“Reformed Resurgence,” by Brad Vermurlen

Reformed Resurgence: The New Calvinist Movement and the Battle over American Evangelicalism
By Brad Vermurlen
Oxford University Press, 2020
304 pages (hardcover), $99.00

What is the health of Reformed Protestantism, and how do you administer the physical exam? Brad Vermurlen’s new book on the New Calvinist Movement (hereafter NCM) answers this question by looking at the influence of popular pastors and their networks (chiefly but not exclusively The Gospel Coalition). On his first page, Vermurlen asserts that “one of the biggest happenings in American Evangelicalism” is a groundswell of “commitment” to the thought of John Calvin. That is a remarkably specific assertion on two levels. What is a “commitment”? Since much of the book relies on analyzing social media, does such an intention involve spending more than ten minutes each day reading the tweets of the New Calvinists? Subscribing to their Patreon accounts? Going to The Gospel Coalition’s website three times each week? And what about narrowing Calvinism (not the preferred word among Reformed Protestants) to John Calvin? The book that gave New Calvinism an identity, Collin Hansen’s Young, Restless, and Reformed, used a graphic on a T-shirt that read Jonathan Edwards Is My Homeboy. Pointing out these discrepancies may seem nit-picky, but a book based on a dissertation in sociology invites expectations for precision.

The trick to understanding the NCM and its resurgence has less to do with actual institutions, influential figures, or website clicks. Instead, Vermurlen’s subject is the “perception of a religious movement.” “A lot of people” are talking about New Calvinism and for that reason it merits analysis. To justify his study, Vermurlen recounts the buzz the NCM generated since Collin Hansen’s 2006 article for Christianity Today. In 2009, New Calvinism was one of Time magazine’s “10 Ideas Changing the World.” By 2014, it had even caught the attention of writers for The New York Times. Mark Oppenheimer identified Mark Driscoll, John Piper, and Tim Keller as part of a “Calvinist revival.” That declaration may have set the agenda for Vermurlen’s research, since he embedded himself in Driscoll, Piper, and Keller’s congregations between 2012 and 2013. He also conducted interviews with evangelical leaders from its four “tribes”—New Calvinists, “progressives,” Neo-Anabaptists, and “mainstream.” His idea was to describe the NCM and locate it within the wider world of evangelical Protestantism.

The identity of the NCM is not confined to Driscoll’s, Piper’s, or Keller’s congregations but extends to the Acts 29 Network, Southern Baptist Seminary, The Gospel Coalition, Together for the Gospel, the Passion Conferences, Crossway publishers, and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. (The inclusion of Driscoll is a bit of a wrinkle since the Seattle pastor had to leave The Gospel Coalition and later rebranded himself. Vermurlen acknowledges this, but the book is based on research started before Driscoll’s controversy.) The specific identity of the NCM is hard to pinpoint since Vermurlen relies more on tendencies (complementarianism, continuing manifestations of the Holy Spirit, social conservatism) than theological definition. But when distinguishing the NCM from the neo-Calvinism of Dutch Reformed Protestantism, he asserts that the former stresses God’s sovereignty over salvation, while the latter emphasizes God’s rule over all of creation.

To compare the NCM to Kuyperianism points to an anomaly that haunts the book. How, for instance, do you account for Reformed resurgence without mentioning the influence of neo-Calvinists from Calvin College and Seminary, Francis Schaeffer (who popularized Kuyperian arguments), not to mention the popular speakers and pastors of the 1970s such as R. C. Sproul, James Montgomery Boice, John Gerstner, the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, or even the work of Michael S. Horton at the White Horse Inn, Christians United for Reformation, or the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals?

Vermurlen’s answer follows the science of his academic training—namely, sociology. This form of investigation leads to some of the more challenging chapters in the book, such as when he describes “a field-theoretic model of religious strength.” Nonacademic readers will find plenty of pages that are accessible, but the author’s intention to make a contribution to the sociology of religion also explains the sections that are rough going. The implement that Vermurlen selects from his sociological toolbox is field theory. Its categories allow him to conclude that New Calvinism emerged through “social processes of game-like contestation,” in which leaders battled with “their competitors for a more advantageous position in and over their field, which is defined by possession of symbolic capital and power.” This is a sociological way of saying that a “real powe struggle” is going on in evangelicalism and that the NCM arose to counteract unhealthy tendencies in the broader church world. Through social media and the influence of celebrity pastors, the NCM gained a higher level of visibility and became a competitor within American evangelicalism.

That may be a scientific explanation by the lights of sociology, but historical science indicates that figures like John Piper and Tim Keller emerged from an older Reformed resurgence. Those Reformed Protestants had an ambiguous relationship with the mainstream evangelicalism well before the NCM tapped frustration with the megachurch movement that older institutions such as Fuller Seminary, Wheaton College, or Christianity Today enabled. Prior to the neo-evangelical movement, J. Gresham Machen, Westminster Seminary, and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church forged ties to the Dutch Reformed world of Calvinism in Grand Rapids. For a time, the OPC and Christian Reformed Church even pursued church union with some vigor. These Calvinists were not anti-evangelical but remained aloof from evangelical institutions because they recognized significant disparities between born-again and Reformation Protestantism. With the formation of the Presbyterian Church in America (1972), another vehicle for Reformed resurgence surfaced. In turn, the PCA became a vehicle for the sort of Calvinism that Boyce, Sproul, and Gerstner made popular. It was also the home to Francis Schaeffer, who popularized Dutch Calvinist ideas (Kuyperianism) for non-Reformed evangelicals. Vermurlen pays little if any attention to these older forms of Calvinism, their critique of evangelicalism, or their influence on the NCM, which is important if only because Keller taught at Westminster and ministered in the PCA and Kevin DeYoung teaches at Reformed Seminary (Charlotte) and is also a PCA pastor. The world of conservative Protestantism would be different—evangelicalism included—if not for earlier Reformed expressions.

Of course, Reformed Resurgence is not designed to be history, but even without historical context Vermurlen’s analysis leaves the impression of seeing coherence where the data is actually variegated. The artificiality of the book becomes especially noticeable in chapter 6 where Vermurlen tries to prove the veracity of his model. From one angle, the NCM functions for the author as the Jordan Peterson of evangelicalism (not his analogy). It has positioned itself by “having clear, compelling, ‘black and white,’ answers to pressing ethical, social, existential, and doctrinal questions, and especially to young persons.” So too, the NCM promotes “traditional, conservative gender roles for both men and women, especially in light of feminism and the gender revolution.” Whether those assertions apply as much to Tim Keller as to John Piper is questionable, since the former has not been part of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. (Redeemer NYC has also taken the lead in permitting deaconesses as an official position in the congregation.) Furthermore, Vermurlen’s inclusion of Driscoll and James McDonald as part of the NCM undermines his case, since both authors ran afoul of their own churches and needed to break with The Gospel Coalition. The author also contends that the NCM is apolitical and nonpartisan, partly as a way to put daylight between its leaders and the Religious Right. But again, the intervening history since the election of Donald Trump forced Vermurlen to adjust the story. The Trump presidency prompted many NCMer’s to repudiate the Republican, a switch that should have forced Vermurlen to admit that although New Calvinists tried to be apolitical, the climate around the former POTUS would not allow them to remain so.

The author seems to understand the squishy nature of his findings. Toward the end of the book, he writes that the NCM’s strength is “strategically and relationally constructed” and “ontologically emergent.” To conclude that such strength is not real is a “mistake.” Every organization “is relationally constructed and ontologically emergent,” and that does not make “such things any less real or powerful.” Why? The field-theoretic model of religious strength says so. I am not so sure. In fact, the book reads like an author in search of an intellectual argument for writers he values and trends with which he identifies.[1]

The use of science to prove personal preference is not especially unusual—many scholars write on subjects with which they identify. Vermurlen’s looks especially orchestrated in light of alternative media phenomena. What if Vermurlen had compared the NCM to the influence of the Salem Radio Network, which includes full-time Christian broadcasting and conservative talk radio (from Hugh Hewitt to Dennis Praeger)? The Christianity Today podcast “Quick to Listen” hosted an interview with Mark Ward, a professor of communications at the University of Houston, to talk about Rush Limbaugh that turned into a jaw-dropping account of Salem Media Group’s presence. Not only does Salem provide nonstop voices (religious and political) on the radio, but it also produces educational materials for youth groups, Sunday school, childrearing, devotions, and even resources for churches that need pulpits, Communion tables, choir robes, and Communion cups. Ward remarked that Salem was its own kind of denomination, a one-stop shop for congregations that have no denominational home.[2]

This is something the NCM has also tried to be, especially through outlets like The Gospel Coalition. But when you compare the NCM to presences like Salem Media Group, you wonder why New Calvinist voices look so important. Maybe a Reformed Resurgence is the comforting thought that Reformed-ish evangelicals have about their place in a media landscape dominated by voices and outlets that pay them no attention. The NCM has been successful in promoting their notable preachers and writers within a certain sector of American Protestantism. But all of the sociological science that practitioners like Brad Vermurlen display cannot change the reality that NCM is a small presence in the big, vacuous, and unmanageable world of American Protestantism.

D. G. Hart teaches history at Hillsdale College and is the author of American Catholic: The Politics of Faith During the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2020).