Why I haven't left

How have you not lost your faith?

I get this question fairly often, given my line of work.

The short answer isn’t hard. The authoritarian movement I track is not—or at least not precisely—the faith I embraced decades ago. At best, I existed on the edges of evangelicalism. “Evangelical adjacent” is probably more accurate. I grew up in the Reformed tradition, in a small town in Iowa, the daughter of a Dutch immigrant. Billy Graham, Bob Jones, Bill Gothard—I never heard of any of these guys growing up. (I did listen to Amy Grant, but that’s about as far as my evangelical credentials go.)

That’s a little too easy, however.

The version of the Reformed tradition I embraced was one oriented toward social justice. It was one that championed Kuyper’s “every square inch” but not (as far as I knew) in a dominionist sense. It was more of a grassroots, “salt-and-light” kind of thing, a call to seek justice and work toward Shalom—the flourishing of all of creation. That said, others working in the same tradition took Kuyperianism in a more dominionist direction. Cornelius Van Til, a Calvin grad, was instrumental in shaping the work of R. J. Rushdoony, whose Christian Reconstructionism influenced the likes of Doug Wilson and the 7 Mountain Mandate. Abandoning the concept of common grace and the humility that should characterize any Calvinist theology, those taking Reformed Christianity in this direction are nevertheless heirs to the same tradition. From time to time I take some heat on social media from Calvinists of this ilk. My version of Calvinism is “insipid,” they say. Or I’m not a real Calvinist, and also not a real Christian. I don’t take offense. Maybe I am the bad Calvinist. I’m certainly not eager to claim the title, given its current brand. Or, maybe they are.

But if I am a bad Calvinist, I know I’m in good company. Because in my day-to-day world, most of the people I interact with are the same kind of bad Calvinists. Calvin University is full of them. So is my church, as you might have noticed from some of the sermons I share here. This morning at church, during announcements, one of our members shared that another of our members was featured this morning in the New York Times.

Pete Wehner published a wide-ranging interview of Nick Wolsterstorff in the Sunday Times. Nick and his wife Claire are both lovely people and longtime members of our church. As a Christian philosopher with a world-class reputation, Nick is certainly one of the more thoughtful members, but he’s also not unique. Just like I’m not unique in these spaces. This faith community has always understood the life of the mind as something that enhances one’s faith, rather than something in conflict with religious devotion. As one Reformed author put it, a deep and wide-ranging education gives you more to be Christian with.

It his conversation with Wehner, Nick talks about how he fell in love with philosophy decades ago as an undergraduate student at Calvin College. Here’s just a little glimpse of the conversation, but it’s well worth reading in full:

As a philosopher, does the fact that faith is intrinsically transrational leave you at all uneasy, or does faith being above and beyond the rational somehow make it more appealing to you, if perhaps somewhat more mysterious?

For a philosopher, the problem there is what we mean by “rational.” For me, faith is not — I prefer not to think in terms of rationality here. What would we mean by “rationality”? Am I entitled to one faith? Is it responsible on my part? Traditionally, rationality was tied up with arguments, as I mentioned before. Most philosophers now would concede that I don’t need an argument for saying that. You know, I’m looking outside and seeing a pond. I don’t need an argument for that. For our perceptual beliefs, we don’t need arguments. We just look.

And most philosophers nowadays concede, I think, that the same is true for fundamental religious beliefs. They arise within us upon reflecting on the extraordinary immensity and complexity and richness of this world in the midst of which we live.

Let me move to the Incarnation. We’ll go from one large topic to another.

You’re not into small questions.

Well, when I talk to Nick Wolterstorff, small questions aren’t the ones that I’m interested in.

Judaism believes God can never be represented in human form. Christianity has a different view. What do you find compelling about the idea of God not only taking human form, not only intervening in history, but also experiencing great suffering? It was a kind of transvaluation of values, a profoundly revolutionary concept.

The fundamental transmutation of values is both that God became part of our history, part of our humanity, but did so not by being a king, a potentate, but by being a child, impoverished, poor, maligned and so forth. Now, some of that was, of course, anticipated in the Hebrew Bible. God siding with the poor, the widows, the orphans, the aliens. When the Hebrew Bible writers talk about justice, it’s always what I call the quartet of the vulnerable: the widows, the orphans, the aliens and the impoverished. So when Jesus was born in a stable by people from this little hick town of Bethlehem, that’s in a deep way a continuation of a theme in the Hebrew Bible: God’s finding, God’s deepest concern, himself, in the vulnerability of human affairs.

And is that what’s most compelling to you?

As I mentioned before, I think I might, if I understand myself, I might have dismissed all of it as a problem if it were not for the Resurrection. That’s what is, for me, the anchor point of it all. And then I go back up from there, in the light of the Resurrection, and read the New Testament. It’s about God’s entrance into our history, in this particular way, with the downtrodden.

What’s powerful for you is not just God entering into history, but it’s entering history on the side of the downtrodden, the social outcast. It’s that kind of solidarity with people who the world itself has often turned against, the notion of the creator God having solidarity with the least of these.

That’s exactly it.

On Christianity and Politics

You’ve attempted to theorize a political theology. You wrote a book on it and several essays. You consider liberal democracy a pearl of great price. When you look at the role of American evangelicals and their role in politics today, especially during the last decade, what do you see as having gone wrong? What do you imagine Jesus would say in response to how American evangelicals practice politics today?

Let’s begin here: Government is a gift of God. It’s not of the devil or something that we wish we could get rid of or anything like that. But it’s something to be thankful for — when it doesn’t become a raging beast, of course, when it does what it’s supposed to do. And what it’s, above all, supposed to do, Psalm 72 says, and Paul says in Romans 13 and lots of other passages, is secure justice, that that’s the fundamental task of government, of the state.

So I begin there. I recently read a book that I found extremely illuminating by Benjamin Lynerd, called “Republican Theology.” It talks about some conservative attitudes toward government and the state over the last century or so. He quotes lots of figures and speeches and articles. And the theme that comes through over and over is not that the business of government is to secure justice in society but that the business of government is to secure individual liberty. What struck me in reading the book was that almost nothing is said about justice; it’s just the securing of individual liberty. And that for me, was an eye-opener.

Deep in the evangelical ethos, it seems to me, is: Get government off our back. Individual liberty is what the government should be doing, insofar as it does anything at all. And second, over the past 20 years, a deep nostalgia and resentment has entered into North American white evangelicals, a nostalgia for what supposedly once upon a time existed, when women stayed at home and didn’t preach in church and there were no homosexuals that we knew about and men had good jobs and so forth. Nostalgia for that and resentment against those who they understand as having destroyed that way of life, like immigrants and college professors and the Chinese and things like that.

The origins of that populism are simply not biblical. So I would say that white North American evangelicals — let’s be specific — have strayed from the fundamental biblical conviction that government is understood to be a gift of God and its primary business is to secure justice in society. And then this haunting theme of the quartet of the vulnerable…

In reading Nick’s interview, I was reminded, too, of a letter I’d read last week from Toronto’s Institute for Christian Studies. I first learned of the ICS three decades ago, as an undergraduate at Dordt. We read several essays and books by professors there, and I still remember when Cal Seerveld came to campus. (In fact, his talk was so memorable that I’ll be citing it in my next book—and just last week, while sorting through old files, I stumbled across my detailed notes from that talk!) Then, several years back, I was asked to serve as an external member on ICS’s academic senate. I was honored to be asked but hesitated to say yes. I told them that they should probably know that I had a book coming out, and that there was a good chance it could be fairly…controversial. As an institution they should probably consider carefully whether they wanted to be associated with me in that way. If not, I would understand completely. Their response made my answer an easy yes: “Kristin, we know exactly what you do, and that is why we want you here.” I spent a couple of years in that role, and after I stepped down, I continued to stay connected. (Last spring I spoke there, and you can here coverage on that here at the CBC.)

The letter from the ICS was an open letter to the Christian Reformed Church, communicating its decision to sever ties with the denomination.

Here’s what it says, in full:

The Institute for Christian Studies (ICS) has a long and cherished history of holding space for conversations that truly matter. At ICS, facilitating difficult, respectful, and safe conversations about controversial matters is a task we are proud to undertake. We believe it is paramount to foster and defend spaces where Christians can, in good faith, disagree about matters of scriptural interpretation or about where the Holy Spirit is leading the Church today. We also believe that, in carefully preparing spaces for these difficult conversations, disagreements can take place in a spirit of communal fellowship and solidarity. These disagreements can, in turn, ultimately become a means of growing in faith together.

Convicted by this spirit, we found our hearts broken as we watched and listened to the last several Synods of the CRCNA silence parishioners who oppose the CRCNA’s adoption of the Human Sexuality Report (HSR) and, by giving it doctrinal status, effectively expel all those whose Christian consciences call them to dissent from the HSR and its conclusions. Because of our concern for these persons as well as for the overall well-being of LGBTQ+ people in the church, we decided that we could not support a denomination that shuts down difficult conversations. For this reason, on January 15, 2025, the ICS Board of Trustees voted to discontinue ICS’s status as a Denominationally-Related Educational Institution of the CRCNA.

Our grief over the CRCNA’s decision stems from ICS’s deep roots in reformational Christianity. ICS’s founding members, several of them prominent CRCNA pastors, sought to create a “University for the People” that would impart a living reformational philosophical tradition as a gift and a call to every person. This tradition traces a ‘creation-fall-redemption’ ground motive through the narrative arc of Scripture, which teaches us that God in Christ is busy restoring a broken creation originally made good, and that, as humans, we are invited to participate in these healing and transformational efforts.

For us, the inclusion of sexual minorities is part and parcel of the healing and transformation God calls us to enact. Scripture gives many examples of God’s people dramatically reforming traditional positions in their efforts to be faithful to this same ethical call. In kindred spirit, we strive to honour the image of God in LGBTQ+ persons. We believe that, in so doing, we can both help end the needless harm inflicted on persecuted sexual minorities and affirm the blessings these
persons bring to the Church and wider society.

While our convictions compel us to take this step in faith, we do not believe that this decision marks the end of ICS’s role serving the reformed community. For years, many reformed congregations and parishioners have walked alongside us, debated with us, listened to us, and supported us. We still consider our institution to belong to these people. For this reason, we plan to expand our lifelong learning offerings to serve all those who seek a safe place to wrestle with their most pressing moral and spiritual questions.

All are welcome in this place.

Shalom,

Nick Wolterstorff wrote in support of the ICS’s decision, and you can read it here. It is a poignant letter.

I love that in addition to other letters of support, the ICS included a link to take an online course offered on Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible.

If you find this kind of Reformed thinking refreshing and want to support this community, there is no better time to donate to the ICS. There is so much money fueling a different way to be Christian right now. Even small gifts can make a real difference to dissident communities charting a different course.

(The link contains donation info for US and Canadian supporters.)

It’s letters like this, and words like Nick’s, that explain why I haven’t left. I like it here.