Credit: Drew Angerer for the New York Times
Just when one might have thought that the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement(s) might be waning—they aren’t getting any younger—comes a piece in last Friday’s New York Times by Mark Oppenheimer on the Calvinist revival among evangelicals. Of course it begins with TULIP and moves on to the largely political, sociological, and theological controversies over the place of “Calvinism” in the Southern Baptist Convention. Happily, Oppenheimer talked with Mark Dever, pastor of Capital Hill Baptist Church. Given that it is apparently impossible for the media to find Reformed confessionalists who share Calvin’s ecclesiology, view of the sacraments, hermeneutics, and understanding of the history of redemption (Brian Lee, pastor of Christ Reformed Church is also in DC but his is not a large congregation embroiled in a heated controversy within a 16-million-member denomination) it is well that Oppenheimer chose to talk to Mark. He’s an excellent scholar of the Reformed tradition and, with Kevin DeYoung, one of the better representatives of the YRR movement.
The meat of the story is the apparent growth of the influence of “Calvinism” within the SBC. Oppenheimer notes the state of Dever’s congregation when he got there and its present flourishing. He also interviews Roger Olson, prince of the narrative of perpetual victimhood, who, instead of celebrating diversity within the SBC and the contribution that “Calvinism” makes to the SBC, suggests that the Calvinists in the SBC have gained their foothold through deception. That’s ironic since there is solid evidence that Arminius, ostensibly the first victim of the evil Calvinists, survived as long as he did by dissembling.
It is encouraging that Oppenheimer interviewed a parishioner from Mark’s congregation, who reports that Mark is faithful expositor of the Word and that is the chief reason for the transformation of the congregation.
For more, see:
http://heidelblog.net/2014/01/calvinism-is-hip-again-again/
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