Time Magazine: 10 Ideas Changing The World Right Now

[darinhouston]

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packa ... 60,00.html

Thursday, Mar. 12, 2009
3. The New Calvinism
By David Van Biema
If you really want to follow the development of conservative Christianity, track its musical hits. In the early 1900s you might have heard "The Old Rugged Cross," a celebration of the atonement. By the 1980s you could have shared the Jesus-is-my-buddy intimacy of "Shine, Jesus, Shine." And today, more and more top songs feature a God who is very big, while we are...well, hark the David Crowder Band: "I am full of earth/ You are heaven's worth/ I am stained with dirt/ Prone to depravity."

Calvinism is back, and not just musically. John Calvin's 16th century reply to medieval Catholicism's buy-your-way-out-of-purgatory excesses is Evangelicalism's latest success story, complete with an utterly sovereign and micromanaging deity, sinful and puny humanity, and the combination's logical consequence, predestination: the belief that before time's dawn, God decided whom he would save (or not), unaffected by any subsequent human action or decision.

Calvinism, cousin to the Reformation's other pillar, Lutheranism, is a bit less dour than its critics claim: it offers a rock-steady deity who orchestrates absolutely everything, including illness (or home foreclosure!), by a logic we may not understand but don't have to second-guess. Our satisfaction — and our purpose — is fulfilled simply by "glorifying" him. In the 1700s, Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards invested Calvinism with a rapturous near mysticism. Yet it was soon overtaken in the U.S. by movements like Methodism that were more impressed with human will. Calvinist-descended liberal bodies like the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) discovered other emphases, while Evangelicalism's loss of appetite for rigid doctrine — and the triumph of that friendly, fuzzy Jesus — seemed to relegate hard-core Reformed preaching (Reformed operates as a loose synonym for Calvinist) to a few crotchety Southern churches.

No more. Neo-Calvinist ministers and authors don't operate quite on a Rick Warren scale. But, notes Ted Olsen, a managing editor at Christianity Today, "everyone knows where the energy and the passion are in the Evangelical world" — with the pioneering new-Calvinist John Piper of Minneapolis, Seattle's pugnacious Mark Driscoll and Albert Mohler, head of the Southern Seminary of the huge Southern Baptist Convention. The Calvinist-flavored ESV Study Bible sold out its first printing, and Reformed blogs like Between Two Worlds are among cyber-Christendom's hottest links.

Like the Calvinists, more moderate Evangelicals are exploring cures for the movement's doctrinal drift, but can't offer the same blanket assurance. "A lot of young people grew up in a culture of brokenness, divorce, drugs or sexual temptation," says Collin Hansen, author of Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists. "They have plenty of friends: what they need is a God." Mohler says, "The moment someone begins to define God's [being or actions] biblically, that person is drawn to conclusions that are traditionally classified as Calvinist." Of course, that presumption of inevitability has drawn accusations of arrogance and divisiveness since Calvin's time. Indeed, some of today's enthusiasts imply that non-Calvinists may actually not be Christians. Skirmishes among the Southern Baptists (who have a competing non-Calvinist camp) and online "flame wars" bode badly.

Calvin's 500th birthday will be this July. It will be interesting to see whether Calvin's latest legacy will be classic Protestant backbiting or whether, during these hard times, more Christians searching for security will submit their wills to the austerely demanding God of their country's infancy.

[mattrose]

I hear about the re-emergence of Calvinism an awful lot, but I never actually see it in real life to be honest.

I hardly ever meet people these days who are hard-core calvinists. Maybe it is just geographical, but in my area calvinism must be at death's door. Even people in churches with Calvinist titles don't actually believe in hard-core calvinism.

[darinhouston]

That link was posted on a friends' facebook page -- here's my comment in response...

Of course, it was an exchange of error for error in my opinion -- and I actually prefer the moniker "Reformistas" for today's Van Dyke wearin', fight club lovin' neo-Calvinists. I think Wesley would take particular exception to the comment that it was his "preference for free will" that led him to Methodism -- I suspect he would consider it a respect for biblical truth. (don't flame me).

And, Now, truly -- what Calvinist in his right mind would object to these lyrics? Not the sound of fuzzy peace-lovin' 70's buddy Jesus of the caricature of non-Calvinists, is it?

Shine Jesus shine
Fill this land with the Fathers glory
Blaze, spirit blaze,
Set our hearts on fire
Flow, river flow
Flood the nations with grace and mercy
Send forth your word
Lord and let there be light.

Lord I come to your awesome presence,
From the shadows into your radiance,
By the blood I may enter your brightness,
Search me, try me, consume all my darkness,
Shine on me. shine on me.

[darinhouston]

I hear about the re-emergence of Calvinism an awful lot, but I never actually see it in real life to be honest.

I hardly ever meet people these days who are hard-core calvinists. Maybe it is just geographical, but in my area calvinism must be at death's door. Even people in churches with Calvinist titles don't actually believe in hard-core calvinism.

I think it's largely urban (which ought to tell them something).

[grunk]

new to the forum; attending a Calvinist suburban church, reading Jerry Bridges trusting God and packer's knowing God.. questioning my United methodist, campus crusade background in favor of a big God who does "our God is in heaven he does whatever he ... psalm 115:3 and "... no purspose of His can be withheld from him.." job 42:2 Huge demand for a big God and little man. Makes more sense.

[darinhouston]

new to the forum; attending a Calvinist suburban church, reading Jerry Bridges trusting God and packer's knowing God.. questioning my United methodist, campus crusade background in favor of a big God who does "our God is in heaven he does whatever he ... psalm 115:3 and "... no purspose of His can be withheld from him.." job 42:2 Huge demand for a big God and little man. Makes more sense.

urban -- suburban -- same thing, really, in this regard.

I'm curious -- "makes more sense" than what, exactly? Did you have a veiw as United Methodist that God was little and man was big?