The question we Evangelical Christians most often hear is for sure: "What are the differences between you and the Catholic Church?". With this short article (adapted from one of our flyers) we try to answer this question giving little hints to different topics so that those who are really interested can go and verify our statements in the Word of God, to judge themselves where the truth lies.

Evangelical Christians means followers of Christ, as the Gospel presents Him to us.

The Bible: the foundation of our faith

The foundation of all our faith is in the Bible, which we explain in our churches, read and meditate in our homes and respect as the only religious authority and as the norm of our life. The Bible, the Word of God, contains the doctrines God taught us so that we can obtain eternal salvation.
The Bible is a rescue that God has given to men to let them know the eternal truth, through his revelations that culminate in the life and teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ. These teachings are found in the New Testament.
It has been observed by the enemies of Evangelical Christianity that the Bible is an illusory rule of faith, because it is left to free examination, that is to say to individual interpretation. Everyone can find in it what they want to find. It is said, therefore, that among the Protestants there are infinite sects and that almost each individual has a doctrine of his own, different from that of the others.
We answer: the free examination of the Evangelical Christians is capricious. The Bible, the Word of God, is clear to us. God gave us his Word to teach us, to make us understand his will, and He did not give it only to theologians and scholars, but to all men. So everyone has the right to read and examine it, in order to obey it, since God inspired it exactly so that man could do that.
Therefore the idea that only one church or one man can interpret the Bible is in open contrast with the Bible itself.

Our (universal) doctrine

This is why the doctrine of us Evangelical Christians is universal: it is not the doctrine of Luther or Calvin or any other reformer (though these are great and illustrious men of God); the Bible doctine is the evangelical one, the doctrine revealed to us by God himself and his Son and divine Word, Jesus Christ.
It may well be said that we Evangelical Christians are truly catholics, in the etymological and authentic sense of the word, since our faith is universal: it is the whole truth of which Christ is the source and not the doctrine of a particular church.

Baptism

It is the voluntary act of the adult person who recognizes in Jesus Christ the only Savior. It is imparted by immersion in water and does not require godparents. Baptism and the Holy Supper are the only two existing sacraments established by Jesus.

Salvation by faith alone

We Evangelical Christians believe that man cannot deserve eternal salvation with his works or buy it with money, with masses, indulgences or dispensations. From the Bible it is clear that faith and salvation are gifts of God, and one cannot be saved by works (although they are a necessary consequence of faith), as the apostle Paul says in the epistle to the Ephesians.
This is why we evangelicals see religion essentially as a completely intimate and spiritual (non-ceremonial) relationship between man and God. We become Christians after the conversion of the heart.

Jesus Christ the only mediator

Jesus Christ is the only mediator between men and God. He himself has repeatedly declared that there are no other means to come to the Father and the apostle Paul states it equally clearly in the first epistle to Timothy.
For this reason we Evangelical Christians, while honoring the memory of Mary, mother of Jesus, and of all the other great men who have distinguished themselves for their holiness of life, doctrine, charity and intelligence, we worship and adore only God.

The unique and eternal sacrifice of Christ

Jesus Christ offered himself for our sins once and for all, and that sacrifice was complete and perfect. It must not therefore be believed that it can be renewed when one wants by means of the mass or any other ritual.

One confessor: God

We also reject any worship of images, relics, crosses or any other inanimate object because it is explicitly condemned by the Bible; neither we practice auricular confession.

Our head

We recognize supreme religious authority only in Christ and in his teaching. In no passage of the Bible Christ established or left a successor or vicar, rather the opposite is written.

Simple and spontaneous prayer

According to the Bible, prayer is a joy, a spontaneous cry of the soul to God, a need of our spirit to draw closer to the Creator. We therefore reject the idea that prayer can be a penitence or a mechanical repetition of words, as happens in the rosary, as is also forbidden by Jesus Christ, according to what the evangelist Matthew reports in his Gospel.

Purgatory: a human invention

Purgatory is in contradiction with the teaching of the Bible, which teaches that those who die in the Lord are undoubtedly blessed, without having to pay their sins further in the afterlife.

We Evangelical Christians with our religious propaganda have no sectarian goals

We do not invite anyone to publicly repudiate a religion, but invite people to return to the true faith, to what was preached by the apostles and taught by Jesus Christ himself
This faith has been adulterated and corrupted in a thousand ways over the centuries, with superstitious additions and arbitrary changes. When God, according to his eternal designs, believed that the time had come to put a barrier to so much scandal, he raised up new apostles, men who were distinguished by pity, intellect and doctrine, who undertook by divine vocation to lead peoples back to the right way of primitive Christianity.
We believe in the manifestation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.