Category: Shameless Selves Promotion

Old Life in the Imperial Capital

Published on by D. G. Hart22 Comments

Brian Lee, pastor at Christ Reformed Church (URC) in Washington, D.C., has put together another fall program of lectures and events, this year devoted to the theme of Christianity and Politics. I will be speaking with Michael Gerson, speech writer for George W. Bush, on Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 7:00 pm. Terry Eastland, publisher of the Weekly Standard, will be moderating our discussion of evangelicals and American politics. (Terry’s presence is remarkable given the collapse of his beloved Braves. I don’t point this out to mock or chest thump but to express real empathy; if Terry takes Braves’ losses the way I go blue after a Phillies’ defeat, then his willingness to get out of bed is a tribute to his mental health.)

[Taken from CRC’s press release]
The full schedule follows (speaker bios below):

Sunday, October 9th,11:00 am — Michael Horton, “Evangelism and Social Justice”

Thursday, October 13th, 7:00 pm — Michael Gerson, Darryl Hart, Terry Eastland, “The Future of Evangelicals in Politics”

Sunday, October 16th, 11:00 am — Brian Lee, “Govern Well, or Be Governed?”

Thursday, October 20th, 7:00 pm — David VanDrunen, “Natural Law and Christian Politics”

Sunday, October 23rd, 11:00 am — David Coffin, “The Spirituality of the Church”

Events will be held at Christ Reformed Church’s new Logan Circle home, historic Grace Reformed Church (the church home of President Theodore Roosevelt), located at 1405 15th Street NW, Washington, DC. Reception to follow. Free parking is available (with validation) at the Colonial Parking Lot at 1616 P Street NW, one block west of the church. Call 202.656.1611 for more information or visit our website at http://www.ChristReformedDC.org.

Speakers:

Dr. Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, Host of the White Horse Inn radio program and Editor-in-Chief of Modern Reformation magazine. He has written The Gospel Commission and Where in the World is the Church, as well as The Christian Faith, a new highly-acclaimed one-volume systematic theology. He is a minister in the United Reformed Church.

Michael Gerson, opinion writer for the Washington Post and former head speech writer and senior policy advisor to President George W. Bush. He is the author of City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era, and Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace America’s Ideals (And Why They Deserve to Fail if They Don’t).

Terry Eastland, Publisher of The Weekly Standard and is ordained as an elder at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland.

Dr. Darryl Hart, visiting professor of History at Hillsdale College in the area of American Religious history and the author of numerous books on Christianity and Politics, including From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism and A Secular Faith: Why Christianity Favors the Separation of Church and State, and blogs on religion and public life at oldlife.org.

Dr. Brian Lee, founding pastor of Christ Reformed Church, Washington, DC, and holds degrees from Stanford University, Westminster Seminary California, and Calvin Theological Seminary. Prior to becoming a pastor Dr. Lee also worked in Washington on Capitol Hill, at the National Endowment for the Humanities, and at the Department of Defense. He studied Dutch Calvinism as a Fulbright Scholar in the Netherlands in 2001.

Dr. David VanDrunen, Robert B. Strimple Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Westminster Seminary California. He has written Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought and Living in God’s Two Kingdoms. He is a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and holds a Law Degree from Northwestern University School of Law.

Rev. David Coffin, Senior Pastor at New Hope Presbyterian Church in Fairfax, Virginia.

Hart on Leithart and Grudem

Published on by D. G. Hart23 Comments

Don Frank kindly prodded my memory about excerpting part of my review essay on two new books on Christianity and politics, one by Peter Leithart on Constantine and Wayne Grudem on the United States. The full review is here. What follows is part of the review.

The vast literature on religion and politics summons up Qoheleth’s oft-quoted remark, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body” (Eccl. 12:12). Remarkable indeed is the amount of published material on questions surrounding church and state, at least in the United States. For instance, in 1960, when despite strong anti-Catholic prejudice John F. Kennedy prevailed over Richard Nixon as the first Roman Catholic president, the number of books published on church and state ran to eighteen, up from five titles during the previous year. Figures returned to 1950s levels until 1976 when the bicentennial primed the pump of scholarly output. In 1976 publishers produced seventeen books. The presidency of Ronald Reagan and the presence of the Moral Majority would help to sustain the market: in 1980 eighteen and in 1981 fifteen books were devoted to church and state themes. By 1984 when the critique of secularism was taking hold, the number of books rose to thirty. Since then the numbers have only escalated: forty-seven in 1990, seventy-four in 1996; forty-four in 2000; eighty-one in 2004, and 188 in 2008. Obviously, if dinner conversations unravel when interlocutors introduce religion and politics, and if controversy sells, then publishers hoping to generate a return on their investment in an author, paper, cover art, and advertizing might look to religion and politics as a valuable topic. Still, doesn’t Qoheleth have a point? Hasn’t all this publishing wearied the subject, if not the readers?

The good news is that the titles under review demonstrate that more can be said, even if readers debate whether it needed to be. (For what it’s worth, these were two of sixty books published in 2010 on religion and politics.) Wayne Grudem’s Politics According to the Bible is textbook in size and arrangement of material, running from basic principles (about one-quarter of the book), to specific issues (about two-thirds) ranging from American foreign relations with Israel to farm subsidies, and concluding observations (one-eighth). Peter Leithart’s Defending Constantine is part biography of the first Christian emperor, assessment of his policies, and apology for Constantinianism (more below). Leithart is specifically intent to defend Constantine from the sort of criticisms leveled and made popular by John Howard Yoder, the Anabaptist ethicist who coined the term Constantinianism to highlight the ways in which the church’s entanglement with the state leads to unfaithfulness and even apostasy.

The cover art for each book is revealing. For Leithart’s the image from a reproduction of Constantine in an act of worship tells readers where the book is headed—a portrait of the emperor as a Christian one. Grudem’s book features the dome of the U.S. Capital building with a U.S. flag flying in front. What each author ends up doing is baptizing his subject. In Leithart’s case, Constantine is a model for Christian politics. For Grudem, the United States and its ideals of freedom and democracy are fundamentally Christian versions of civil polity; he even includes the full text of the Declaration of Independence in the chapter on biblical principles of government. The result is two books, published in the same year, written by two white men of conservative Protestant backgrounds in the United States, equipped with biblical and theological arguments, both making a case for Christian politics from wildly different political orders—one a Roman emperor, the other a federal republic. Readers may reasonably wonder if these authors are letting their subjects—the United States and Constantine’s empire—determine Christian politics or are basing their arguments on biblical teaching and theological reflection.

Evangelicals Aren't Christian

Published on by D. G. Hart34 Comments

Publicity for From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin continues and it has made me aware of the variety of radio shows in the United States once you get beyond Rush, Sean, and Glenn. I am also much more attentive than I was to the need for talk show hosts to keep a copy of the author’s book handy. Today I was on a show — name withheld to protect the guilty — where the host several times announced that the title of my book was Why Evangelicals Aren’t Conservative. But that was not as bad as the one time when he actually segued into a commercial break by referring to the book as Why Evangelicals Aren’t Christian. As provocative as I try to be, that one never dawned on me, not even now that I no longer have to worry about embarrassing my mother.

For this reason, I returned to steady spirits (as opposed to distilled ones) when I found a review of FBG2SP in yesterday’s Washington Times by William Murchison. It was even positive as the following excerpt attests:

[Hart]e does so much more, which is really the point here. He probes deep below the surface of evangelicalism to identify, with intelligence and grace, elements that conservatives might have examined with more detail back when Mr. Falwell and others came to shopping around for allies to fight the “secular humanism” they viewed with alarm. Conservatives, for one thing, might have thought more about how voters in general would view the evangelical quest, sublimated at first as Republican politics, for increasing Christianity’s political profile.

That would have started arguments about whether America was or wasn’t a Christian nation, as the evangelicals of the day sometimes alleged. Besides, their votes were wanted. Yet when Barry Goldwater, the grandest political conservative of them all back in his day, offered to kick Jerry Falwell in the place where he sat down, conservatives should have figured out that there might be some problems coming down the road. They didn’t, and now the piper demands his pay.

Old Life Yeast

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

As I mentioned, the current issue of Ordained Servant features the talks that John Muether and I gave at the pre-General Assembly conference that was part of the 75th anniversary festivities for the OPC. Here’s an excerpt from my presentation, “Is the OPC the Church that Calvinists Have Been Waiting For?”:

This all too brief tour of the first seventy-five years of other Reformed communions is a good reminder of the dangers that lurk in church history. If Machen thought the history of western Europe circa 1933 was depressing, one reason was his own struggles in the ecclesiastical part of the West’s history. The OPC’s own history is further evidence of the difficulties that Reformed churches have experienced since the Reformation. The question is whether these difficulties are part and parcel of Reformed history or an aberration. If part of being the church militant means always experiencing contention, disloyalty, and departure, then the OPC’s own struggles are no worse than those that Reformed Protestants have experienced before.

Still, making the case that the OPC is a worthy successor to Reformed history requires being clear about the nature of Calvinism and the Reformation’s significance. For the better part of two hundred years the Corinthian temptation has been to regard Reformed Protestantism’s importance in cultural and political terms. This was a perspective held not only by Reformed believers. Think of Max Weber and his theory about Calvinism and capitalism, or of Alexis de Tocqueville and Calvinism’s contribution to democracy, or of Robert Merton on Calvinism and the rise of modern science. These older arguments do not have the force they once did, but even a couple of years ago at the academic conference in Geneva that marked the five hundredth anniversary of Calvin’s birth, most of the scholarly presentations explored not the sorts of ecclesiastical reforms that characterized Reformed Protestantism but the way that Calvinism shaped the modern world. Such assessments have prompted Reformed believers to think of Calvinism less as a churchly movement than as a religiously-based source for social transformation. Of course, the rise of neo-Calvinism and the inspiring words of Abraham Kuyper have contributed mightily to this estimate of Reformed Protestantism.

But even before Kuyper, the temptation to regard Reformed Protestantism for its political and cultural significance was constant for Presbyterians. How could it not be since the rise of Reformed Protestantism was bound up with European politics. Indeed, the division of Western Christianity that split the Reformed, Lutheran, and Anglican communions from the Roman Catholic Church was also part of the confessionalization of western Europe. After 1600 individual nations could be identified by the kind of church and confession they sponsored. This process helped to secure the creation of the nation-state, a form of government that greatly centralized the economic, legal, educational, administrative, and even linguistic features of territories that had previously been decentralized and diverse. However we estimate the size, scope, and power of the modern nation-state, the reality is that Reformed Protestantism was on the ground floor of the construction of modern Europe and its colonial proliferation, a period that ran from 1600 at least to World War II. No wonder, then, that conservative Reformed believers pine for the days when their faith mattered to the mission of a particular nation. Scottish Presbyterians still long for the days of the National Covenant. Abraham Kuyper endeared himself to Reformed believers by evoking a golden age of Dutch history. Meanwhile, American Presbyterians have their own version of this nostalgia and attempt to construct a Christian founding of the United States even though the very point of the new nation was to bring an end to the pattern of confessionalization that had torn apart Europe (and especially England) during the seventeenth century.

Yet, the question remains whether Reformed Protestants were hoping to remake Europe or reform the church. Thanks to a host of Holy Roman Emperors, from Constantine and Charlemagne to Charles V, thinking about Europe apart from the church was impossible. Even so, the reforms that the original Protestants initiated were overwhelmingly ecclesial and bore directly on doctrine, liturgy, and church polity. Only because the church was part of the established political order did church reform translate into broader social and political developments. The Reformation was first and foremost a religious effort and only secondarily did it affect politics and culture.

If Reformed Protestantism was chiefly an instance of ecclesiastical reform and renewal, then against that measure the OPC may be a worthy heir to the mantle of Reformed Protestantism, even meriting a celebratory toast. To be sure, the history of the OPC is strewn with believers who still want the church to be more than the church, to be at the forefront of maintaining and promoting social righteousness. But just as important to the OPC’s history has been a growing contentment with the church as simply the church. The word “simply,” of course, understates this sense because the church’s mission is hardly simple or ordinary. But to recognize that the church has a responsibility that no other institution does, and that God has instituted the church uniquely for his redemptive purposes, is the start of a broader sense of restraint and resolve that the OPC, while lacking many of the attributes and features that impress the Corinthian minded, is doing a good and important work no matter how quiet or routine.

Janet Mefferd Is My (all about me) Hero

Published on by D. G. Hart10 Comments

I participated in an interview this week with Janet Mefferd who has a radio show out of Dallas on the Salem Radio Network. I was not sure what to expect because in the places I have lived her syndicated show has not been available. The SRN affiliates near me have followed the Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher (nee Laura Ingraham), Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt line-up and in that company I don’t suppose a book about the tensions, if not antagonisms, between evangelicals and conservatives would go over very well. My sense is that they would prefer to continue the biased-liberal-media mantra that has given evangelicals a pass from conservative pundits who don’t seem to be troubled by what “Christian America” means even for conservative Roman Catholics and Jewish Americans.

But to my surprise, Janet was unbelievably positive about From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin, even to the point of insisting that evangelicals need a megadose of Augustine’s two cities for their considerations about public life. For anyone interested in the interview they may go here.

I also conducted a couple of other pleasant interviews recently, one with Scott Oakland at ReformedCast.com, and one with Matt Lewis at DailyCaller.com.

And to fill out this shameless post of self-promotion (my publicist makes me be all about me), Oldlifers may want to check out the interviews available through Office Hours from Westminster California. Unfortunately for me, the interviews at Office Hours for Season Three do not include me. That’s why I’ll be listening to Seasons One and Two.

The Forgotten Mark Hatfield

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

The governor of Oregon and U.S. Senator, Mark Hatfield, died last Sunday. For many evangelicals born after 1970, Hatfield’s name is obscure. But during the 1960s and 1970s he was a model for evangelical political engagement. Only after the rise of the Moral Majority under Jerry Falwell and the Reagan Revolution did Hatfield’s brand of liberal Republicanism disappear as an option for born-again Protestants. But now that a younger generation of evangelicals, recovering from Falwell and Bush fatigue, is looking for a less conservative and (even) more compassionate way of doing what Jesus would do in the public square, reflections on Hatfield’s legacy will likely be positive.

Hatfield makes an important appearance in From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin as a representative of what might have been had Falwell and the Moral Majority not come along. As important as Hatfield was, especially by inspiring the likes of Jim Wallis, he committed the same error as Falwell — baptizing politics in the name of Jesus. Here is an excerpt from the book:

Hatfield initiated any number of pieces of legislation on domestic and foreign policy that struck many as naively idealistic. From American consumption of food, and dependence on fossil fuels to the United States’ production of a nuclear arsenal, Hatfield was often ready with proposals that reflected his own understanding of what would Jesus do if he were an American Senator. Aside from legislative proposals, the Oregonian also used his own limited bully pulpit to prick the conscience of fellow Americans. Two resolutions from the 1970s stand out. In 1974 Hatfield called for a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer on which Americans would humble themselves, acknowledge their dependence on their creator, and “repent of their national sins.” The Senator’s home newspaper referred to the proposed day as the time “we all eat humble pie.” The same year, Hatfield proposed a “Thanksgiving Resolution” that would have called upon Americans to identify with the world’s hungry, and encouraged fasting on all holidays between Thanksgiving Days of 1974 and 1975. To publicize this resolution, Hatfield hosted a luncheon in the Senate where eaters were treated to a one-course meal consisting of a hard roll.

Hatfield’s political sensibility made no sense to conservatives leaders in the GOP but it resonated with the young evangelical desire for a religiously motivated politics. In several books, such as Between A Rock and A Hard Place, Hatfield insisted that politicians and citizens who followed Christ should be committed to four basic ideals: identifying with the poor and oppressed against exploitative institutions and social structures, opposition to all forms of violence and militancy, resisting a materialistic life-style, and understanding political authority as essentially a form not of rule but service. “Our witness within the political order must hold fast,” Hatfield wrote, “with uncompromised allegiance, to the vision of the New Order proclaimed by Christ.” As such, the role of the Christian politician was always prophetic — the Senator drew much inspiration from the case of the Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah. “Our allegiance and hope rest fundamentally with [Christ’s] power, at work in the world through his Spirit, rather than in the efficacy of our world’s systems and structures to bring about social righteousness in the eyes of God.”

For Hatfield, whose close exposition of the Bible was more substantial than most of the evangelicals who were writing about politics, a fundamental tension existed between Christianity and politics. This world’s structures of governance and economic productivity were essentially corrupt. Rather than regarding the role of the civil magistrate as one of restraining such evil until the return of Christ and the establishment of a new order, Hatfield believed the Christian politician’s duty was to implement those longed-for patterns of justice and righteousness in the present. As utopian as such an ideal might appear, the Oregonian’s reliance on the Bible forced evangelicals to take him seriously. For the younger evangelicals, and especially those attracted to an alternative form of politics, Hatfield’s arguments expressed exactly the themes that should characterize Christian social concern. But even older evangelicals, who were more comfortable with the label of conservative and who channeled their political energies into the GOP, could not dismiss Hatfield because of his standing in the Senate and his appeal to Scripture. If evangelicals had actually been comfortable with political theories derived from reflection on human nature and the created order, they might have dismissed Hatfield as just one more radical idealist who happened to know his Bible. Because he spoke the language of Bible-based, Christ-centered social activism and political responsibility, Hatfield was another in a long line of American Protestants who thought he was doing the Lord’s work.

Orthodox Presbyterians Rival Gospel Co-Allies Enthusiasm for Enthusiasm

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

General Assemblies are not always like this but the recent OPC GA did assume more the character of a national preaching conference (of course, minus the celebrity pastors) than a regular meeting of the church’s highest judicial body. All of the presentations from the OPC’s standing committees included historical overviews as well as substantial edification and exhortation from God’s word. Don Poundstone, a retired minister and home missionary, rounded out the proceedings with his address at the Saturday night banquet in which he argued, based on Christ’s responses to Pilate (John 18), that the OPC at its best had been a witness to the truth of Scripture and had affirmed that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. Video recordings of most of the presentations are available here. (Foreign missions talks are unavailable because of the sensitivity of information regarding several fields of ministry.)

Arguably, one of the most moving parts of the Assembly came on Saturday morning during the presentation by the Committee on Christian Education. Part of the proceedings included a talk by Rev. John P. Galbraith, a 98-year old minister who actually studied at Westminster when Machen was still teaching and went on to serve in a variety of capacities, including General Secretary of both the Committee on Home Missions and the Committee on Foreign Missions. Even before speaking — which revealed a man with a mind still sharp and a tongue still eloquent — Galbraith received a standing ovation from commissioners and guests. The first words out of his mouth were those of the apostle Paul, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Galbraith then added, “And you applaud me?”

As near as I could tell, Galbraith’s deflection of applause characterized the week of presentations, devotionals, and sermons. Orthodox Presbyterians were glad to have reached the seventy-fifth birthday, but but they also knew that their history was not sensational or the product of their own faithfulness. (Self-promotion alert: see this point expressed in a different way here.) As cliched as it may have sounded, the truth that human accomplishments were less responsible than God’s grace for the OPC’s “success” was overwhelming sense among all those gathered. Part of the reason must have been that the last time the OPC met to throw a birthday party — in 1986 at Tony Campolo’s Eastern University — the church also voted itself out of existence. That is, the OPC accepted the invitation from the PCA to join and be received into the newer Presbyterian denomination. The proposal did not receive the super-majority of votes needed to be sent to the presbyteries for ratification. But a majority of commissioners in 1986 were willing to hitch their own and longer story to a communion that was less than fifteen years old. After twenty-five years of developments in both denominations, hardly anyone, at least in the OPC, regrets the rejection of J&R.

And so with quiet resolve and restrained joy Orthodox Presbyterians reflected on their past and heard preachers and missionaries recount the mighty deeds of God throughout redemptive history. It was by most accounts a time of great blessing for all who attended, and even prompted some to think that the OPC should sponsor its own national conference. Its speakers, like its history, would not be famous. And so the turnout would be light, insufficient to cover expenses. But those preachers would know their Bibles. Perhaps, just as important, they’d know their place — that the power of their words depends not on their own accomplishments or celebrity but on the God who gave them the word to proclaim.

An Anniversary that Deserves More than a Mug

Published on by D. G. Hart10 Comments

The Orthodox Presbyterian Church turns 75 today. Festivities have so far included lectures, presentations from the General Secretaries of the Assembly’s standing committees, a banquet tonight, and the opportunity to purchase handsome coffee mugs. Thankfully, the Assembly’s organizers resisted the chief temptation of our time — t-shirts (which are fine to wear under shirts with collars but should be reserved for the boudoir or basketball court).

The OPC has also produced two new books to mark the event, Confident of Better Things, a collection of essays edited by John Muether and Danny Olinger, and Between the Times: The Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Transition, 1945 to 1990 by yours truly.

The latter title covers a number of important episodes during the period when second generation Orthodox Presbyterians decided what to do with the legacy and heritage of Machen, Van Til, Murray, Stonehouse, Young, and Woolley. It includes chapters on the creation of the Trinity Hymnal, the formation of Great Commission Publications, Westminster Seminary’s relationship to the OPC, relations with the PCA and RPCES, and the demise of the Presbyterian Guardian.

One of the more interesting parts of this middle period was the OPC’s desire and protracted effort to merge with the Christian Reformed Church. To honor the anniversary and whet readers’ appetites, the following is an excerpt from chapter seven, “The OPC and the Christian Reformed Church, 1956-1973”:

The OPC’s dependence on theologians and churchmen from immigrant backgrounds characterized its first three decades of existence and gave to the denomination a unique character and international outlook. Westminster Seminary was the source of this foreign presence. Names such as Cornelius Van Til, Ned B. Stonehouse, and R. B. Kuiper were not common fare among American Presbyterians. And even though John Murray’s name was more common than Dutch family names among Presbyterians whose ties to Scotland and Ireland were apparent in the colonial era and first half of the nineteenth century, even his Presbyterianism — the Scottish Free Presbyterian Church — differed in important respects from the American tradition out of which the OPC came. Yet, the OPC did not simply find a place for these foreign Calvinists, as if the church were a haven for the world’s Reformed masses struggling to be free. If anything these Dutch and Scottish Calvinists helped to preserve the conservative Presbyterianism they had learned at Princeton Seminary and that Machen had established at Westminster. In turn, these hyphenated Presbyterians helped to define the the OPC. Because the denomination had emerged from the northern Presbyterian mainline church, it was obviously American in its formal expressions. But because of the presence of foreign leadership — a point that the OPC’s critics never tired of making — the church was also un-American.

The Dutch-American connection was particularly strong and a significant influence upon the OPC’s ecumenical relationships before 1970. Here the ties went back again to Old Princeton. Geerhardus Vos’ decision to complete his theological studies — after transferring from Calvin Seminary — at Princeton Seminary and Princeton’s subsequent appointment of Vos in 1892 as professor of biblical theology established a unique kinship between conservative American Presbyterians and Dutch-American Calvinists of which the OPC was practically the sole beneficiary. Of course, the relationship also benefitted the Dutch communion. As an ethnic religious body on the margins of Anglo-American culture and Protestantism, the CRC was naturally looking for ways to assimilate. Conservative Presbyterians at Princeton and Westminster were particularly attractive half-way houses from ethnic isolation to mainstream respectability. But again, not to be missed in this relationship is the leadership of Dutch-Americans within the OPC. The church did not merely provide a comfortable home for ethnic Calvinists who hoped to be successful in the United States on American terms. In fact, the situation was almost the reverse. The OPC became a comfortable home for Reformed orthodoxy and Presbyterian practice because hyphenated Calvinists assumed positions of leadership in the denomination.

The downside of ethnic leadership, as disaffected critics never ceased to mention, was the OPC’s difference from other conservative Protestants who followed the ethos and piety of American Christianity more than a Reformed faith less encumbered by United States developments. The upside was an ability to see the Reformed faith without the blinders of national pride or patriotic civil religion. So appealing was this international Calvinism that the OPC almost decided to unite with the Christian Reformed Church. In fact, at a time when American Protestants were increasingly identifying Christianity with the American “way of life,” the OPC was contemplating ways to establish closer ties to Dutch-American Reformed Protestants.

Which Doesn't Belong and Why?

Published on by D. G. Hart77 Comments

Warning: really, really shameless self-promotion.

Bernard McGuirk, the executive producer of Imus in the Morning, did (and may still do) a bit in which he played Cardinal Egan and would ridicule Don Imus up one side and down the other in a thick Irish accent. His barbs were far more abusive than anything the host said about the women’s basketball players at Rutgers University.

One part of Cardinal Egan’s shtick was the game, “which doesn’t belong and why.” He would name three people, objects, teams or songs, and then ask Imus to identify the odd one out. Imus was always wrong because Egan had a witty and sometimes degrading reason for which one actually did not belong.

In the spirit of a show I used to listen to before Imus got fired and is no longer syndicated, I post the series of events scheduled at Eerdmans this summer to mark the publisher’s 100th anniversary. I am honored and do not feel worthy of this company, so I have my own answer to the question, “which doesn’t belong and why.” But I invite readers to submit their own answers. The winner (the funniest) will receive a copy of the book.

P.S. Apologies to Nick Wolterstorff for not posting this in time for his lecture last week.

The Gospel Coalition's Thin-Skinned Long Arm

Published on by D. G. Hart140 Comments

I did not see Kevin DeYoung’s post at his Gospel Coalition blog about confessionalism and pietism — and for good reason. Between the time you opened the page and blinked it was gone. (And it promised to be the first of a three-part series.)

(UPDATE: For those old enough to remember the Tonight Show when Johnny Carson was the host, and Doc Severinson was the band leader, Doc was not always present, often playing other gigs. Johnny regularly said to Ed McMahon, “Doc is here? Doc is not here.” In that same vein, Kevin’s post was not here. It is now here.)

Why it vanished from the Gospel Coalition website is a mystery. At the risk of shameless self-promotion, the reason may have to do with DeYoung’s decision to interact with The Lost Soul of American Protestantism, a book written by this blogger. Seemingly, any attention given to the Old Life case for confessionalism is improper at the Gospel Coalition because that case has uncomfortable implications for the gospel Allies.

And at the risk of seeing the Gospel Coalition administrators purge DeYoung’s thoughtful comments altogether from the Internet (they are currently available at his Facebook page), I am preserving his piece here below. Unlike the Gospel Coalition, where disagreements about polity, the sacraments, and even the eternal decrees, are not permitted to surface for the sake of fighting the Axis powers of inauthentic Christianity, I regard a blog as simply a place to discuss and kvetch. (I imagine that several days worth of Prozac and Prilosec comes with the registration packet at the Gospel Coalition conference to keep the conferees in good humor and free from indigestion.)

Here is DeYoung’s post (reaction to follow):

Can Pietism and Confessionalism Be Friends? (Part 1 of 3)

by Kevin DeYoung on Friday, April 8, 2011 at 12:27pm

Those outside Presbyterian circles may not be aware (and may not care), but there has been a lot of discussion over the past few years about the dangers of pietism and how it differs radically from the older (read: better) model of confessionalism. Pietism, it is said, emphasizes dramatic conversions, tends toward individualism, pushes for unity based on shared experience, and pays little attention to careful doctrinal formulation. Confessionalism, on the other hand, is a more churchly tradition, with creeds and catechisms and liturgy. It emphasizes the ordinary means of word and sacrament and prizes church order and the offices. It is pro-ritual, pro-clergy, and pro-doctrine, where pietism, it is said, stands against all these things.

I am sympathetic with much of this critique of evangelical pietism. I agree with Darryl Hart’s contention in The Lost Soul of American Protestantism that American evangelicalism has tried too hard to be relevant, has largely ignored organic church growth by catechesis, has too often elevated experience at the expense of doctrine, has minimized the role of the institutional church, and has worn out a good number of Christians by assuming that every churchgoer is an activist and crusader more than a pilgrim. Confessionalism would be good tonic for much of what ails the evangelical world.

Concern for Confessionalism

And yet, I worry that confessionalism without a strong infusion of the pietism it means to correct, can be a cure just as bad as the disease. Is there a way to reject revivalism without discounting genuine revival in the Great Awakening? Can I like Machen and Whitefield? Is there a way to say, “Yes, the church has tried too hard to Christianize every area of life” while still believing that our private faith should translate into public action? Hart argues that after revivalism Christian devotion was no longer limited to “formal church activities on Sunday or other holy days,” but “being a believer now became a full-time duty, with faith making demands in all areas of life” (13). Given the thrust of the book, I think it’s safe to say Hart finds this troubling.

Further, Hart clearly sides with the Old Side in New England that opposed the Great Awakening, its emphasis on inner experience, and the insistence that ministers be able to give an account of God’s work in their hearts (32-42). While I agree wholeheartedly that experience does not a Christian make, I wish the strong confessional advocates would do more to warn against the real danger of dead orthodoxy. It is possible to grow up in a Christian home, get baptized as an infant, get catechized, join the church, take the Lord’s Supper, be a part of a church your whole life and not be a Christian. It is possible to grow up in an Old World model where you inherit a church tradition (often along ethnic lines), and stay in that church tradition, but be spiritually dead. There are plenty of students at Hope College and Calvin College (just to name two schools from my tradition) who are thoroughly confessional as a matter of form, but not converted.

I have no hesitation in commending confessionalism. My concern is that pietism–with its private Bible study, small group prayer, insistence on conversion, and the cultivation of “heart” religion–is frequently set against confessionalism. For example, Hart agues, “Confessional Protestantism invites another way of evaluating the making of believers. Its history demonstrates the importance of inheritance and the way that believers appropriate faith over a lifetime through the sustained ministry and counsel of pastors as opposed to the momentary crisis induced by the itinerant evangelist or the pressures of sitting around a fire at summer camp” (184). I like the first sentence, but why so negatively caricature the work of itinerant evangelists and the real conversions that may come at summer camp? I could be misreading Hart. Maybe he has no problem with any of these things. But when he says, “the central struggle throughout Protestantism’s history has been between confessionalism and pietism, not evangelicalism and liberalism” (183), I worry that committed Presbyterians will steer clear of anything that gets painted with a broad brush as “pietism.”

A Confessionalism with Deep Piety

We all feel and respond to different dangers (for example, see Ligon Duncan’s post and William Evans’ post, both of which I like). No doubt, revivalistic, hyper-experiential, adoctrinal, deeds-not-creeds, tell-me-the-exact-moment-you-were-born-again, go-conquer-the-world-for-Christ Christianity has a load of problems. If that’s pietism, then I want no part of it.

But I want a certain kind of confessionalism. I want a confessionalism that believes in Spirit-given revival, welcomes deep affections, affirms truth-driven experience, and understands that the best creeds should result in the best deeds. I want a confessionalism that believes in the institutional church and expects our Christian faith to impact what we do in the world and how we do it. I want a confessionalism that is not ashamed to speak of conversion—dramatic conversion for some, unnoticed conversion for many.

I want a confessionalism that preaches and practices deep piety. Whether this is labeled “pietism” or just part of our rich confessional tradition doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that we have ministers and parishioners who realize there is an external and internal dimension to the faith. I want Christians to know that going to church, hearing the word, reciting the creeds, singing the hymns, and partaking of the sacraments is not peripheral to the Christian life; it our lifeblood. And I also want Christians who do all those things every week to pray in “their closets,” look for opportunities to share the gospel with the lost, submit to Christ’s lordship in every area of life, and understand that true faith is not only a knowledge and conviction that everything God reveals in his Word is true; it is also a deep-rooted assurance” that not only others, but they too “have been made forever right with God, and have been granted salvation” (Heidelberg Catechism Q/A 21).

Okay, I can’t resist one quick comment. Why does piety have to be “deep”? I understand that deep piety is good, and better than shallow piety. But what company makes the piety meter to detect whether it is deep or shallow? And what about those days when my piety is shallow? Am I less elect or justified? In other words, the word “deep” encourages an interest in me, not the gospel or God’s saving work.

This is not a reason to say, let’s have more shallow piety. But it may be a reason to be careful about the words we use lest we fall prey to the pride of thinking our own piety is deep. You’d think that folks who desire God and his glory might see how their piety standards nurture desires less theocentric and glorious.