In the early 19th century as Americans became more democratic, consumer-driven, and individualistic they turned away from the eighteenth-century Calvinism of their fathers and turned toward a free-will (Arminian) theology that fit better with the culture in which they lived.
This was a time of unprecedented choice. All men could vote for their choice of political candidates. Consumers were empowered to choose products and churches. And in religion, one could choose to accept or reject the gospel. If you didn't want to get up from your seat and respond to the altar call during a Charles Finney revival you had the power to just say no to the gospel message he was preaching and stay seated. As Wilfred McClay put it in his Merle Curti Prize winning book The Masterless:
...the era was marked by the emergence of a restless, individualistic, egalitarian, wide-open, romantic, liberatory, antinomian, and anti-authoritarian spirit...All these elements seem to merge and coalesce into a heroic fantasy of boundless individual potential, a vision of personal infinitude that impatiently brushed aside the severe and impassible limits imposed by custom, by history, by the accidents of birth, or even by the venerable doctrine of original sin.
Calvinism was simply out of place in this era. It taught that the "restless" should find "rest in Thee." It taught that the individual was only important in relation to the sovereign God who created him. God was in control--humans were not. The Calvinist God was an unwelcome symbol of authority in a democratic society teeming with self-interest and civil liberty.
Calvinism has taken a back seat to free will American religion ever since. But according to a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor, old-fashioned Calvinism is making a comeback. It is appealing to Christians who are sick and tired of the kind of therapeutic, feel-good religion that places no demands on one's life or fails to recognize the sinfulness of the world and the limits of this world:
Today, [John Calvin's] 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.
Move over Joel Osteen. Here comes John Piper and Mark Dever.
More from the Christian Science Monitor:
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, 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.
3 comments:
Encouraging, Bro. I think you should meet Mark Dever. You too would enjoy the time. Just imagine but really smart. He has a cool interview of Ken Myers on his 9Marks site that you would get a kick out of. For some great humble Calvinism, I also read the Gospel Coalition Blog.
I don't think I really buy it. What about the 18th c. made it particularly congenial to Calvinism? And while one can hardly underestimate the influence of revivalism, arguably it was Charles Hodge, not Charles Finney, who was the most influential theology professor of the 19th century (having taught over 3000 ministers in his lifetime, not to mention is literary influence). And the influence of J. I. Packer, Carl Henry, Francis Schaeffer, etc. was far greater on the evangelicalism of the mid-20th century than Mark Dever or John Piper are today.
What is interesting, at least to me, is that articles on these "Calvinists" seem to always focus on (white) Baptists. Articles like the lengthy one in the NYT on Tim Keller a few months ago don't even mention he's a Calvinist, and journalists don't seem to have noticed how many Korean-Americans are Presbyterian yet.
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