What Attracts People into the Young, Restless, Reformed Movement?
That is probably the question I’m asked most often when I talk about
the “new Calvinism” that has swept up thousands of Christian young
people in the last twenty to thirty years. There’s no doubt this has
been and is a religious phenomenon. Most recently even the New York Times has taken notice; a few years ago Time
magazine mentioned it as one of ten great ideas changing the world.
Everyone seems to be talking about it even though it’s not exactly new.
I first became aware of the Young, Restless, Reformed Movement (YRRM)
before anyone thought to give it that moniker. I was teaching theology
at Baptist-related Bethel College and Seminary (now Bethel University)
in Minnesota. John Piper had left the faculty to take the pulpit at
nearby Bethlehem Baptist Church about a year before I arrived. He was
still much discussed by students and faculty alike and seemed to have
been a polarizing figure on campus. People tended either to love him or
despise him. I had read his article about “Christian Hedonism” in HIS
magazine (the now defunct publication of the InterVarsity Christian
Fellowship) before then and had met Piper when I first visited Bethel a
few years before joining its faculty. (I still have that article in my
files! I tore it out of the issue thinking maybe someday it would be
important to have. Little did I know….) Continue at Roger Olson
