{"id":979,"date":"2009-01-12T10:39:05","date_gmt":"2009-01-12T10:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/driscoll.html"},"modified":"2009-01-12T10:39:05","modified_gmt":"2009-01-12T10:39:05","slug":"driscoll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/driscoll.html","title":{"rendered":"Driscoll"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s been chatter about the NTTimes mag’s profile of Mark Driscoll of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church<\/a>.
\nThe interesting thing about the profile, to me, is that the writer actually tries to take a look at Driscoll’s theology rather than simply focusing on the sexier angles of megachurch marketing, Driscoll’s hypermasculine schtick and, well, sex.
\nDriscoll, who left Catholicism in his late teens, is a Calvinist, and the article explores the recent resurgence of Calvinism and some of its younger adherents. The piece is a really decent attempt to try to figure out the appeal of what Driscoll has been doing in Seattle – how the casual environment of Mars Hill, the strict Calvinism and the preaching of traditional gender roles has been such a success in Seattle, one of the most unchurched cities inAmerica, and one of the most politically and socially liberal.
\nAnthony Sacramone, who has done his time among the Calvinists, frames the piece very helpfully here. <\/a><\/p>\n

Wait \u2014 it gets worse. Not only are the majority of people doomed to an eternity of torment, but sometimes God will \u201cawaken\u201d a defective faith, \u201can inferior working of the Spirit,\u201d in unsuspecting individuals, for the sheer purpose of faking them out into thinking God loves them and that Jesus died for them when, in fact, His Holy Wrath abides on them.
\nYeah, that\u2019ll preach.
\nBut, strangely, it does. Driscoll\u2019s robust congregation is proof of that. I was swayed by it, once upon a time, becoming a member of Tim Keller\u2019s Redeemer Presbyterian in New York (although Keller doesn\u2019t sell the election part all that hard). Why? Because Calvinists believe they\u2019re in<\/em>. As in the Kingdom<\/em>. Of Heaven<\/em>. And if you\u2019re in \u2014 you can\u2019t get out. So all is good. For you. There\u2019s certainty in an uncertain world. Yes, there may be those who only think<\/em> they\u2019re in when they\u2019re, in fact, not, but they\u2019re all out there<\/em> somewhere. Not in here, in my heart, with me.
\nIt should also be noted that the craftiest of Calvinist preachers keep certain unpleasantnesses to themselves, so as to lead you to believe that you, too, can be in. Perhaps the greatest, or at least the most winsome, example of a crafty Reformed preacher was the 19th century English Baptist C.I. Spurgeon, who softened the election blow by maintaining that any attraction to the Gospel you experienced was evidence of the Spirit of God drawing you. And as God finishes what he starts in the human heart, you could rest easily about your own eternal destiny.
\nsnip<\/em>
\nThere have been many great Christians who have flown the Calvinist banner: John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, George Whitfield, the aforementioned Jonathan Edwards \u2014 great preachers of Christ as Lord and Savior and great hymn writers. (A study should be done, though, on the relation of Calvinist theology and missions, or Calvinist theology and charity\/work among the poor.) But I ended my sojourn among the Calvinists because their view of justification is not so much \u201cby faith alone\u201d as it is \u201cby luck alone.\u201d
\nAnd good luck with that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mark Driscoll’s blog is here – a recent controversial post is near the bottom in which he reflects on the low attendance on a recent snowy Sunday. <\/a>That provoked much reaction in the blogosphere. Of more interest to me is his new series on “Vintage Saints” which includes simple, direct and uncritical entries on St. Nicholas and…Thomas Aquinas. Say what?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s been chatter about the NTTimes mag’s profile of Mark Driscoll of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church. The interesting thing about the profile, to me, is that the writer actually tries to take a look at Driscoll’s theology rather than simply focusing on the sexier angles of megachurch marketing, Driscoll’s hypermasculine schtick and, well, sex. Driscoll,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nDriscoll - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/driscoll.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Driscoll - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There’s been chatter about the NTTimes mag’s profile of Mark Driscoll of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church. The interesting thing about the profile, to me, is that the writer actually tries to take a look at Driscoll’s theology rather than simply focusing on the sexier angles of megachurch marketing, Driscoll’s hypermasculine schtick and, well, sex. Driscoll,…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/driscoll.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-12T10:39:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Driscoll - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2009\/01\/driscoll.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Driscoll - Via Media","og_description":"There’s been chatter about the NTTimes mag’s profile of Mark Driscoll of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}