From the days when I was hired as an adjunct and then a professor to teach NT at TEDS, I learned that both D.A. Carson and John Woodbridge, and in some ways Kenneth Kantzer (Dean then former Dean), wanted both to define evangelicalism and delineate who was “in” and who was not. Their participation in the book Evangelical Affirmations was said to me to be nothing less than Nicea III. It wasn’t, though there was lots of hoopla surrounding that event in Trinity’s chapel. I listened in on a couple sessions.
Photo by Skyler Gerald on Unsplash
In those efforts to define evangelicalism there was considerable consternation over James Davison Hunter’s 1987 book Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation. The problem was Hunter’s method, which they called “sociological,” which it was. His method said something like “Here’s a bunch of evangelicals (he was looking at some major Christian colleges), this is what they believe, so this is what evangelicalism believes.” Their contention was that it had to be defined by theology, not sociology. The irony of their contention is that one has to choose “who” gets to decide which theology it is, and when one delineates as did Evangelical Affirmations, you’ve got good grist for the sociologist’s mill. The authors were friends and companions of Kantzer, Carl F.H. Henry, Carson, and Woodbridge. Which means one subgroup of evangelicals. I could go on.
What I’m on about today, and in this series, is a brand new book by Brad Vermurlen called Reformed Resurgence, and it is a forthright and frank study of The New Calvinism Movement and the Battle over American Evangelicalism. Way back in 2014 when Vermurlen was doing his work he asked to interview me, I agreed, then I backed out because I was tired of talking about Calvinism. I used “Neo-Reformed” mostly in those days and still think that’s the best term. Who cares.
Vermurlen’s book is an academic piece, done under the supervision of the best sociologist of the church in the USA, Christian Smith, at Notre Dame. So, it’s got stuff on sociological theory. Still, the book is readable and accessible, that is, if you care about the New Calvinism. And the resurgence or rise of this movement is significant in American Christianity, well at least in American evangelicalism.
His approach is field theory, which I will explain in a future post, but here’s a taste of what he’s getting at:
its leaders engage culture and strategically position themselves vis-à-vis the rest of the Evangelical field, vying in a game-like contest for orthodoxy against other expressions of the Evangelical tradition.
Exactly. It has always been a movement to define itself over against less-than-faithful expressions of evangelicalism. There’s antagonism at work in the whole of this movement. It’s agonistic. It’s polemical in an us vs. them frame, as my college David Fitch worked out in his book The Church of Us vs. Them.
Here’s a fuller statement of Vermurlen’s approach:
Through strategic, often deliberate engagement with church tradition, innovation, postmodernism, the Internet, city life, politics, gender and sexuality, individual autonomy, contextualization, impression management, symbolic boundaries, and more, the sociological strength of New Calvinism is less a matter of market dynamics of supply and demand or happening to take the best posture toward culture – and instead is a direct result of religious leaders’ strategic and conflictual actions” (his emphasis).
Thus, it is “relationally constructed.” You gotta be “in” the circle to play this game. The relationally constructed point leads to this opening point of Vermurlen’s: “American evangelicalism has turned in on itself” (his emphasis), and the conflictual dynamic pitting one group against others has led to incoherence. That incoherence has been observed by many of us as a tribalization of American evangelicalism since the old days of Billy Graham and John Stott.
Vermurlen’s concern is the perception of a new movement, that something is going on, more than the social realities of a new movement; he’s not counting growth. So he dates the academic concern about the movement to the 2006 article by Collin Hansen, and Hansen’s book then came out in 2008. In 2007 I lit a fire on this topic when I referred to the “pesky” Calvinists on my old blog. It had some 273 comments. I reposted it two years later it got dozens and decades of comments again. Then Vermurlen mentions a number of essays/articles/books about the movement: Molly Worthen, David Van Biema, et al.. Most of these I read at the time they appeared.
This is not book that tells us if the movement is good or bad but one that describes how it can be called a movement and what happened that led to becoming a movement.
I look forward to conversations about this book. (Groanings heard.)
I just finished Vermurlen’s book. I found it curious (given the 2020 publication date) that he didn’t mention either the 2016 Evangelical Theological Society debate over semi-Arianism being taught by complementarians, or the #ChurchToo movement.
Both are external factors that could, over time, possibly weaken the connection between complementarianism and the Gospel that the New Calvinists are determined to bundle together. The Trinity debate weakened complementarians’ theological foundations, and many see the #ChurchToo movement as the rotten fruit of complementarianism (along with celebrity culture and/or authoritarian churches).
The Gospel Coalition, for instance, has a bad reputation for shrugging at misogyny and abuse—platforming and then not publicly calling out the likes of C.J. Mahaney, Douglas Wilson, Tullian Tchividjian, Mark Driscoll, etc.
I wish Vermurlen had explored these new developments affecting evangelicals’ views on complementarianism—or at least mentioned it.
I look forward to your explanation of Bourdieu’s field theory! 😉
I’ve always found evangelicalism to operate in a “not those guys” motif as a means of group identification (which is why I liked Fitch’s book).