RESURGENT CALVINISM IN THE USA

JOHN J MURRAY of Glasgow, Scotland Author of Catch the Vision: Roots of the Reformed Recovery reviews Young, Restless, Reformed by Collin Hansen.

(Reflections by John J Murray on Young, Restless, Reformed by Collin Hansen)

This book is about a recent resurgence of Calvinism in the USA, especially among young people.  The sub-title is ‘a Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists’. The author is editor-at-large for Christianity Today and he takes us on a journey  to the churches and conferences of the men who are spearheading the recovery of the doctrines of free and sovereign grace.

Preachers
It is appropriate that Hansen’s first visit was to John Piper at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, described in chapter 2.  ‘At sixty years old Piper is the chief spokesman for the Calvinist resurgence among young evangelicals’.  The greatest influence on Piper’s life and ministry came through reading  Jonathan Edwards. He wrote Desiring God  in which he forged his manifesto ‘God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him’.  In the year 2000 we are told that 40,000 students gathered at a venue near Memphis to listen to John Piper on the theme ‘Don’t Waste Your Life’.

‘Ground Zero’ is the heading of  chapter 4, devoted to Al Mohler and the transformation brought about in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. No less than 96 per cent of the Seminary’s faculty left when Al Mohler took over and solidified his authority with the trustees’ backing not only against a hostile faculty but an embittered city. He reinforced Southern’s Abstract of Principles derived from the Second London Confession of Faith  Mohler saw that the Seminary had a heritage to be reclaimed: ‘I felt a deep personal commitment to that heritage’ Mohler’s fidelity to the Abstract of Principles has steered the Seminary back toward Calvinism. Less than fifteen years later, Mohler has attracted one of the strongest evangelical faculties in the country. Though it is only one of six denominational seminaries, one in four Southern Baptist Convention seminaries attends Southern. This amounts to 4,300 students.  Many of the graduates will take Calvinism to pulpits throughout the SBC.

Next stop was Covenant Life Church, Gaithersburg, Maryland  and an interview with C J Mahaney, described in chapter 5.  He founded this sprawling suburban church in 1977 and pastored it until 2004. It is a  charismatic congregation of 3,800 members. Mahaney was converted when he was a hippie in Arminian charismatic circles. On conversion he had an immediate desire to read good books and soon came to the doctrines of grace. He is a preacher who tells everyone to read more books by dead people – especially John Owen on sin. Two years ago Mahaney handed leadership of the main Covenant Life Church to Joshua Harris, aged 33. Mahaney is now President of Sovereign Grace Ministries, a family of seventy-five churches in the United States with 8 more dotted around the world.

Hansen’s  final call on a church  took him to the north west corner of America – to Seattle, Washington State. In chapter 7 Hansen meets 38 year old Mark  Driscoll who ministers in  Mars Hill Church. The church began in 1996 and is now attended by 6,000 people. This is impressive since only ten per cent of people in Seattle are regular church-goers. Mars Hill is mother church to about a hundred churches described as  ‘Acts 29 churches’. Driscoll claims to be theologically conservative and culturally liberal. He is unflinching on the issues of homosexuality, inerrancy of Scripture, the eternal punishment of the wicked and penal substitution.

Conferences
Mixed in to the narrative is Hansen’s account of various Conferences that promote sovereign grace doctrine. The first one he attended, as described in chapter 1, was the 2007 Passion Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. As twenty three thousand college students gathered for registration,  the first one he interviews declared:  ‘I’m a John Piper  fiend’. Piper is a regular speaker at Passion. As noted already his book Don’t Waste Your Life emerged from a talk he delivered in front of about forty thousand students for the Passion OneDay event in 2000. Passion was founded by Louie Giglio in 1997. ‘Piper doesn’t know what Passion founder Louie Giglio believes about Reformed theology. But he does know that Giglio adores the glory of God and desires to spread God’s renown around the world’. The Passion website reveals that Passion had its first World Tour in 2008.

After Joshua Harris, aged 33,  of Covenant Life Church attended Passion in 1999, he sought Giglio’s help to plan a similar event and the outcome was the New Attitude Conference, discussed in chapter 6. The Conference in Louisville attracted ‘three thousand twenty-somethings’  Here Hansen encountered Reformed rap – a small group of  hip-hop artists  who employ Calvinist theology in their lyrics. At the centre of this group is Curtis Allen, an ex-convict who attended Covenant Life and accepted Reformed theology through reading Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology. Curtis came to prominence when John Piper invited him to perform at Bethlehem Baptist Church. When a video of the event later hit the web ‘ a blog firestorm erupted’.

Hansen maintains that if the Calvinist resurgence endures future observers might look back and see a critical event in April 2006 – the inaugural Together for the Gospel conference. Mark Dever, C J Mahaney,  Ligon Duncan and Al Mohler invited three of their heroes – John Piper, John MacArthur and R C Sproul – to join them in addressing a crowd of about three thousand pastors in Louisville, Kentucky. ‘The pyramid of influence illustrated the general resurgence of Calvinism. Long-serving pastors Piper, Sproul and MacArthur inspired the generation that includes Dever, Mohler, Mahaney and Duncan, who has joined them in turning thousands of young evangelicals toward Calvinism’.

Universities, books, websites
Hansen’s journey took him to New Haven in Connecticut, described in ‘Big Man on Campus’ (Chapter 4). There he visited Yale University where he examined a rare collection of Jonathan Edward’s notes and manuscripts. Opportunity is taken to expound the impact of the life and writings of Edwards, especially in the present resurgence. In New Haven he met Josh Moody who is pastor of Trinity Baptist Church with 300 members. In 1999 there were fewer than thirty members.  While at Yale, Hansen probed into the extent of the ministry of Reformed University Fellowship (RUF),  the College ministry of the Presbyterian Church in America. RUF has increased from thirty-five campuses in 1998 to more than one hundred today. Its strength is one reason the PCA continues to grow.

The influence of the reprinting of Reformed classics over the last 50 years is incalculable. These books have moulded a generation of preachers whose own writings are now spreading over an even wider field. The books of R C Sproul, John MacArthur and John Piper have sold in their thousands. Desiring God sold more that 275,00 copies while Don’t Waste Your Life reached over 250,000 copies. A factor that has a marked an even greater increase in the spread of Reformed teaching is the internet. The Conferences mentioned above have connected many like-minded young evangelicals but now the connections have increased. Words from Justin Buzzard confirm this: ‘Blogs have created theological community across geographic distance. They have taken isolated movements and made for a collective resurgence’.

Collin Hansen writes:  ‘Before the Web, you might learn about Reformed theology if that’s what your pastor preached, if you found a Banner of Truth book in the local Christian store, or if a friend handed you a Charles Spurgeon sermon. Now you can go online and find endless resources new and old from history’s leading Calvinists. “The Internet has done for for Reformed theology what MTV did for hip-hop culture’, said Matt Hall who started blogging in 2003.’ One of the leading Reformed bloggers is Tim Challies. He estimates that his site attracts between one hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand  visitors per month.

An Assessment

1 A cause for thanksgiving. For any  who have been involved even in a small way in the Reformed recovery of the last fifty years this account gives cause for rejoicing. Things have been happening in church circles across America. Pastors have been coming to Calvinistic understanding of Scripture and then discovering brethren of a like mind in other places. Says John Piper ‘What makes it like a divine work is how independent these outcroppings are’. The development is not unlike what happened in the United Kingdom in the 1950s.  There are, however, things to be cautious about.. Much of the story is centred upon charismatic figures. There is a tendency to hero worship, like ‘I’m a John Piper fiend’. It is not that the men themselves encourage it but they are given a kind of cult status. One senses a kind of Reformed ‘elitism’ among some of the younger leaders. They write glowing recommendations of one another’s books and appear on popular websites with their  own cryptic humour.

2 The common factor. The common factor in this whole movement is the positive transforming impact of a Calvinistic understanding of salvation. This involves a grasping of the glory and majesty of God, the seriousness of sin, the helplessness of man and the sovereign grace of God. This is the common bond between these Calvinists. Hansen interviews a wide selection of young people who testify to  their encounter with the free grace doctrines, some by a direct studying of Scripture. This is refreshing.

3 Clarifying terminology. There is a great need to clarify terminology. Collin Hansen makes it  clear that he grasps and holds personally to the five points of Calvinism, known by the acrostic TULIP. But there are indicators throughout the book  that  there is more to Calvinism than TULIP and that there is more to the Reformed Faith than free grace doctrine. The term ‘Reformed Faith’  is used in more than one sense. In its main historic sense it is that body of truth emanating from the Genevan Reformation and crystallized in the great Confessions of the 17th century. It is also used by  Dutch Churches to include the Kuyperian world and life view. A third use is the broader sense of an uncompromising emphasis on God’s sovereign grace in salvation. Only in the third sense can the word  ‘Reformed’ be used for Baptists and charismatics. The  Calvinistic resurgence described in this book is mainly among such people. Michael Horton is right when he claims: ‘The momentum has shifted to evangelicals who affirm Calvinist soteriology but not necessarily the broader Reformed tradition of covenant theology, including infant baptism’

4  Debt to forerunners  Hansen rightly acknowledges the debt owed to R C Sproul who founded Ligonier Ministries more than thirty-five years ago and through Soli Deo Gloria Publications promoted the reprinting of Puritan classics. ‘It would be hard to imagine the response seen today by Piper and other high-profile Reformed teachers apart from the foundation laid over decades by Sproul’. Also the ministries of John MacArthur represent a large proportion of the Calvinistic resurgence. (MacArthur refused an interview for the book). However, there needs to be acknowledgment made of men who stood for the Reformed, and more particularly the Puritan teachings, in the 1950s and 1960s when at conferences devoted to the Puritans, as Packer recalls, ‘if we had a hundred we were lucky’. (p55).  While men like A W Pink, Jay Green and Ernie Reisinger were opening treasures of the past,  we must also not fail to appreciate  the legacy left to us by the Hodges, Warfield, Machen, Murray, Berkhof, van Til etc, the mainline Reformed and Presbyterian Churches and some outstanding Seminaries (see for example Reformed Theology in America, edited by David Wells, 1997).

5 Getting the balance right. Much is said in the book about  experiencing the thrill of discovering the doctrines of grace. John Piper said of the young students: ‘They’re not going to embrace your theology unless it makes their hearts sing’. One chapter is headed  ‘Drug Induced Calvinism’. When we are told by Hansen that a  study of  teenagers’ religious attitudes by two sociologists showed that  ‘few teenagers can articulate even the basics about their religious beliefs’ and that ’64 percent of conservative Protestants responded that believers need not be involved in a religious congregation in order to be truly religious or spiritual’, we see the scale of the challenge. On more than one occasion in the book there is a mild swipe at Grand Rapids (long recognized as the Calvinistic centre of the western world). Yet the Grand Rapids that now is,  and particularly the notes struck in the writings of Dr Joel Beeke and in the output of Reformation Heritage Books (recently incorporating Soli Deo Gloria Publications) can do much to help Hansen’s young Calvinists. The spiritual Puritan Reformed tradition with its emphasis on sound Scriptural knowledge, Christian nurture, heartfelt piety, godly living and family religion has much to offer.  As Don Carson has wisely said ‘This is not the time for Reformed triumphalism. It is time for quiet gratitude to God and earnest intercessory prayer, with tears, that what has begun will flourish beyond all human expectation.’