From a review of Addie Zierman’s When We Were on Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over:
. . . the title of Addie Zierman’s memoir is evocative: When We Were on Fire. A good title will tell you a lot about a book, and indeed there is a lot to learn from this one. We know, for example, that the titular “we” are no longer “on fire,” that it happened in the past. We know this is about more than just one person, although whether the “we” is a constant voice or a changing one remains to be seen.
Most telling is that last bit, “on fire,” a resonant phrase for anyone even passingly familiar with the evangelical subculture of the 1990s. “Fire” was the favored metaphor for a deep and burning passion for God. Consuming. Refining. To be “on fire for God” was the highest compliment, the deepest mystery, the truest sign that you were wholly his.
Old Life 
More from the review:
There were rules governing everything—quiet time, prayer, Bible reading, street preaching. Chris’s faith, “an axis of rotation around which no one could freely turn,” ultimately drove the two of them apart. One night he told Addie he felt like God was calling her to break up with him. What do you say to that? When you couch your confused emotions in the language of God, as Chris had, no one can argue.
Chris is in control, he speaks for God, and he shifts the responsibility onto God and the girlfriend. That’s genius. Also sick & twisted, but genius.
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The long-awaited 1990s religious autobiography genre has finally arrived. Just in time for President Hillary.
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Those “on fire” for Jesus, ought be sealed in an old refrigerator for two years.(re-stock refrigerator after 1 year)
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In Coen Brothers news, Vanity Fair has an interview with their frequent cinematographer, Roger Deakins, in the recent Hollywood issue. Deakins is working on their adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken”, currently being directed by Angelina Jolie. That could be a heck of a movie.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005683/
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I’m not sure what the slant of this post is, but merely from reading the review it sounds like the book would fit quite neatly with your views on the evangelical subculture.
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Alexander, so why is it that so many Calvinists are comfortable with that subculture?
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I went to a prayer meeting on campus. In one corner, a student was droning, “Lord, we just… we just… we just… we need… we need…” This was going on for around 10-12 minutes, while the others in his circle were obviously bored and politely irritated.
Meanwhile, from the other end of the room, a male student sat in a chair gripping his knees with white knuckles and fingers, face to the heavens with a winced and grimaced look, and through clinched teeth, groaning over and over in a low volume, slow paced, trance-like plea, “Revive ussss… revivvve usss… revive usss…” His plea seemed to go on for about 5-7 minutes. There were other weird things that happened that need not be shared… The people were sincere, no doubt. But they simply didn’t know any better. They had no confessional moorings.
It was one of those surreal moments in my life… yet a moment that seemed to summarize so much of religion in America.
Thankfully, there is such a thing as confessional Protestantism.
Thank you, Dr. Hart, for helping us know what that is.
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DG, you asked Alexander but I will venture an answer: so many Calvinists are comfortable with that subculture because they have been taught that there must be something unqiuely Christian in all areas of life. Christians have to look different to others, it seems they think, measureably and noticeably. If a subculture labels itself Christian, that’s good enough. It gives a sense of belonging when the ties to church have become so weakened.
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Nothing quite like being scolded DURING sunday service for NOT sounding off during the sermon with Hallelujahs and amens. If the preacher really wants my extemporaneous feedback, he might want to strap on a helmet. I’ll never quite understand being reprimanded for being SO presbyterian while attending a presbyterian service. I don’t know, color me stupid, but maybe he’s in the wrong building.
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As long as their actions are truly from the heart…
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Henry,
But what if the Charismatic chicks are hotter than the Reformed chicks?
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David, could be. But then, if the culture itself is so experiential, moralistic, and therapeutic then haven’t they accommodated instead of stood out? And if being counter-cultural is a Calvinist virtue then maybe those ill-at-ease with these vices are onto something.
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Zrim, no argument from me. It is definitely accomodating. Being counter-cultural is a Reformed virtue (contemptio mundi, Calvin Inst. III.9) but you won’t get that from Niebuhr or most “Calvinist” accounts of interaction with culture.
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dgh: Good manners involve respecting the rules of the house in which I am a guest. Better then to pray before entering the non-believing home than to make the hosts feel uncomfortable when I bow my head, say a prayer, and invariably miss the mashed potatoes while they are being passed. Doh!
What is impermissible, it seems to me, is for me to turn to the head of the non-Christian household and say, “let me lead us in prayer,”… I am also including people who have not professed Christ and perhaps given them the impression that they are Christians….And if I pray in the first-person singular then why am I praying out loud?
https://oldlife.org/2010/03/praying-in-public/
contemptio mundi, Calvin Inst. III.9—indeed, Niebuhr was no Calvinist
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If your friends must be all Christians, then you might need to tinker with the definition of Christian.
https://oldlife.org/2013/09/seeing-world-kuyperian-lenses/
dgh: when I was a youth my mother told me I should only have Christian friends. She and my father never enforced this policy. But growing up in a fundamentalist home gave me a pronounced wariness of “the world.” It also meant that I tried to fashion my childhood heroes according to pious wishes.
mark: The wish to turn the brothers Niebuhr into Reformed prophets of transformation is like the need to explain “the covenant” in terms of structured antithesis to “anabaptist dispensationalism”. But there should be no need for the academy to disregard reality in that way.
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McMark, why so many golden oldies? Scary.
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because it’s the poetry and not the history which matters?
unless history also is a narrative invented and created?
like the group now called “evangelical”
as in your Worthen review— who left the mainline and also who didn’t
which includes Doug Franks and also which does not
all antithesis and no perspectives takes the poetry out of it for John Frame
mark
Mr Cogito and Longevity
he was delighted by lapses of memory
tormented by memory
http://www.bostonreview.net/valles-the-testament-of-mr-cogito
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