Neo-Calvinism and piety

The relationship between neo-Calvinism and piety has been much on a number of younger minds of late. Most recently James Brink and Rob Joustra have written on this, and it came up during my lengthy conversation with Mr. Joustra last month on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. In the course of the latter we discovered that Mr. Joustra and I come to the question from almost precisely opposite directions. Let me tell something of my own journey.

Three decades ago I was an undergraduate student at Bethel College, north of St. Paul, Minnesota. Bethel is associated with a baptist denomination with roots in what its members delight in describing as Swedish Pietism. At the time I had little understanding of what this meant, but in the course of my studies I came up against the limits of pietism. At Bethel there was a pronounced emphasis on cultivating a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This is, of course, all well and good. I myself was raised by devout Christian parents, and my mother's deep piety in particular had a profound impact on my growth in the knowledge of God and his ways. From her I learned to listen for God's voice and to try to conform my will to his in everything. The knowledge of Jesus Christ she communicated to me was definitely heart- and not just head-knowledge. No dry formal faith from her.

But at Bethel I had difficulty seeing what implications this personal relationship was supposed to have for the way we live our lives, besides telling others the good news and avoiding a number of proscribed practices such as tobacco, alcoholic beverages (but not caffeine!), euchre cards and dancing. In chapel services and on other occasions, I would hear people speak of what they called "full-time christian service" as opposed to presumably "secular" occupations. The implicit assumption was that in some lines of work one is serving God to a greater extent than in others. Ministers, missionaries, church youth workers, and so forth, were seen to be serving God "full-time," whereas farmers, labourers, lawyers, businessmen, statesmen, and others, were in "secular" work in which they were serving God to a lesser extent, if at all.

Some, of course, tried to salvage this approach by asserting that even labourers and businessmen were called to engage in evangelism, that is, to witness to their colleagues and try to win them for Christ. Such witnessing would presumably sanctify such occupations, but without addressing any of the central issues intrinsic to the occupations themselves. Those articulating this strategy still accepted the division between "sacred" and "secular" occupations, the latter of which were recognized to have worth only insofar as they were made serviceable to the overriding goal of personal evangelism.

My second year at Bethel I came into contact with neo-Calvinism, primarily through a fellow student who introduced to me writings associated with the Institute for Christian Studies and the old Wedge Publishing Foundation in Toronto. Years later I can see that not all of this literature was of uniformly high quality. Yet it opened up to me a way of looking at the world that was more integral than the openly dualistic form of pietism I had found at Bethel. It was the beginning of a journey that would lead me to what I am doing now.

Where did this take me with respect to the genuine piety I had inherited from my mother? My mother was not and is not a neo-Calvinist -- although my parents have become inadvertent disseminators of the neo-Calvinist vision insofar as they have given my book to friends and acquaintances, some of whom are not even Christians. For a while I found it difficult to pray, but this was due not so much to anything found in neo-Calvinism as to a reaction against pietism magnified by my own youthful pride.

Later, when I came to understand that there is a legitimate place for genuine piety, I began to look in more than one direction, all of which affirmed the primacy of Scripture. I've written before about my discovery of the Daily Office and of the liturgical use of the Psalms. Together these shaped my piety in my adult years. Where neo-Calvinism has played a role, however, is in cultivating a creation-affirming rather than a creation-denying piety. There is a hymn we used to sing in the Baptist church where I spent my teen years:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

Apart from the fact that the visual metaphor doesn't make sense -- why on earth would anything turn dim in the light of Jesus? -- it bespeaks a form of piety that calls us to flee the world rather than to live obediently within it. I cannot help contrasting this refrain to Psalm 119:105: "Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." The emphasis here is obviously far different.

But what of those for whom an emphasis on cultural engagement is a substitute for a deep life of piety? This is the concern expressed by Mr. Joustra and the already much missed Graham Ware. When I was living in Toronto, I was friends with a young married couple one of whom was studying at the ICS. They were no longer in the habit of attending church, implicitly assuming that cultural engagement and the affirmation of creation were somehow adequate substitutes for the weekly assembly of believers to hear the word and receive the sacraments. I could not understand the logic of this, although I never tried to argue the point with them. Here it seems to me that Augustine offers a more balanced perspective: We do not flee creation, nor do we cease to love created things. We simply love things ordinately while loving their Creator all the more. Cultural engagement is not a substitute for attending to prayer, the reading and hearing of the Word, and the reception of the sacraments. Mere activism without a solidly grounded piety is likely to degenerate into mere busyness -- and possibly even works righteousness, which is the death of true faith.

Pietism -- like any other -ism -- is an exaggerated emphasis on personal piety to the exclusion of much of the fulness of the rest of life. Yet much as the ideology of liberalism does not itself negate the legitimacy of individual liberty, so the excesses of pietism cannot obviate the need for cultivating a heartfelt personal relationship with our Creator and Redeemer. Pietism, no. But piety, definitely yes: a piety capable of encompassing the entire life of obedience before God and our fellow human beings.