Christian faith: Calvinism is back

[Cees Binkhorst]

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Groet / Cees

Should There Be an Inquisition for the Pope?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/opinion/31dowd.html
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

It doesn’t seem right that the Catholic Church is spending Holy Week
practicing the unholy art of spin.

Complete with crown-of-thorns imagery, the church has started an Easter
public relations blitz defending a pope who went along with the perverse
culture of protecting molesters and the church’s reputation rather than
abused — and sometimes disabled and disadvantaged — children.

The church gave up its credibility for Lent. Holy Thursday and Good
Friday are now becoming Cover-Up Thursday and Blame-Others Friday.

This week of special confessions and penance services is unfolding as
the pope resists pressure from Catholics around the globe for his own
confession and penance about the cascade of child sexual abuse cases
that were ignored, even by a German diocese and Vatican office he ran.

If church fund-raising and contributions dry up, Benedict’s P.R.
handlers may yet have to stage a photo-op where he steps out of the
priest’s side of the confessional and enters the side where the rest of
his fallible flock goes.

Or maybe 30-second spots defending the pope with Benedict’s voice
intoning at the end: “I am infallible, and I approve this message.”

Canon 1404 states that “The First See is judged by no one.” But Jesus,
Mary and Joseph, as my dad used to say. Somebody has to tell the First
See when it’s blind — and mute — to deaf children in America and Italy.

The Vatican is surprised to find itself in this sort of trouble.
Officials there could have easily known what was going on all along;
archbishops visiting Rome gossip like a sewing circle. The cynical
Vatican just didn’t want to deal with it.

And now the church continues to hide behind its mystique. Putting down
the catechism, it picked up the Washington P.R. handbook for political sins.

First: Declare any new revelation old and unimportant.

At Palm Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New
York bemoaned that the “recent tidal wave of headlines about abuse of
minors by some few priests, this time in Ireland, Germany, and a re-run
of an old story from Wisconsin, has knocked us to our knees once again.”

A few priests? At this point, it feels like an international battalion.

A re-run of an old story? So sorry to remind you, Archbishop, that one
priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, who showed no remorse and suffered no
punishment from “Rottweiler” Ratzinger, abused as many as 200 deaf
children in Wisconsin.

Archbishop Dolan compared the pope to Jesus, saying he was “now
suffering some of the same unjust accusations, shouts of the mob, and
scourging at the pillar,” and “being daily crowned with thorns by
groundless innuendo.”

Second: Blame somebody else — even if it’s this pope’s popular
predecessor, on the fast track to sainthood.

Vienna’s Cardinal Christoph Schönborn defended Pope Benedict this week,
saying that then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s attempt in 1995 to investigate the
former archbishop of Vienna for allegedly molesting youths in a
monastery was barred by advisers close to Pope John Paul II.

Third: Say black is white.

In his blog, Archbishop Dolan blasted church critics while stating: “The
Church needs criticism; we want it; we welcome it; we do a good bit of
it ourselves,” adding: “We do not expect any special treatment. ...so
bring it on.” Right.

Fourth: Demonize gays, as Karl Rove did in 2004.

In an ad in The Times on Tuesday, Bill Donohue, the Catholic League
president, offered this illumination: “The Times continues to
editorialize about the ‘pedophilia crisis,’ when all along it’s been a
homosexual crisis. Eighty percent of the victims of priestly sexual
abuse are male and most of them are post-pubescent. While homosexuality
does not cause predatory behavior, and most gay priests are not
molesters, most of the molesters have been gay.”

Donohue is still talking about the problem as an indiscretion rather
than a crime. If it mostly involves men and boys, that’s partly because
priests for many years had unquestioned access to boys.

Fifth: Blame the victims.

“Fr. Lawrence Murphy apparently began his predatory behavior in
Wisconsin in the 1950s,” Donohue protested, “yet the victims’ families
never contacted the police until the mid-1970s.”

Sixth: Throw gorilla dust.

Donohue asserts that “the common response of all organizations, secular
as well as religious,” to abuse cases “was to access therapy and
reinstate the patient.” Really? Where in heaven’s name does that
information come from? It’s absurd.

And finally, seventh: Use the Cheney omnipotence defense, most famously
employed in the Valerie Plame case. Vice President Cheney claimed that
his lofty position meant that the very act of spilling a secret, even
with dastardly intent, declassified it.

Vatican lawyers will argue in negligence cases brought by abuse victims
that the pope has immunity as a head of state and that bishops who
allowed an abuse culture, endlessly recirculating like dirty fountain
water, were not Vatican employees.

Maybe they worked for Enron.
---------------------------------
Christian faith: Calvinism is back

In America's Christian faith, a surprising comeback of rock-ribbed
Calvinism is challenging the Jesus-is-your-buddy gospel of modern
evangelism.

America's Christian faith is experiencing a comeback of Calvinism and
its God-first immersion in Scripture. Catherine Snow prays during an
event at the Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., intended
to introduce new people to its Calvinist theology.
(Mary Knox Merrill/Staff)

By Josh Burek, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2010/0327/Christian-faith-Calvinism-is-back
posted March 27, 2010 at 12:00 pm EDT
Washington —

Snow falls resolutely on a Saturday morning in Washington, but the
festively lit basement of a church near the US Capitol is packed. Some
200 female members have invited an equal number of women for tea,
cookies, conversation – and 16th-century evangelism.

What newcomers at Capitol Hill Baptist Church (CHBC) hear is hardly
"Christianity for Dummies." Nor is it "Extreme Makeover: Born-Again
Edition." Instead, a young woman named Kasey Gurley describes her
disobedience and suffering in Old Testament terms.

"I worship my own comfort, my own opinion of myself," she confesses.
"Like the idolatrous people of Judah, we deserve the full wrath of God."
She warns the women that "we'll never be safe in good intentions," but
assures them that "Christ died for us so we wouldn't have to." Her
closing prayer is both frank and transcendent: "Our comfort in suffering
is this: that through Christ you provide eternal life."

It is so quiet you can hear an oatmeal cookie crumble.

Welcome to the austere – and increasingly embraced – message of
Calvinism. Five centuries ago, John Calvin's teachings reconceived
Christianity; midwifed Western ideas about capitalism, democracy, and
religious liberty; and nursed the Puritan values that later cast the
character of America.

Today, his theology is making a surprising comeback, challenging the
me-centered prosperity gospel of much of modern evangelicalism with a
God-first immersion in Scripture. In an age of materialism and
made-to-order religion, Calvinism's unmalleable doctrines and view of
God as an all-powerful potentate who decides everything is winning over
many Christians – especially the young.

Twenty-something followers in the Presbyterian, Anglican, and
independent evangelical churches are rallying around Calvinist, or
Reformed, teaching. In the Southern Baptist Convention, America's
largest Protestant body, at least 10 percent of its pastors identify as
Calvinist, while more than one-third of recent seminary graduates do.

New Calvinism draws legions to the sermons of preachers like John Piper
of the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. Here at CHBC, the pews
and even rooms in the basement are filled each Sunday, mostly with young
professionals. Since senior pastor Mark Dever brought Calvinist
preaching here 16 years ago, the church has grown sevenfold. Today it is
bursting at the stained-glass windows.

Yet the movement's biggest impact may not be in the pews. It's in
publishing circles and on Christian blogs, in divinity schools and at
conferences like "Together for the Gospel," where the rock stars of
Reformed theology explore such topics as "The Sinner Neither Able Nor
Willing: The Doctrine of Absolute Inability."

"There is a very clear resurgence of Calvinism," says Steven Lemke,
provost and a professor at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

The renewed interest arrives at a crucial inflection point for American
religion. After reviewing a landmark opinion survey last year that
showed a precipitous decline in the number of people who identify
themselves as Christian, Newsweek declared ominously that we may be
witnessing "the end of Christian America."

In some ways, Newsweek may have understated the shift. Five hundred
years after Martin Luther posted his 95 theses challenging the Roman
Catholic Church, some religion watchers see not just a post-Christian
America but an unraveling of the Protestant Reformation itself. Their
alarm is rooted in surveys that show a watering down of Christian beliefs.

Now come the New Calvinists with their return to inviolable doctrines
and talk of damnation – in essence, the Puritans, minus the breeches and
powdered wigs. Is this just a moment of nostalgia or the beginning of a
deeper revolt against the popular Jesus-is-our-friend approach of modern
evangelicalism? Where, in other words, is Christianity going?

• • •

When people today hear the name John Calvin, they think mainly of
predestination – the controversial idea that God has foreordained
everything that will happen, including who will and won't be saved, no
matter what they do in life.

What people often forget is that the 16th-century French theologian
transformed Western thought both by what he taught and how he taught it.
His 700-page "Institutes of the Christian Religion" became the reference
manual for Protestant faith. And his detailed and explanatory style of
preaching – he spent five years expounding on the book of Acts, verse by
verse – became an example for generations of clergy.

Detractors, and there are many, see Calvin as a harsh theocrat who
punished heretics (including one who was famously burned at the stake)
while molding the city where he preached, Geneva, into a model of his
fatalistic and hopeless ideology.

But supporters view him as a man who recovered God-centric Christianity,
set the stage for religious freedom, and encouraged countless believers
to read the Bible for themselves.

"Like it or not, he is one of the great minds that shaped our modern
world," says Gerald Bray, a professor at Beeson Divinity School in
Birmingham, Ala. "Ideas of democracy, open-market capitalism, and
equality of opportunity were aired in his Geneva and put into practice
as far as they could be at that time."

Calvin's influence on America's founding is unmistakable. The nation's
patriotism, work ethic, sense of equality, public morality, and even
elements of democracy all sprang in part from the Calvinist taproot of
Puritan New England. When Calvinist preacher Jonathan Edwards told
worshipers in 1741 that they were loathsome spiders held over the pit of
hell by the gracious hand of an offended God, he wasn't speaking a
heretical creed but the basic vocabulary of American faith. It wasn't
until the 19th century that Calvinist doctrines waned.

By most logic, the stern system of Calvinism shouldn't be popular today.
Much of modern Christianity preaches a comforting Home Depot theology:
You can do it. We can help. Epitomized by popular titles like Joel
Osteen's "Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential,"
this message of self-fulfillment through Christian commitment attracts
followers in huge numbers, turning big churches into megachurches.

At the same time, a strict following of the Bible, which Calvinists
embrace, hardly resonates the way it once did in American society. The
Barna Group, a California-based research firm, recently did a survey to
find out how many US adults hold a "biblical worldview" – for instance,
believe that the Bible is totally accurate, that a person cannot earn
their way into heaven simply by doing good, that God is the all-powerful
creator of the universe.

The result: a steeple-thin 9 percent. Among 18-to-23-year-olds, it was
0.5 percent, fewer people than might show up at a Lady Gaga concert.
Even among "born again" Christians, it was only 19 percent.

In a separate report, Barna found that more than 6 in 10 born-again
Christians say they are customizing their faith, not following any one
church's theology. "Americans are increasingly comfortable picking and
choosing what they deem to be helpful and accurate theological views and
have become comfortable discarding the rest of the teachings in the
Bible," the report notes.

The blunt implication: Scripture is no longer the sheet anchor of
American spirituality.

This, of course, was the Roman Catholic warning to early reformers five
centuries ago: If you break away from the church, orthodoxy will spiral
into fancy. By emphasizing sound doctrine and the naked gospel, New
Calvinists want to restore what they see as stability to Protestant faith.

Indeed, CHBC has a sister organization called "9Marks," which strives to
promote "biblically faithful" churches across denominational lines.

"A lot of people think religion is something you piece together [from]
ideas you think are sweet and that you personally find beneficial," says
Mr. Dever. "No. It's like a doctor's report.... It's an objective
reality. It's just what is."

More broadly, the Calvinist revival reflects an effort to recast the
foundation of faith itself. From conservative evangelical churches to
liberal new-age groups, the message of much modern teaching is man's
need for betterment. Not New Calvinism; its star is God's need for
glory. And the gravity of His will is great: It can be denied, but not
defied.

"God either knows everything, or He knows nothing at all," says CHBC
member Jeannie Hagopian, a young mother from South Carolina.

• • •

As morning light filters into a fourth-floor room on a Sunday, students
huddle on tiered seats, listening to a lecture on substitutionary
atonement. The teacher poses a tough question, but a hand shoots into
the air, eager to answer with a recitation of the week's memory verse
from I Peter 3:18: "For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous
for the unrighteous, to bring you to God."

Scholars and seminarians call this systematic theology. Kindergartners
at CHBC just call it Sunday school.

Their parents are downstairs, absorbing seminars, prayers, and a
Scripture-saturated sermon that add up to five hours of worship over the
day. Just before noon, the adults jot notes as they listen to an
hour-long sermon on II Samuel 5-9. These chapters cover King David's
glorious reign over Israel, but Dever doesn't skip the tough verses,
such as when God strikes Uzzah dead for trying to steady the ark of the
covenant.

"Friends, have we sinned like Uzzah?" he asks.

Such statements are meant to prick the hearts of his listeners. Yet he
often follows up the hard questions with reassuring comments like: "You
and I should not draw a breath today, without living for the praise of
God's glory."

This pattern – convict worshipers of their sin, then show them spiritual
elation – has a gripping effect on the assembly. After the service,
churchgoers linger for an hour, hugging and sharing heartfelt
conversation. "I've come to believe and understand that God is not
fundamentally about me; He's much bigger than that," says Dan Wenger, a
government employee. "The teaching at this church has helped me to see
that in context of the whole story of the Bible, not just the parts that
make me feel good."

Dever acknowledges that people might well ask, "Why would God make
anybody who is going to go to hell?" His answer captures the essence of
New Calvinism. "I don't know," he says. "I didn't do this. I'm just
trying to tell you what I think is true, not what I like."

Membership at CHBC isn't for the faint of holy. Classes on theology and
Christian history are required before joining. At the "Lord's Supper"
once a month, members stand and recite an oath that ties them to one
another. In addition to Sunday worship and Wednesday night Bible study,
they spend hours each week in small-group study or one-on-one
"discipling." They say those sessions – a time for confessions,
encouragement, and prayer – are the most challenging and rewarding
feature of church life.

"Christian fellowship is so much more than hanging out with friends,"
says Claudia Anderson, a magazine editor. "It involves spiritual
intimacy, support, learning, counseling, and stunning acts of kindness."

Christopher Brown, a lawyer, concurs. "I came for the theology but
stayed for the community," he says. "As Americans, we're so
individualistic. But the New Testament rebukes this 'rugged
individualism.' We're not saved to be lone rangers."

The BlackBerry-wielding Millennials who worship here say they crave
teaching that challenges them – "preaching for PhDs," as one puts it.
Ask them what books they're reading, and they won't mention "The Girl
with the Dragon Tattoo." They'll reel through names of 17th-century
Puritan preachers like a pack of baseball cards.

"The resurgence of Calvinism indicates that America hasn't changed so
much as some might suppose," says Collin Hansen, author of "Young,
Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists."
"American Christianity has splintered in myriad directions since the
Puritans settled New England. But the God they worshiped – attested in
the Bible, sovereign in all things, and merciful toward sinners through
the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ – still captivates believers today."

• • •

What captivates outsiders, however, is that New Calvinists are restoring
the doctrine of predestination – God choosing from the outset whom He
will and won't save – to a land that long ago shifted toward a "No Child
Left Behind" view of salvation. Taken to its logical end, predestination
means God has always regulated everything, even evil.

This belief bothers many Christians. "The shooting at Fort Hood: Did God
foreordain that? 9/11? The Holocaust?" asks Professor Lemke, who's also
a Baptist pastor and critic of some, though not all, points of Calvinism.

In 2008, the Southern Baptist Convention put on a John 3:16 conference
to counterbalance tenets of Calvinism, including predestination.

What critics see as a grim and fatalistic doctrine, however, Calvin saw
as good news: that God's purposes can be fulfilled despite man's sinful
ways.

"To him, predestination was a liberating belief because it says that God
can choose anyone, however humble, and use him to overturn the great men
of this world," says Professor Bray. "It makes real change possible and
puts ordinary people like you and me in charge of seeing it happen. What
could be better news than that?"

Many followers agree, adding that Calvinism is not fatalism: You are
responsible for you behavior.

"Calvinism is 'big picture' Christianity," says Allen Guelzo, the author
of "Edwards on the Will: A Century of American Theological Debate." "It
is less interested in asking why God lets bad things happen to good
people, and asks instead whether there have ever been any genuinely
'good' people."

For all its controversy, predestination is something New Calvinists
accept as part of their take-it-all-or-leave-it approach to the Bible.

"Today we have more Bibles and more study guides to Scripture than ever
before, but people know the text itself less and less," says Bray. "This
is disastrous. Calvin's deep and expository approach to it is therefore
more necessary than ever."

At CHBC, several members say they became authentically Christian only
after a friend studied the gospel with them verse by verse. "As I
studied the Bible, I saw that God has every reason to send me to hell,"
says Connie Brown, a kindergarten teacher. "God broke me down – and
renewed my heart."

New Calvinists talk about their sin a lot. Despite that – or rather
because of it – they exude not guilt but great joy. Their explanation:
If we play down our sinfulness, we'll play down our gratitude for the
magnitude of God's love and forgiveness.

Many members were drawn to CHBC precisely because they had yearned to be
"convicted of their sin" again and grown frustrated with "watered-down
preaching." School vice principal Jessica Sandle says she came after the
pastor at her former church read a book on growth and became consumed
with filling pews. "So he stopped talking about sin, and why we need
God," she says.

Another congregant, who declined to be named because he is running for
office, was searching for something more substantial as well. "I went to
other churches and I came away feeling good, but I came away hungry,
too," he says. "They [the sermons] were mercifully shorter, but they'd
leave the gospel out, and I wouldn't be convicted of my sin.... Here,
your deficiencies are laid bare."

Ultimately, Calvinism's contrast with chummier, Jesus-is-my-friend forms
of evangelicalism may highlight a more fundamental change in the world
of faith. Bestselling religion writer Phyllis Tickle sees the interest
in Calvinism as the first phase of a backlash against the dominant
religious trend of today: the rise of "Emergence Christianity."

Emergence Christianity, which she identifies as a once-every-500-years
religious shift, is less a doctrine or a movement than a postmodern
attitude toward religion itself. Loosely organized, it values
experimentation over traditional rules and Christian practice.

"When things go through this upheaval," Ms. Tickle says, "there's always
those who absolutely need the assurance of rules and a foundation."

Or, as Ms. Hagopian puts it with uncompromising Calvinistic clarity:
"The dominant philosophy of American Christianity is so far removed from
biblical truth. Life is not hunky-dory."

**********
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