The difference between the constitutive and corrective views underlies the pronounced disagreements among Lutheran theologians in America today. The evangelical catholic movement is clearly on the corrective side of the debate. The Reformers were not Protestants and did not, in any way, resemble modern Protestantism. Modern Protestantism is largely the outcome of the various reducing diets administered by four hundred years of scholasticism, pietism, rationalism, revivalism, romanticism, idealism, and historicism. Barth called modern Protestantism a heresy. It is not the legitimate heir of the Reformation. Ecclesiologically it has become the illegitimate offspring that, by almost every criterion of church doctrine and practice, exists in betrayal of the founding confessions and catechisms of the Reformation.

The term evangelical catholic is itself not new. I do not know with whom it originated. Söderblom used it when he recommended that the three main blocs of world Christianity be called Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, and Evangelical Catholic. The word catholic, he argued, should not be reserved for any one church. After all, the word appears for a reason in the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed that all orthodox Christians and churches confess. (Mother Church, pp 86-7)