The Biggest Evangelical Divide Is No Longer Between Wesleyans and Calvinists

It's between those who affirm creation and those who reject it

Just the other day I had the privilege of listening to my friend Ian Harber speak into the deconstruction movement at Brad Edward’s fantastic Post Everything podcast. It struck me afresh how deeply Ian and I agree on the deconstruction movement, as I found myself nodding my head nearly all the way through. Both of us think deconstructers are largely misunderstood. We both think a return to ancient faith is what young people are craving. We both see very similar solutions to the problem, rooted in ancient faith and a renewed sense of mission. That’s probably because both of us have truly “deconstructed” our faith and left the church, then found renewal years into that process. The folks offering solutions to deconstruction these days tend to treat the movement like Thurl Ravenscroft treats the Grinch: “I wouldn’t touch you with a 39 1/2 foot pooooollLLLe” So, lots of grenades are launched and names are called, and there is very little reflection - or even repentance - for the ways we evangelicals in America have largely contributed to the deconstruction movement we see today. On these things, Ian and I are in lock-step.

I’ve had a similar experience with a ministry here in Indianapolis that equips people to think about their vocation through a theological lens called Circle City Fellowship. I had the great chance to connect with the organization’s leader, David Bell, about a year ago, and immediately I felt a kinship in the way we think about the church, our mission, and the ways the church needed to be equipped to demonstrate the gospel in a post-Christian culture. Since then, we’ve had the opportunity to share space and resources with this fantastic group, and it’s been an ideal partnership for both of us. Many of the things I do on Sunday mornings through our faith and work cohort at Redeemer are in lock-step with David’s organization.

One more encounter: many years ago, when I first began in ministry, I was part of a church that was adamant about some of the core tenants of Calvinism: once saved, always saved, total depravity, God’s election, etc. To say my time working for this “church” (I say “church” because the organization claimed a new way of reading the Bible that rejected anything the church had taught before, including belief that baptizing people was a sinful misunderstanding of the gospel…yikes!) was a horrible experience would be an understatement. Abuse in the church was rampant. We were surrounded by low-income families, and when I’d suggest more holistic care for the 60+ students coming to our ministry, the pastor glibly dismissed this as a non-spiritual task. “Our job is to get kids in here and get em’ saved, not do a bunch of social projects for them. Stick to your job.” That’s what I was told. At the end of every church service, we’d sing the same song together: “I’ll fly away.” Soon, it became clear to me that being on staff at this cult was a violation of my conscience, and we had to leave.

Why do I bring these three encounters together? Because of this: I’m an ordained pastor in a reformed denomination. I don’t like the label, but if you want to call me a “Calvinist”, you certainly could (though if you’re going to choose a name, I’d prefer “Augustinian”!) Ian and David - the two men I feel so much kinship with - would not call themselves “reformed” in their theological perspective. The cult I was a part of, however, would have.

I think these three encounters I’ve had illustrate something that I think is true of evangelicalism on the whole. The largest divide between evangelicals, these days, isn’t over issues of soteriology (or how God does or doesn’t elect people to salvation and the mechanics of all that). Those are important issues, but I’ve found over the years those particular issues tend not to impact the church’s ethics and mission so much as people might think they do, except for in extreme articulations (pelagianism or hyper-Calvinism). The bigger, further divide, I find, is this: it’s between Christians who believe Jesus is calling us to escape creation, and Christians who believe Jesus has come to redeem creation. These two beliefs, far more than soteriology, will shape a church - and an individual’s - vision for what it means to follow Jesus. And I’ve found over the past ten years, the reformed view of the creation covenant and mandate to “be fruitful, fill the earth and subdue it” has increased well outside of circles that may call themselves reformed. The huge proliferation of “non-reformed” faith and work movements is one way we see that. The Bible Project’s massive success is another evidence for the reformed hermeneutic taking hold, whilst spending hardly any time on issues of election. As a result, the gap between my understanding of Jesus’ work and that of these institutions tend to be much thinner these days.

My friends Ian and David firmly believe that Jesus has come to renew creation. To me, that has always been the heart of reformed theology: the belief that God’s work of creation, the cultural mandate, and the covenantal promise of Genesis 3 are not ABANDONED by the New Testament, but FULFILLED in the New Testament. For me, what compelled me toward the reformed faith was this covenantal view of the Bible: the belief that the Bible is one story, leading to Jesus, and that Jesus fulfills God’s original intent of a good, created (and resurrected) world at the end. David, Ian and I agree wholeheartedly on this point, which is why our sense of what Jesus is up to in the church is so similar (I’d tell them both that they’re more reformed than they’d like to believe in that way, but hey, you can’t win em’ all). The cult I worked for, on the other hand, explicitly rejected the goodness of creation. The cult taught very explicitly that our world was a sinking ship, and that Jesus has come to help us “fly away” from the created order to go to a purely spiritual realm called heaven. This enabled the cult to perpetuate abuse, injustice and cruelty, all in the name of “getting people saved”. And while this is surely an extreme example of escapist theology, I think it is a highly consistent version of escapist theology: if it’s true that Jesus does not care about our bodies, or the earth, or the culture around us, we SHOULD reject these things or abuse them in order to “get people saved”.

Now, just to be clear: belief in Jesus’ renewal of creation isn’t the only dividing line in evangelicalism. For example, if someone believes Jesus is renewing creation, but denies the atonement or the need for personal salvation, I’d have just as little in common with this person as the cult church. But at least in my circles, I see the escapist evangelical perspective to be far more pervasive. In fact, I’d say the gospel of escape (or the Gnostic gospel) is the gospel most evangelicals in America assume. And that gospel of escape has far more bearing on how we live (or don’t!) for Jesus in our day to day lives.

Give me a pro-creational Wesleyan any day over that.