About a month ago there was an article by Molly Worthen in the NY Times Magazine on Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill, and the new wave of Calvinism that is enjoying a great deal of popularity among young evangelicals in recent times. Although I am inclined to appreciate any criticism of such an enormous clown as Driscoll, the faux-objectivity of Ms. Worthen’s piece is too frustrating to let pass without comment. Ultimately, the article does nothing to help the reader understand Calvinism, Evangelicalism, or the nature of Driscoll’s appeal. Rather, it serves basic function of most NYT interest articles: to make the reader feel good about being a liberal, enlightened reader of the New York Times.
Worthen makes short work of Driscoll, who has become such an over-stretched caricature of himself that the reporter need exert little effort in order to make him look ridiculous. What with his designer-distressed jeans, occassional cuss-word, and did-I-mention-I-beat-up-people-in-bar-fights-before-I-was-a-Christian-so-watch-out-I’m-a-tough-guy image.
The troubling thing about the article is how Worthen makes a hardly subtle attempt to trace the genesis of Driscoll’s assholery to his embrace of Calvinism, rather than the many other possible explanations, like the cultural type of the machismoed fundamentalist Billy Sunday and the like. Here she makes the connection clear:
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.
As if Calvin invented the hierarchical authority structure! The problem with this is threefold:
1. Worthen is mistaken about the facts of Calvin’s treatment of heretics. In fact, there was only one, not many, heretic hanged on his watch. His name was Michael Servetus, whose crime, in short, was advocating and non-trinitarian doctrine of God. Calvin did not hunt down Servetus out of the blue: Servetus was, in fact, an escaped prisoner from France, having been sentenced to execution by the Catholic Inquisition (an institution which must certainly have learned its authoritarianism from Calvin!). He foolishly made a stop in Geneva on his way to Italy, and hearing of it, Calvin did notify the Genevan authorities to have them arrest him, but the sentencing and execution of Servetus had nothing to do with Calvin.
2. Worthen’s understanding of Calvinism is historically naîve. If it is the case that western social structures were universally authoritarian (which they were), then it cannot be said that Calvin’s authoritarianism (which was hardly notable, given the context) derived in any sense from the particularities of his doctrine. You cannot blame a 16th century man for being authoritarian. (You can only credit a 16th century man for being an Anabaptist!)
3. Worthen commits a horrendous fallacy by deducing that since (a) Driscoll is a Calvinist and (b) Driscoll is authoritarian, therefore (c) Calvinism must necessarily engender authoritarianism. It’s hardly necessary to point out that this syllogism depends on factors that Worthen does not, and I suspect cannot prove: first that what theology Driscoll is influenced by is actually a faithful interpretation of Calvin (for this she would need to know something about Calvin), and second, that there are not other factors contributing to Driscoll’s authoritarianism (which, clearly, there are, making Worthen’s blindness to them rather inexplicable). In regards to the first point, even a brief perusal of Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Ordinances would make it clear that Driscoll’s mode of church governance is not influenced by Calvin’s in the slightest.
Ultimately, Worthen is simply a shining example of what Marilynne Robinson lampooned so cogently in her essay on Calvinism in The Death of Adam:
The way we speak and think of the Puritans seems to me a serviceable model for important aspects of the phenomenon we call Puritanism. Very simply, it is a great example of our collective eagerness to disparage without knowledge or information about the thing disparaged, when the reward is the pleasure of sharing an attitude one knows is socially approved.
[...] Molly Worthen has Never Read Calvin [...]