He and his family converted to the Catholic faith in 1995.

A Bob Jones University graduate and former evangelical Protestant, Dwight Longenecker grew up in the United States before moving to England to be ordained into the Anglican ministry. He currently lives in England and is the district organizer for the St. Barnabas Society — which helps Protestant ministers considering conversion to Catechism. He is the author of a book of British conversion stories called The Path to Rome, a commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict for parents, Listen My Son, and Challenging Catholics. He spoke with Register features correspondent Tim Drake about his recent book.

Tell me a bit about your background.

Our ancestry was Mennonite. The first American Longeneckers were a couple of Swiss brothers who came to Pennsylvania for religious freedom. My grandfather left the Mennonite church and we were brought up in an independent Bible church.

There were five of us kids. Dad owned a men's clothing store and was a deacon at the church. Like many Evangelicals we were in church twice on Sundays and on Wednesday nights for Prayer Meeting. Our home life was devout, prayerful and spiritual in a quiet way. I don't remember our family being particularly anti-Catholic, but if pushed we probably would have said that Catholics needed to “get saved.”

How does a Bob Jones graduate become a Catholic?

We went to Bob Jones because my Dad and Mother both attended. My grandfather was on the board of directors so it was sort of assumed that's where we would attend. If our own family faith in Pennsylvania was quiet and devout, Bob Jones was the noisiest sort of hellfire and brimstone Southern Protestant religion.

I remember it as an oppressive, angry and suspicious place. But in saying that, of course there were some good and kind Christian people there. While I was there I was introduced to the Anglican church through a kind and eccentric music professor. In the town of Greenville I also met a very holy Catholic woman who took an interest in my spiritual progress and me. My interest in the Anglican church was part of a deeper desire to be part of the ancient Church — the Church that stretched back to the Apostles. This is eventually what led me “home to Rome.”

What took you to England?

I had a serious case of that disease known as Anglophilia or the love of England. I had been reading C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, T.S. Eliot and the major English writers. I had visited England a couple of times and I fell in love with the English countryside as well as the reserved and wry English people.

After I left Bob Jones I knew I wanted to study theology and thought it would be great to do so in England. So I wrote to the evangelical Anglican theologian J.I. Packer and asked if he could recommend any seminaries. He recommended a couple and I applied. I was thrilled when I was accepted to study theology at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford. For a C.S. Lewis fan to be able to study at Oxford for three years was a dream come true.

Once I was there I met a Church of England bishop who sponsored me for ordination and so I was ordained and settled in England. I finally wound up as a country parson looking after two ancient churches on the Isle of Wight — a little island just off the south coast of England. While I was there I struggled with the call to become a Catholic and eventually made the step.

Your first book was about Catholic converts. In the United States there appears to be an increase among ordained clergy converting. Do you find the same to be true in England? Why do you think that is?

Here in Britain we are usually five or 10 years behind the trends in the U.S.A. We see signs of the same wave of evangelical converts, but at the moment it is just a trickle. I believe there are two reasons for this surge of baby boomer conversions.

The first is education. Generally speaking we belong to a generation who have been better educated than our parents and grandparents. It's difficult to hold on to the extreme forms of Protestant fundamentalism as you learn more about the Church, culture, history and theology. As a result many of us have migrated towards the mainstream Protestant churches with a liturgical tradition.

That brings me to the second reason. Once we get there we find these churches are too liberal and wishywashy. We are looking for what C.S. Lewis termed “mere Christianity” but we don't find it in the main-stream Protestant churches. We therefore start looking for the only historical, liturgical, apostolic Church which still teaches the old time religion and Christian morals — and that is the Catholic Church. I believe this trend is going to continue and grow, and that it is a real Spirit-led movement that fulfills both our ecumenical desires and our longing for the Catholic Church to be renewed from within.

Your most recent book consists of a dialogue between yourself and an evangelical Anglican. Where do the two have the most glaring differences?

Challenging Catholics is an unusual book. My co-author, John Martin, is an Anglican evangelical. As I came to England 20 years ago from an evangelical background in the U.S.A., John came to England about the same time from a very similar background in Australia.

As a result we both speak with the bluntness of colonial types, but we also speak with a British reserve and politeness that we've picked up from living here. I feel much of the apologetic work in the U.S.A. tends to be confrontational and aggressive. “Challenging Catholics” takes a different tone. Despite this, the sparks do fly between us. There are the most fireworks in our chapters on the papacy and the Virgin Mary.

And where do evangelical Protestants and Catholics agree?

I can't speak for all Catholics and evangelicals, but John and I agreed pretty much on the question of justification. We also agreed a lot on the relationship between Scripture and the Church and on the role of the saints. But John is an Anglican evangelical. He's already far more sympathetic to the Catholic Church than the more extreme varieties of evangelical.

In other areas there have been some real strides forward between evangelicals and Catholics. Father Richard Neuhaus and Chuck Colson have launched an initiative called “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” This group has issued a couple of documents outlining how evangelicals and Catholics can work together in the social arena and in mission. They also discuss the areas of agreement theologically. I think its true that there is more that unites us than divides. We need to focus on where we agree, and then continue to discuss where we disagree.

What do you have planned next?

I have two books coming out this year. “St. Benedict and St. Thérèse — The Little Rule and the Little Way” is launched this month. In autumn my book “More Christianity” will be published. This is a book that takes people one step further from “Mere Christianity” to the fullness of the Catholic faith.

I've just started another dialogue book. This one is being written with an old Bob Jones friend and is about the Virgin Mary. Imagine — two Bob Jones graduates writing a book about Our Lady!