Hi Ron:

I’m glad to have you for my ideal reader because the stuff I’m discussing in this series can get very heavy and abstract. Having a real—and friendly—person in my mind’s eye helps me stay clear and down to earth, I hope! 

Plus it gives me an excuse to use the informal language of “we,” “us,” and “ours” in discussing things Christian Reformed. That idiom might put off “outsiders,” but it just seems to serve better than the formal labels of bureaucracy or sociology. Non-Christian-Reformed folk: you’re most welcome to look in on the peculiarities of a tribe with no sense of superiority or privilege implied. Perhaps the opposite….

We’re reflecting on the good elements—the “virtuous baggage”—that those of us being force-marched out of the CRC might take along into whatever new church affiliation we might enter. Last time I discussed the best side of classic CRC piety—communal, God-centered, most memorably expressed in congregational singing. Today I’d like to move on to the next three traits my circle of thirty-some informants value in their CRC heritage: (1) a holistic sense of God’s redemption and the Christian’s calling, (2) a high esteem for education and the life of the mind, and (3) a robust confessional theology. 

Holistic Redemption, Holistic Calling 

The breadth of God’s redemption and the Christian’s calling should have been pretty clear to good Bible-believing CRC folk: Paul in Colossians 1:15-20 says that God through Christ is reconciling “all things” to himself and further, in 2 Corinthians 5:18-20, that we are to be “ambassadors” of that project.

In the early twentieth century, however, when Dutch immigrants were entering deeper into the American mix, that scope seemed suspect, particularly when it involved socio-economic arrangements. It smacked of that dread beast, the Social Gospel. Then-champion revivalist Billy Sunday put it with characteristic charm: salvation meant being born again, not “that godless social service nonsense.” The attitude prevailed among Fundamentalists and evangelicals for generations to come. 

Since CRC leaders regarded those parties as “our erring cousins,” as opposed to “the Modernists” who were “our enemies” and with whom the Social Gospel was associated, it took some courage and tenacity to row against the stream. Here Abraham Kuyper came to the rescue: solidly orthodox, equipped with distinctively Christian theory and a wide array of practical applications, he put critical cultural engagement at the heart of the Christian—yea, verily the Calvinist—calling. A very broad engagement too, for as I pointed out last year, Kuyper saw Christ’s redemption involving the entire cosmos, not just Sunday’s scattered souls. Sound the “every square inch” mantra.

Thus when the emergencies of the 1960s came calling, the CRC’s rising generation had tools at hand to break out of the (selective) quietism of their elders. To break as well with the package of militarism, “free-market” individualism, patriarchy, and racism that was the once and future social gospel of those who denounced the Social Gospel. This progressive cadre has had a strong presence in CRC institutions until recently; now the empire has struck back with its own replay of the young and the restless. 

The Life of the Mind

Besides resources against world-flight, my respondents treasure the high value the CRC has typically accorded to the life of the mind. “Education, education, education,” one outside observer replied to my inquiry about the CRC’s merits. “Calvin College. Christian schools. Respect for intellect. Academic rigor.” Yes, the record shows some sneers against scholars who “study the age of the rocks without knowing the Rock of Ages,” but fewer than in many evangelical churches and many fewer than in American culture as a whole. 

Three virtues stand out in this category. First, capacious breadth again, an affirmation of the value of all fields and disciplines. Christian Reformed kids were not to learn just theology and ethics but science and mathematics, the social sciences and humanities. At my Christian school, one correspondent remembers, “we learned that language and literature are some of God’s great gifts to us. . . that a good mind is a great gift, and that critical thinking was a virtuous use” thereof. 

Another refrain, regularly repeated, stands out particularly in light of our endless culture wars now redoubled in the Trump regime’s assault on libraries, universities, and scientific agencies. “We learned not to be afraid of non-Christian thinkers and artists,” to ignore none of “the gifts that geniuses bring us” from whatever quarter. Rather, we were encouraged to trust that the roots growing out of an educated faith were strong enough to withstand contrary winds and provided nutriment enough to grow branches reaching up to the heavens and out to our neighbors. 

Thirdly, intellectual engagement has prime strategic value. Far from threatening faith it can strengthen it, says Calvin philosophy professor Jamie Smith, by engaging the rising generation in “courageous learning, academic freedom, and faith-fueled inquiry into our generation’s hardest questions,” thus also extending the gospel’s witness to a skeptical, yet searching world. For that very reason, Smith continues, Calvin needs to escape the restrictions that the denomination is threatening to impose on it. To be a Reformed Christian institution of any value it can no longer be Christian Reformed.  

Confessional Theology

Which puts this last “treasure” in a paradoxical light. It is after all on confessional grounds that the university lies under suspicion and congregations are being ousted. The CRC’s “Three Forms of Unity” actually create disunity, one veteran minister cried out at my church’s recent meeting about disaffiliation. (The results, btw: 199 yes, 2 no, 2 abstentions.) “They only come up when parties want to exclude or punish each other.” So, one might infer (the speaker did not necessarily mean), what good are they? 

Plenty good, my respondents seem to think—at least plenty good as they remember them functioning. Creeds, Catechism, and Confession conveyed to them the full body of Christian doctrine and connected the current church to the testimony of Christian reflection as it has come down over the ages. They elevate us above our personal penchants and parochial situations. They raise the questions of faith with which we must struggle, and provide a frame for understanding spiritual experience both within and beyond that struggle. They help make sense of the disparate sources and testimony in the Bible. 

Provided, as one correspondent reflects from his own experience, that they operate as “doors” that draw us “into community rather than walls that keep out those who were different or those that had questions.” My own model comes from Judaism: Torah complemented with Prophets and Writings with Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara supplying a body of commentary that prompts new engagement with the tradition in every generation. Not everybody agrees about every point, but they all circle around the same questions to make an old body of wisdom come alive again in the present moment.    

Given the recent use of the Reformed confessions as walls and guillotines, it’s possible that people might throw over the whole enterprise. It’s also possible that the better part of the practice might be recovered and renewed. But that will be the work of folks younger than you or me!

More next time. Thanks for reading!