Talk about Providence. The weekend I was in Belfast (2 weeks ago) witnessed two book talks by authors from the U.S. The first was me talking about Calvinism (more below), the second was P. J. O’Rourke who was promoting his new memoir, Baby Boom. PJ spoke at the Ulster Museum, an impressive facility in Belfast that covers most aspects of Northern Ireland politics and culture. I chatted at the Evangelical Bookshop, an unusually good bookstore operated by the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. If you ever get to Belfast, you should visit both.
It almost goes without saying that O’Rourke was funnier than I, even though we both used stages of life to frame our subjects.
PJ contends that you cannot understand the boomers as a block since the dates for this demographic cohort run from 1946 to 1964. The experience of people like him who were born just after World War II was different from boomers like me who grew up in with the threat of missiles in space. The older boomers smoked a lot more dope. The youngsters paid attention in school. So O’Rourke divides the boomers into the grades of senior high school, with the seniors (himself) being a whole lot more experimental than the freshman. In the senior group, running from 1946 to 1951, are such disparate figures as Hillary Clinton and Cheech Marin. To the junior class (1951-1955) belong the computer whiz kids, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. O’Rourke didn’t mention any representatives for my sophomore class (1956 to 1961). But the standout from the freshman class is Barack Obama, a group of Americans so swimming in the BS produced by the seniors that Jeremiah Wright’s rants about African-American brains could never have distracted Obama from his smart phone.
I used age to divide Calvinism into its old, middle-aged, and young identities. Old Calvinism (1520 to 1660) includes the institutional churches that arose with the help of the magistrates — why we call it the magisterial Reformation. This Calvinism was established, national, institutional (read churchly), and had its greatest influence among the Swiss, Scots, Dutch, English, and Germans (all of which except for the Swiss became the major exporters of Calvinism to non-European settings).
Middle-aged Calvinism (1660-1800) was on the move. It transferred from Europe to Africa, North America, and Australia through colonialism (English and Dutch) and immigration (Scots and Germans). Calvinism also spread beyond the walls of the institutional churches through the rise of experimental Calvinism (also nadere reformatie) which strove to make all of life reformed especially since the national churches (England and the Netherlands) would not. Middle-aged Calvinism also spread through the auspices of foreign missions, first created by parachurch agencies inspired by experimental Calvinism (and the example of David Brainerd), with the established churches bringing up the rear of support for foreign missions — many were still trying to do home missions (the American West or the Scottish Highlands).
The youngest group of Calvinists, the truly Young Calvinism, were the churches that after 1800 began to extricate themselves from the confining compromises of ecclesiastical establishment by forming either voluntary or secessionist communions. The Dutch kicked off the process in 1834 with the Aufscheiding, which later inspired Abraham Kuyper and the Doliantie which formed the backbone of the GKN (1892). Then came the Free Church of Scotland with the disruption of 1843 led by Thomas Chalmers. In the twentieth century the chief efforts to leave behind Reformed establishmentarianism came from J. Gresham Machen who withdrew from the Protestant mainline through the doctrine of the spirituality of the church, and then from Karl Barth who articulated such a high view of divine transcendence that Christian truth could never be reduced to societal or cultural (or even ecclesiastical) norms.
By this scheme the so-called “New” Calvinists are really middle-aged since Edwards is their home boy, a man who stands smack-dab in the middle of Calvinism’s second stage. This also means that if the New Calvinists want to be truly young, they need to come to terms with Chalmers, Kuyper, Machen, and Barth.
O’Rourke still isn’t laughing even if he is home by now and taking his advance and honorarium to the bank.
Old Life 
“New Middle Reformed Baptist Calvinists” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Thanks for the heads-up on O’Rourke’s memoir.
LikeLike
D. Hart,
I’m surprised you aren’t summering in Debrecen, a.k.a. “The Calvinist Rome”
Sounds like the best of both worlds to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debrecen
LikeLike
I hear Hillsdale is also lovely if you can get past the mosquitoes.
LikeLike
Ahhhh, Hillsdale…
The Lincolnian Guadalupe.
LikeLike
I’m the exactly the same age as Darryl. As I used to say back when it was funny, too young for Woodstock, too old for Nintendo.
LikeLike
Karl Barth, Romans, p 353—–The work of a church is the work of men. It can never be God’s work.
Barth, 4, 2, p 749—“there is no sociological possibility–which a church must always accept or must always refuse.”
Mike Horton, People and Place, p 247–:”Are citizens of a democracy rendered inactive because they do not hold public office?”
LikeLike
Your ages of C works quite well. But you don’t seem to be sure what to do with the Free Church of Scotland – Chalmers, Cunningham et al were hardly ‘experimental Calvinists’, as you use the phrase. And in the 19th C English Dissent as well as well as C in Ulster and Wales was a rainbow of your different ages of C. Maybe you should think instead of ‘the seven ages of man’ a a template, or try adapting the Perkins chart!
LikeLike
Nice to see Kuyper and Machen mentioned in the same breath. BTW, I’m in your class–very serious in school.
LikeLike
Paul, I stay away from Perkins.
LikeLike
Terry,
Since you’re around, what are your impressions of this video:
http://literatecomments.com/2014/06/07/intelligent-atheists-left-speechless-on-a-question-on-evolution/
LikeLike
DG,
I’m also interested in your treatment of Chalmers et al.
Chalmers’ famous mantra at the time of the Disruption was along the lines that although they quit a vitiated establishment, they maintained the establishment principle.
This doesn’t really fit with the analysis you seem to be offering that Chalmers was part of a movement that saw establishment as necessarily confining or compromising?
LikeLike
Cath, I understand that about TC. But he did leave the older and established establishment because it was compromised by a kind of Erastian control of the church. All of those figures — Chalmers, Kuyper, Machen and Barth — said in some manner, let the church be the church and keep the government out.
Also, look at Stewart Brown’s biography of TC. Even though TC defended establishment, in reality the Free Church had to run itself like a voluntary communion even as early as 1850.
LikeLike
Fair enough. But in Scotland, the church was the church (exercised its ecclesiastical prerogatives unhindered by the state) while it was established, for more or less 300 years.
I guess all I’m trying to say is that the establishment principle of Chalmers et al is a genuine third option, neither theonomy nor voluntaryism, and what the Free Church fathers believed they were doing was emphatically not part of a move away from state recognition of the church.
It might be convenient for a tidy narrative to play up the ‘spiritual independence’ side of the establishment principle, but it doesn’t do justice to what Chalmers and co saw themselves as doing to ignore the ‘duty of mutual support’ side.
LikeLike
Cath, Bush’s faith based initiatives was another effort to square the Constantinian circle. When the state pays, you have to give an account to the state.
Plus, where exactly does the Bible teach the establishment principle? Be careful you don’t use theonomic texts.
LikeLike