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Not long after I began working as an editor for Christianity Today in 2004, the emerging church began to sweep through evangelicalism. Our editorial staff tended to view this youthful stirring with appropriate skepticism, wondering about the implications of altering theology to reach postmodern cultures. Still, writers such as Brian McLaren sold thousands of books packed with provocative critiques of modern evangelicalism. It was clear that McLaren and others had struck a nerve.

Relativistic Breakdown

But as a recent college graduate, I didn’t know anyone who was reading McLaren, even though my friends and I had recently experienced the fruits of postmodern relativism. We witnessed the complete breakdown of moral authority and heard apathetic responses to Christian truth claims when we shared the gospel. Yet we attributed these reactions not to problems with Christianity but to sinners who reject God’s grace shown through Jesus Christ.

Reformation Fever

If anything, in my limited sphere, I had seen a return to traditional Reformed theology. My friends read John Piper’s book Desiring God and learned from Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology. They wanted to study at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and sent each other e-mails when they saw good sales for the five-volume set of Charles Spurgeon sermons. Maybe that was just our little clique in Campus Crusade for Christ at Northwestern University.

Or was it? I started thinking about leading seminaries in the United States and noticed a number of Calvinists in leadership positions. I considered millions of books sold by Piper and yearly appearances he made for the popular Passion conference. Yale University Press had just released a major biography of Jonathan Edwards. Reformed theology had recently become a major point of contention in the nation’s largest Protestant body, the Southern Baptist Convention. Maybe it wasn’t just our group.

Reformed Resurgence

So I embarked on a nearly two-year journey to discover whether my experiences had been unusual or a sign of something bigger. In locales as diverse as Birmingham, Alabama, and Seattle, Washington, I visited trend-setting churches and asked young evangelicals what makes them tick. These travels provided fodder for my book Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists. I saw how these churches faithfully proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, week after week, through tragedy and triumph. Culture has conspired to give their message a wider audience. Desire for transcendence, tradition, and transformation among young evangelicals has contributed to a Reformed resurgence

To be continued.

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