The third week of our conversations about “Three Streams of Post-Evangelicalism” will focus on a movement that has received attention from the secular media as well as from within the church. It has been deemed the “New Calvinism”.

We are responding to Scot McKnight’s recent article in which he identified three alternative paths replacing the old “neo-evangelical coalition”: the Emerging movement, the Ancient-Future movement, and the new Calvinism. We invite you to join us this week as we discuss this third alternative, keeping in mind that we are aiming for a robust and healthy discussion.

We are doing this precisely because we are NOT experts with regard to these movements. We want to learn more. We want to hear your experiences. As pilgrims trying to negotiate the post-evangelical landscape, we are interested to hear of your involvement and interaction with these groups that have grown so much in recent years. Please join the conversation.

On March 12, 2009, Time magazine presented a list of “10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now”. Number 3 on the list? David van Biema said it is “The New Calvinism”.

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. (emphasis mine)

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UPDATE II: Phillip Winn has an excellent response to this post.

UPDATE: Moderation is on. My apologies that I have to do this so often.

Bill Kinnon reviews DeYoung and Kluck’s newest book, Why We Love the Church. I haven’t read the book, and won’t, but Bill did, and talks about it.

Tim Challies reviewed the book in early July.

A sympathetic DeYoung reader/hearer makes some very pertinent observations about the direction of things.
My mailbox is the constant recipient of the stories of those who have left the church, are considering leaving, or are wondering why they haven’t. Their stories are a large part of what I carry with me when I write or speak. Some of their stories are typical of leavers, and would not impress those who love the church. Other stories, however, are clearly stories of churches that are wrong. Deeply, painfully, often irreparably wrong. These stories make me angry that there exists people who, in the name of the infallibility of Christ, claim their church is right in situations of heinous and obvious wrongdoing.

I often get links to websites where individuals and groups in particular churches are using the internet to air their grievances against their church. I tend to believe a lot of what I read because it comports with human nature, but I respect the process churches may be using to deal with these situations, so I don’t ever publish those links. That may be wrong, but it’s a choice I’ve stayed with, so I am not an unaware critic with an agenda to tear up ministries and churches. Far from it.

We’re in an interesting cycle. A bunch of Protestants- Protestants, mind you- are constantly writing and blogging about the church in a way that leaves little room for their churches to be wrong and no way for the churches of their theological opponents to be right. [Continue reading]

Tim Challies recently reprinted an extended quote from Kevin DeYoung’s writing on the emerging/emergent church. I won’t reprint it here, but if the rest of the post is going to make any sense to you, go read it all.

When I first read this, it tipped my already leaning inclination to be highly annoyed at needless stereotyping and dividing of the Christian family by things that are neither significant nor truly divisive, but simply are the perceptions and caricatures of one team over another. We’ve come to the point where portraying emergent Christians as “useless idiots” is an approved form of bigotry, and it does positive harm. I posted at the BHT while I was steamed up, then decided to give DeYoung the benefit of the doubt, at least on this quote, and say he was simply having a little fun.

I’ll admit that DeYoung comes off like the witty kid who can make fun of the other kids without seeming to be all that mean, but the mean kids will find it hilarious for all the wrong reasons.

So turnabout is fair play, and perhaps a look in the mirror makes the point whatever way you want to take it: caricature, satire or humor. So courtesy of Adam Omelianchuk, author of one of the better explanations of why you don’t have to be a Calvinist to be a Christian, here’s the same passage, but with the gun sights aimed the other way. [Continue reading]