Why did the CRC grow more conservative on human sexuality?

A 2½ hour discussion with Clay Libolt, Paul Vander Klay, and I on CRC culture, confessions, controversies, and history.

Last week, I joined Clay Libolt and Paul Vander Klay for a 2½ hour discussion about the CRC. We talked a lot about culture, confessions, controversies, history, and, of course, human sexuality.

You can find the full interview here:

Interview Notes:

• 0:00:00 - Introductions

• 0:07:32 - Kent finds out John Bolt and Clay Libolt met in a bar to talk about him in 2007

• 0:09:59 - Paul’s time at Madison Square CRC in the early 80s

• 0:12:05 - The origins of Clay’s blog and Kent’s Substack

• 0:18:59 - Confessionality and the HSR goes back to Synod 2016

• 0:20:22 - Women in office fights at Calvin Seminary in the 80s and the moderate consensus that it was not a confessional issue

• 0:25:37 - Clay on Calvin Seminary controversies in the 70s and 80s, James DeJong, John Kromminga, Carl Kromminga

• 0:27:53 - John Stek’s influence on Clay, other seminary faculty during this era

• 0:30:12 - The CRC was an extended family network in the 80s and 90s which made the women in office fights different

• 0:38:41 - Transitions at the edges of the CRC Circulatory System

• 0:40:10 - Denominational loyalty, “He’s one of us”

• 0:41:16 - Timothy Christian School and the Civil Rights movement

• 0:43:06 - The decline of the CRC circulatory system and the influence of evangelicalism

• 0:46:39 - “We come and we like it here, and then we hit a wall.” The wall was shared experience and background.

• 0:49:07 - How to make places like Walnut Creek CRC succeed

• 0:51:33 - What is the identity of the post-ethnic CRC? Less Kuyperian, more Young Restless Reformed.

• 0:53:01 - The CRC does not do theology anymore.

• 0:54:01 - Growing up in a sincerity culture in Lynden, Washington in the 1960s. “You were Christian Reformed because you were born Christian Reformed.”

• 0:55:50 - The encroachment of evangelical theology into Lynden’s CRC culture via Billy Graham.

• 0:56:01 - The beginnings of authenticity culture in the CRC came from the right. “You’re not really a Christian unless you’ve accepted Jesus into your heart.”

• 0:59:50 - The massive shift in the CRC from sincerity culture to authenticity culture: when people get upset, now they leave. This is why North County Christ the King is now the largest church in Lynden: it’s fully of ex-CRC people.

• 1:01:21 - The shift from authenticity culture to profilicity culture in the CRC. The presentation of who you are matters more than a felt, authentic experience of faith.

• 1:02:45 - The right wing of the CRC has seized upon profilicity culture and the left can’t figure it out. The CRC right today is very different than the conservative wing of the CRC during the 80s and 90s.

• 1:05:50 - Sincerity culture and profilicity culture have some things in culture.

• 1:07:44 - When Herb comes to Synod in overalls, is it profilicity?

• 1:09:40 - The mistake of Grand Rapids is not seeing the rise of profilicity culture at the margins of the CRC circulatory system.

• 1:10:12 - Comments on Kristin Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne and Paul’s problems with the book

• 1:12:55 - Calvin grads who return to the edges of the CRC Circulatory System don’t go to CRCs. The big question: what happened to the mainline?

• 1:17:10 - LGBTQ-related protests at Synod are profilicity, too. It’s not just happening on the right. The main issue is the collapse of the mainline.

• 1:19:53 - Mainline influence and posturing in the CRC develops initiatives that will backfire on them. “The affirming wing in the CRC is the oldest, whitest, boomerest area of the church!”

• 1:21:14 - How the RCA split

• 1:23:04 - “Almost all of the pathways by which the groups which are now in ascendance in the CRC — those doors were opened by the CRC Establishment in pursuit of the post-war Baby Boomer authenticity culture. The dramatic aspect of the story is that it was the CRC Establishment that set the table with the knives that are now being pointed back at them…. They built the guillotine that so many of their heads will roll from.”

• 1:29:32 - The ability of the right to use the internet to network and organize stopped the CRC’s multi-decade slow leftward drift and is contributing to the decline of the CRC Establishment.

• 1:31:21 - The right figured out how to leverage profilicity culture better than the left.

• 1:32:41 - Who is the CRC Establishment? Who is exercising leadership in the denomination anymore? It’s up for grabs, and the right is grabbing it.

• 1:34:37 - The effect of demographic change in the CRC.

• 1:37:44 - Paul: “The theology of the left has not borne fruit. in institutional Christianity.”

• 1:38:01 - Home Missions’ attempts to grow the denomination in the 80s and 90s.

• 1:39:49 - The CRC styles evangelical. Evangelicals come and notice something is off about how CRCs do church: they’re not really evangelical. That is a total failure of leadership in the denomination.

• 1:42:19 - Growing interest in traditional expressions of worship and resurgence of interest in Young Restless Reformed theology in rural areas of the CRC.

• 1:43:31 - Mainline decline has settled as evangelicals have gotten to close to right-wing politics.

• 1:45:06 - “What the CRC has failed to do is to articulate a reason for anybody to be CRC that is intrinsic to the tradition of which we are a part.”

• 1:46:08 - There are two Kuypers. One is transformationalist. The other is conservative.

• 1:48:10 - Young pastors who are coming into the CRC are looking to have a confessionally Reformed experience.

• 1:51:53 - If the CRC splits, the quality of conversation and the temperamental setting of the CRC will be lost. “Just stop for a minute.”

• 1:55:08 - Limited options for the CRC left.

• 1:59:55 - The CRC is no longer good at having conversations that are non-threatening.

• 2:06:14 - What happens to Calvin in the divorce? To the pension? To World Renew? CRC moderates hold the keys, and they want to keep the family together, but they’re suspicious of the left.

• 2:11:33 - What kinds of institutions does the CRC need in order to bless the world?

• 2:12:42 - Clay’s prediction: GRE’s future in the denomination in doubt. Calvin’s future is complicated. World Renew goes independent.

• 2:16:19 - Beyond the CRC, denominationalism is in trouble, too. We need new ways of associating institutionally with one another.

• 2:21:19 - Kent is cynical about denominational institutions and pessimistic about the future.

I’m still processing much of what we talked about.

Kent