New Calvinist Paper Tiger?
I was a bit taken aback today to see that new research is indicating that the Calvinist resurgence has made no statistical difference in the theological allegiances of American Protestant churches. When the researchers at Barna Group crunched the numbers they showed that the percentage of Reformed churches had not changed in the past decade. The conclusion seems to be that Reformed leaders may now be better or at least noisier communicators. Says study director, David Kinnaman:
“there is no discernable evidence from this research that there is a Reformed shift among U.S. congregation leaders over the last decade. Whatever momentum surrounds Reformed churches and the related leaders, events and associations has not gone much outside traditional boundaries or affected the allegiances of most today’s church leaders. It is important to note that the influence of Reformed churches might also be measured through other metrics that are currently unavailable, such as the theological certainty of self-described adherents, their level of acceptance toward those who are not Calvinist, and the new methods Reformed leaders are using to market their views to their peers and to the public.”
There’s more reaction including from Ed Stetzer who believes there is a Reformed/Calvinist resurgence, but that it’s still too small to show up in Barna’s samples, and Skye Jethani who seems to shrug and wonder if there’s anything new under the sun.
I would agree that the Reformed camp is definitely more organized, more vocal, and – surely some will not like me saying this – making more of an effort to be relevant. Whether this translates into more adherents remains to be seen. At the same time, I fully expect more from the Arminian tradition to start robustly proclaiming their own views. Thoughts?
I confess to not having read the results because I don’t care enough to do so, but two commenters at Scot McKnight’s post about this mention that given the margin of error it’s possible there is up to a 9% growth, and that the survey only seems to measure growth among clergy. I dunno.
I think what I got out of this is that what people think based on spending their time reading blogs or even traditional news publications can be skewed sometimes. Based on what one reads on the internet or even from Time or Newsweek, one might think that a much larger shift is under way. A shift that Barna’s research would have reflected, however flawed the methodology. I still think that, to a certain extent, what’s really happened is that diverse groups of Calvinists have managed to focus on Reformed soteriology and agree to disagree on things that would have been deal-breakers in other centuries (baptism, worship style, denominational structure, and so on). If the Reformed churches can continue to leverage their organization and their ability to stay on message (and not start battling each other), they may well start to shift those numbers.
I pretty much agree with what Dan said here. What makes the new Calvinism interesting (and I guess I’m pretty much one of them) is that agreeing to disagree about infant baptism or ecclesiology or what sort of millenialism motivates us is actually a very positive development. If, say, Andrew’s a postmillenialist and I’m an amillenialist we don’t have to somehow not associate with each other as heretics.
I know he’s not Dan’s favorite by a stretch but Driscoll’s avoidance of denouncing Arminianism as a false gospel is another sign that new Calvinists are less likely to be entirely divisive toward non-Calvinists on issues that would have been deal-breakers. Of course with something like egalitarianism and complementarianism a guy like Driscoll shows there are other faultlines but at least on the issue of Arminians he’s a good case in point that new Calvinists may end up having more long-term influence by virtue of having some more positive interaction with non-Calvinist groups.
Michael Spenser used to say that the resurgent Calvinism seemed to be mostly an echo chamber of new Calvinists sending each other congratulatory press clippings. I think there’s a lot of truth to that but as one of those neo-Calvinists I certainly hope it’s also true that we can have a positive influence by not dividing over things that old Calvinists have divided over. Here’s hoping John Frame’s cautions have long-term effect!
Jamie Smith just posted on this: http://forsclavigera.blogspot.com/2010/11/barna-report-on-new-calvinism.html?spref=fb
I think Smith’s critiques are fairly accurate, that said, surely someone could come up with evidence that Calvinism is actually growing in popularity (as opposed to merely noise) if that were indeed the case. I recall that one of things that the New Calvinists slagged the Emergent Church for was a lack of actual numbers. Everyone from Driscoll to Doug Wilson made this observation – that this was a movement of disgruntled evangelicals who weren’t really growing the church as whole. In the early 2000s though one could be forgiven for thinking that in fact the Emergent Church was a huge deal and surely reshaping the face of North American Christianity. Maybe Barna’s evidence is bad, but it still generates a hypothesis that might well require further investigation.
I think the New Calvinism might be more of a grassroots phenomenon, with ordinary people (not necessarily pastors) who are looking for an increased sense of doctrinal ‘certainty’ going to GC conferences, listening to radio shows and reading the books they get from Christian bookstores. Those same people then come back to their churches (and pastors) and say, hey, let’s firm up our ‘stance’ on Calvinism, role of women, creationism, “relevance,” etc.
Pastors who would rather not come down squarely on either side of any or all of these (secondary) issues may find themselves under increasing pressure to clarify their views from their congregations. And, speaking anecdotally, if they don’t like what they’re hearing from the pulpit congregants may gravitate to a more conservative, Gospel Coalition-influenced church… which I think is a less-than-exciting trend.
http://wp.me/pZ8Y9-2d
Hmm, that’s definitely something that Barna’s questionable methodology wouldn’t account for. One worries that this would create clusters of frustrated New Calvinists passive-aggressively stewing in the pews of evangelical churches.