Corrosive and Compromised Dominionism

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/faith-work-capitol-hill/

This article typifies what I think of when it comes to New Calvinism applied. This piece is run of the mill on The Gospel Coalition website and for them it's something to celebrate. For me, it's a cause for depression and it serves as a warning.

You will not understand the impulses behind their movement or my criticism of it unless you understand the key tenets of Dominionism which now is the dominant paradigm within Evangelicalism. The New Calvinism is some ways represents a super-charged intellectually robust expression of this and given the cultural angst within the Christian Right, perhaps it's no surprise that this Evangelical-friendly form of Calvinism is rapidly becoming a dominating force.

What strikes me when reading the article is that there's no sense of antithesis, no sense of being at war with the world and its system. If there is an oppositional world, it's merely the other political party. The idea that this world is wholly against us and that it's a burden to be here and that our longing is for our eternal home and the return of Christ is absent from their thinking. Rather than be burdened by trying to live within this wicked culture, they seem to largely flourish within it. Oh they have their struggles to be sure but they're not deep existential struggles, they tend to be superficial, practical, more concerned with how to re-frame what they're doing so that it can be 'redeemed' and deemed reconciliatory.

This flawed monistic view of the Kingdom has sacralised all of life and is no longer able to make any distinctions between Christian life and thought categories and those of the world.

It truly is a baptised worldliness on an order that exceeds even the hyper-sacralised Middle Ages. As I've written about elsewhere the old Confessionalism at least retained a modicum of the mundane and even Ultra-Sacralised Roman Catholicism still possesses degrees of nuance and retains parallel streams of thought which are able to differentiate between purely worldly pursuits and true piety.

The New Calvinism is unable to do this.

What I also see in this article is the feminism that is deeply ingrained in both Evangelicalism and its cousin...the New Calvinism. What is now celebrated as normative represents great ethical compromise and Biblical disobedience.

Also while I'm not so concerned with social or political conservatism, this movement represents a shift in this regard. These mostly Right-wing folks are not nearly as 'conservative' as they think they are. Their norms are not the norms of an older generation. They've been shaped by social changes (such as feminism and attitudes about money and lifestyle) which they will admit are anti-Christian... and they think they're resisting these impulses...  but they're only able to do this by moving the goalposts. So today's Evangelical anti-feminists were yesterday's feminists. The career Christian woman has become completely normative. They're not even aware that within my lifetime the idea of Christian career women was controversial... and rightly so.

Are they so myopic as to fail to understand that feminism has played a tremendous role in the destruction of family life? Of course not, they argue this very point. That's why they oppose feminism. But again, do they? Or have they just moved the goalposts?

It demonstrates that focusing on society for how to define these questions is a pretty unstable if not fruitless task.

What was meant to be a very touching story was to me an unmoving tale of Middle Class struggle. The author falls into a common caricature presenting opponents of their new theology as lazy, unengaged members of the Middle Class.

It's interesting because while I wouldn't accuse these folks of being lazy or unengaged I do believe that their values are profoundly Middle Class... so much so that they cannot even differentiate those very same values from the teaching of Scripture.

While this is presented as an example of Biblical Worldview standing strong I see these folks as already on the road to theological liberalism and the denial of Scriptural authority... on so many levels. Whether it's feminism, values, money or the doctrinal and ethical compromise required to engage in politics... this article is like a roadside billboard advertising an exit for apostasy. I'm supposed to be excited because this young career woman works for corrupt and evil politicians and is climbing the ladder? I'm supposed to be impressed because she's a Sarah Huckabee Sanders in training, learning to lie and spin the truth for political expediency?

And what kind of mother is this person going to be? I already know the answer. If she and the article's author really want to 'impact' the Kingdom they both should resign from their respected positions and expose the whole thing... the deceitful political system and the theological travesty that is The Gospel Coalition.

Culturally speaking the movement continues to fail. Their victories are pyrrhic and false and only attained through suicidal compromise. Looking at our society the movement has clearly failed as indeed it was destined to do. They would blame the 'other' Christians who haven't joined the movement. Of course I have yet to find them. I find people who are apathetic but I'm sad to report I rarely find anyone who conscientiously and Biblically rejects what they're doing.

I would argue they have failed because what they're doing is not honouring God and even their victories will in the end lead to the compromise and destruction of the Church. At best it will only produce a new type of cultural Christianity, a new type of corrupt Catholicism for the techno-industrial consumerist age.