Mark Driscoll, Calvinism and the Philistine Press

It's a good idea for evangelical Christians to occasionally get the perspective of observers on the outside, and there is arguably no vantage point farther outside the boundaries of Evangelical Christianity than the New York Times. Cal Thomas used to say that each day he tried to read the Bible and the NYT, just so he'd know "what both sides were up to."

So when on January 6th, the New York Times ran this piece on "young-restless-Reformed" pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, my interest was piqued.

Coastal media folks typically get a lot of things wrong about the beliefs, distinctions and defining characteristics of conservative Christians—those mysterious, anachronistic denizens of the great fly-over space between NY and the West Coast. Perhaps it was Driscoll's growing presence in the heart of a coastal Philistine stronghold that engendered this rare journalistic curiosity, I don't know.

Critics on the reformed and evangelical side will find things that writer Molly Worthen gets wrong. For example, the Calvinist/Armininian debate. I'm not really a Calvinist, but I do know that rooms full of theological volumes have been written to nuance, resolve and explain seeming contradictions within that theology. Worthen broadbrushes these and some other issues just a little.

What's more unsettling is the amount she gets right. Summarizing at the very end of the article:

Driscoll’s New Calvinism underscores a curious fact: the doctrine of total human depravity has always had a funny way of emboldening, rather than humbling, its adherents.

Now this could be taken in a couple of ways. It could be a compliment, it depends on what you mean by "embolden." Think of the (likely apocryphal) quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, "I would rather face 100,000 Italians coming from mass than 1000 Presbyterians rising from their knees." If my Calvin-informed sense of my own "depravity" produces greater humility and greater dependence upon God and leads to fearlessness in service of God and man, good. Humility and boldness are not necessarily at odds. On many levels Driscoll seems to represent that sort of refreshing audacity and courage. Good for him. If it stopped there, everything would be fine.

But Ms. Worthen perceives something else that has been haunting me for some time in regard to the new, young, reformed resurgence; something that the more mature influencers within the movement (Piper, Dever, Carson, MacArthur, Keller and others) desperately need to address. There is another sort of "boldness" that ought to give fellow observers pause. I tried to express it this way, on an earlier post back in May: (apologies for annoying self-quotation!)

...there may be as much to worry about among the young reformed reaction to Emergent. There is a troubling growth of not-very-reformed authoritarian chatter among some of them...Almost as if the right reaction against the emergent loss of scriptural authority is to assert your own authority. Yikes!

What I feared I was sensing in Driscoll and others was not lost on the New York Times (the essential facts, I think, are not disputed). Sometimes "...the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.":

Nowhere is the connection between Driscoll’s hypermasculinity and his Calvinist theology clearer than in his refusal to tolerate opposition at Mars Hill. The Reformed tradition’s resistance to compromise and emphasis on the purity of the worshipping community has always contained the seeds of authoritarianism: John Calvin had heretics burned at the stake and made a man who casually criticized him at a dinner party march through the streets of Geneva, kneeling at every intersection to beg forgiveness. Mars Hill is not 16th-century Geneva, but Driscoll has little patience for dissent. In 2007, two elders protested a plan to reorganize the church that, according to critics, consolidated power in the hands of Driscoll and his closest aides. Driscoll told the congregation that he asked advice on how to handle stubborn subordinates from a “mixed martial artist and Ultimate Fighter, good guy” who attends Mars Hill. “His answer was brilliant,” Driscoll reported. “He said, ‘I break their nose.’ ” When one of the renegade elders refused to repent, the church leadership ordered members to shun him. One member complained on an online message board and instantly found his membership privileges suspended. “They are sinning through questioning,” Driscoll preached. John Calvin couldn’t have said it better himself.

They are sinning through questioning? Yikes, indeed. This approach to church leadership has a rather pre-Reformation magisterial stridency about it to say the least! Very sad. I'm not worried about unconventional methods, blunt, even rough language (I like Luther, too) and in-your-face cultural relevance. I am worried about this.

Time for 95 theses on a very hip Seattle warehouse door?