New Calvinism: Its Pitfalls

Most people consider Mark Driscoll the MMA fighter of the Christian world. But in truth, he is Kimbo Slice compared to Carl Trueman. Armed only with a pen, Trueman consistently obliterates those in his path (with decidedly British flair). His corrective prose is always worth reading and usually is spot on.

Such is especially the case with his newest article, "The Nameless One," as he reflects on the pitfalls of the new resurgence of Calvinism, or the "Young, Restless and Reformed," as he refers to them (YYR). If you're interested in some inside-baseball, read away. Personally, his cautions cut out my heart several times as I am a guy who consistently desires fame (that will never come) more than faithfulness.

Here are a few blurbs that burned my fingers as I read:

One striking and worrying aspect of the movement is how personality oriented it is. It is identified with certain big names, rather than creeds, confessions, denominations, or even local congregations. Such has always been the way with Christianity to some extent. Luther was a hero, both in his own time and for subsequent generations, and he is hardly alone. The names of Owen, Edwards, and Spurgeon, to list but three, also have great cachet; and, if we are honest, there are things which we all find in their writing which are scarcely unique to them but which we are inclined to take more seriously because it is these men who wrote the words on the page....

The significance of the leaders of the YRR movement, however, seems less like that of ages past and at times more akin to the broader cultural phenomenon of the modern cult of celebrity, a kind of sanctified Christian equivalent of the secular values that surround us. The world has Brad, Anjelina, Tom, Barack, and so on; the Christian world has - well, I am sure the reader is quite capable of filling in the blanks. All too often we're a bit too much like the church in Corinth, with its Christian competitive equivalents to pagan Sophists.

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The supply side economics of the YRR movement is also worrying here, as it can easily foster such idolatry by building up a leader's importance out of all proportion to his talent. Let's face it: no preacher is so good that his every sermon deserves to be printed or his every thought published; but some contemporary leaders are heading fast in that direction, and this can only fuel their cultic significance for those needing someone to follow. Come on, chaps, everyone preaches a disastrous clunker once in a while; and many actually preach them with remarkable and impressive regularity. The world therefore does not need to read every word you ever utter from a pulpit; and not every electrical impulse which sparks between the synapses in your grey matter needs to be written down, turned into yet another expository commentary, and sold for 15% net royalties at the local Christian bookshop.

If leader-as-celebrity-and-oracular-source-of-all-knowledge is one potential problem in the YRR culture, then another concern is the apparent non-exportability of the models of church on offer. Everyone knows the amazing works that have been done through the ministries of men like Tim Keller in Manhattan and Mark Driscoll in Seattle; but the track record of exporting the Redeemer or Mars Hill models elsewhere is patchy at best, raising the obvious question of whether these phenomena are the result less of their general validity and more of the singular talents of the remarkable individuals. To be clear, this is in no way to suggest that these churches are not faithful; but it is to ask whether they are not more unique and unrepeatable than is often acknowledged. If the secret lies in the gifts of the individual leader, then time spent trying to replicate the models elsewhere with less talented or differently gifted leaders is doomed to failure and a waste of time.

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Ultimately, only the long term will show if the YRR movement has genuinely orthodox backbone and stamina, whether it is inextricably and inseparably linked to uniquely talented leaders, and whether `Calvinism is cool' is just one more sales pitch in the religious section of the cultural department store. If the movement is more marketing than reality, then ten to fifteen years should allow us to tell. If it is still orthodox by that point, we can be reasonably sure it is genuine. Indeed, when torn jeans, or nose rings, or ministers talking about their sex lives from the pulpit become passé or so commonplace that they cease to be distinctive, we will see if it is timeless truth or marketable trendiness which has really driven the movement; and, even it proves to have been the latter, we should not panic. We will still be left with the boring, mundane and nameless people and culturally irrelevant and marginal churches - the nameless ones -- upon whose anonymous contributions, past and present, most of us actually depend.