RSSShall the Reformed Rockers Win?
American Reformed Christians have weathered a number of challenges in recent years, from Federal Vision to Ancient Near Eastern literature. Underneath the responses to those difficulties simmers a deeper question about how Reformed someone needs to be in order to be Reformed. Some refuse cooperation (at least ecclesiastically) with non-Reformed, others are willing to work around ecclesial restrictions to find common ground with evangelicals and other conservative Protestants (except Lutherans, of course).
My sense is that these dispositions among conservative Reformed Christians go to a deeper tension, one that John Frame seems to notice in his recent book on Christian ethics. He observes that Reformed Christianity has developed a reputation as a smoker’s movement. “Some understand a discussion among Reformed theologians,” he writes, “to be incomplete without cigars, pipes and cigarettes.” Frame cautions against this kind of Reformed identity with the heavy hand of mortality. “Some of the men I’ve know who have been most insistent on their freedom to smoke have died of emphysema and lung cancer.”
What Frame has failed to notice is that within another sector Reformed Christianity has become synonymous with classic rock ‘n roll of the 1970s. In those circles the discussion of Reformed theology seems to be incomplete without references to The Who or The Boss. And where the Reformed smokers tend to be unwilling to cooperate with non-Reformed, Reformed rockers have shown greater willingness to work with evangelicals. Could it be that a person’s attachment to certain forms of leisure activity affects his understanding of the Reformed faith?
The answer is unclear, but to paraphrase Garrison Keillor on non-smokers living longer but living dumber, Reformed smokers may not live as long as Reformed rockers, but at least smokers can hear.
R. Scott Clark
August 30th, 2008 at 10:47 am
DG,
Don’t you mean the Reformed “soft” rockers?
After all “Shine, Jesus Shine” has more in common with “Lost in Love” than it does with Who’s Next? or the Badlands. I think the Reformed Rockers would sit down for a smoke with you, wouldn’t they? They might not be able to hear you well and it’s an open question as to what they might be smoking, but they would smoke wouldn’t they?
What puzzles me about the soft-rock, worship chorus singing lot, is that they are so latitudinarian about the 2nd commandment and so legalistic where there is no commandment.
Reformed Smokers, Rockers, and Air Supply « Heidelblog
August 30th, 2008 at 10:53 am
[...] 30, 2008 in Uncategorized DG takes the occasion of a comment by John Frame about smoking to lauch a salvo against “Reformed [...]
Zrim
August 30th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
As a 20-year-newbie to Christianity, an even newer newbie to American evangelicalism and an even newer newbie to American Reformed and Presbyterian religion, I always feel remiss to pass up commenting on what a chuckle I get from this back and forth on substance use. If one isn’t busy showing his piety by his cleanliness another is doing so by his liberty. I tend to prefer the approach I experienced last week at a family reunion with Birmingham WASPs and Wixom Catholics where all sorts of liquids were flowing–even, gasp, O’Douls and Diet Coke. The music was so-so.
When it comes to “forms of leisure,” sorry, give me the WASPs and Catholics; when it comes to getting from this world to the next still give me a Presbyterian, but most preferrably the one smoking.
D Hart
August 31st, 2008 at 7:44 am
Scott, you know the guys who blog at the site representing some of the most conservative thinkers in the PCA. At least Frame had the sense not to promote the Rolling Stones.