New Calvinism Explained: How it happened

In the 1960s to the 1990s, American evangelicalism’s center swirled together around Billy Graham, the English apostle to the universities John R.W. Stott, Christianity Today, and a handful of publishers, including IVP and Zondervan and Eerdmans. That center gradually dissipated in the aging of Graham and Stott and the shifting importance of the voices and editors in chief at Christianity Today.

This left a power vacuum, and as Orwell once said, when there is a transfer of power a civil war ensues. That power vacuum became gradually available to other charismatic leaders.

But, the diversity of the leaders created tension and conflict in evangelicalism. One set of charismatic leaders, who seemingly were beginning to replace Graham and Stott, became the various megachurch pastors who by 2010 all had massive programs and models and conferences and – yes – brands they could pass on to others. An “I am of Warren” or “I am of Hybels” tribe became identifiable and quite noticeable. Much of evangelicalism turned into tribal alliances with one of these megachurch models: Willow Creek, Saddleback, North Point, Mars Hill Seattle and Grand Rapids.

Arising out of this tension was New Calvinism, which both denied alliance with one of these megachurch pastors and models, and created its own brand and alliance on a different, more ideological, basis. Its basis could be said to be authentic, traditional evangelicalism of the Reformation, the church’s traditional theology, and the New Testament gospel.

Brad Vermurlen, in Reformed Resurgence, applies his skills in sociological analysis to this rise of New Calvinism by applying something called field theory. The rise of NC is not explicable by numbers for its numbers are not substantially different than the growth of its major rivals: mainstream evangelicalism, neo Anabaptism, and emergent/emerging Christianity’s progressive evangelicalism.

What explains its rise, then? He proposes that we begin with the destabilizing of evangelicalism that created opportunities for challengers and new voices to rise into the role previously played by Graham, Stott, and CT. Now these particulars are mine, not Vermurlen’s. He does not explain the power vacuum as I have here, but he may in a later chapter. But the reality of a tension that destabilized the evangelical tradition derives from his work. The tension becomes “contention” for power.

These new voices became players in the “game” of winning back evangelicalism to its true roots and true identity.

Two “actors” appeared on the scene: Incumbents (the NC’s claim for itself, acc to Vermurlen) and Challengers (mainstream evangelicalism’s shifts with the megachurches, neo Anabaptists, and progressive evangelicals).

Both the Incumbents and the Challengers perceived changes in evangelicalism as threats that were destabilizing authentic evangelicalism. Both knew cultural forces were at work and some saw them as threatening. The diversification and fragmentation and dilution at work among the wideness of evangelicalism unmasked the absence of authoritative voices and led to “intractable conflict.”

Who will step in to lead evangelicalism? New Calvinism claimed that calling.

Vermurlen offers three levels of analysis from various theories at work in sociological analyses. This is his adaptation of field theory. He takes the best of five other frameworks that have been used among scholars. The object of study of these five other frameworks is how religion fares in a modern and postmodern world where secularization was thought to be erasing religion from culture. Vermurlen reworks the best of these frameworks into field theory.

First, at the micro level (person, leader level) we discover religious leaders with “genuine beliefs and convictions” who leveraged media attention taking advantage to “make their beliefs more widely visible and attractive to others.” They attracted religious adherents who became the “substance of a movement for those very convictions.” Add to this also the personal characteristics and charismatic authority of the individual leaders (like Piper and Keller).

Second, at the meso level (organization level) NC is made to “fit ecologically with their cities and geographic regions.”

The perceived threat to evangelicalism’s stability created alternatives with:

Incumbents proposing “clear, compelling, ‘black and white’ answers” around gender roles, theological rootedness in the authentic traditions, and “de-emphasizing autonomous self-direction and individual free will.” They persuaded their adherents of their claims to be more the most faithful alternative and the true evangelicals. They located themselves in urban centers, they were “apolitical” and saw themselves as the “rightful gatekeepers.” Because conflict and strategy in taking issues with alternatives in the “field” of evangelicalism was important to this movement, they policed others (think Kevin DeYoung) and drew “symbolic boundaries.” This strategy led to plenty of polemical expression by its leaders.

Yet, at the same time of claiming historical rootedness in the Reformation, the Incumbent leaders claimed they were “a significant new movement for orthodoxy” and created a brand and tribe for themselves.

Thus, they turned themselves into those with “symbolic capital” and “power” to legitimate and define who was in and out.

Challengers are known here as those pushing back – his emphasis is not on the challengers but how the NC did what it did to become what it is today.

Third, the macro level takes into view the cultural threats like gender and sexual revolutions, pluralisms, and the “triumph of the therapeutic.” Both the Incumbents and Challengers made use of the internet, the terrorist attacks, and the threats of postmodernity.

He is not saying New Calvinism is manufactured or engineered, but he does explore how it was engineered.