When Anika Smith moved to Washington, D.C., more than a decade ago, her first order of business was to find a church. She didn’t have a car, so she used the metro. Even with transportation challenges, she managed to visit about three services each weekend. Her fourth Sunday, on a recommendation from a co-worker, she went to Church of the Advent, an Anglican congregation. Smith grew up Presbyterian in the Pacific Northwest, and Anglicanism was new to her.

“There were a lot of words, a lot of standing up and sitting down, and so many prayers,” she recalled with a laugh. But she knew almost instantly she had found her new church home. “Some of the first songs I heard were hymns I had sung back home,” she said. And the preaching was “gospel centered and Holy Spirit centered.”

Smith moved to Washington for a job in the conservative movement. That same month she was invited to a big party at the home of a Catholic friend. “It was really fun and sweet,” she said. But Smith noticed that, as a Protestant, she was in the minority. That was her first taste of the city’s vibrant Catholic social scene. Several years later, she enrolled in law school at the Catholic University of America. She continued attending Church of the Advent but also went to Mass. “I would just duck into daily Mass because I loved it,” she said.

When young Protestants move to Washington, it’s usually not long before they start meeting smart, influential conservatives who believe Rome is the one true church. Like many of her peers, Smith began to ask herself: Should I swim the Tiber?

Roman Catholics exiting their church are disproportionately driving declining rates of Christianity in America. And far more Catholics convert to Protestant denominations than vice versa. But you wouldn’t know it if you looked only at places like Washington and some influential university campuses. A small but vocal group of Protestants is converting to Catholicism—and in even smaller numbers to Eastern Orthodoxy. They tend to be ambitious, highly educated, and well connected. Catholics now provide much of the conservative movement’s intellectual horsepower—and they are picking up Protestant converts along the way. Read more»

Emma Freire | “The Lure of Rome: Why Are So Many Young Protestants in America’s Power Centers Converting to Catholicism” | February 1, 2026

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