co-belligerents, and this co-belligerency has eased much of the hostility that once separated the two movements. President Bush, himself a born-again Christian, has worked hard at nurturing cooperation with conservative Catholic leadership.

But politics is only part of the story....

...Multiple forces lie behind these developments, the most important being the ongoing effect of the Second Vatican Council, the great conclave of all Catholic bishops convened by Pope John XXIII shortly before his death in 1963. After the Council was over, the evangelical theologian David Wells, who now teaches at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, concluded that the Council's actions had ''rendered the vast majority of Protestant analysis of Catholic doctrine obsolete.'' Wells correctly predicted that the Council would push change among Catholics in many different directions, with some moving toward social radicalism and theological liberalism and some moving closer to evangelical theology and practices.

As a result of the Second Vatican Council, Catholics sought ecumenical dialogue with many other Christian bodies, including evangelicals. The Council's stress on encouraging the laity and on opening the Scriptures to the whole church also led to new points of contact with evangelicals. These developments are not leading to a formal union of churches. But they have led to much better communication and a general relaxation of mutual suspicion....