The Christian Century

In a new study on the influence of the NeoReformed or "New Calvinist" movement on the church, the Barna Group concludes that "there is no discernable evidence from this research that there is a Reformed shift among U.S. congregation leaders over the last decade."  A number of evangelical Christian leaders maintain that the study seems to contradict their on-the-ground experience.

Working with this week's apocalyptic Gospel text evokes memories of childhood experiences and teachings in a Mennonite congregation with a fundamentalist understanding of Bible and life. Within that setting, however, my family was solidly Anabaptist in outlook and rooted in social justice concerns. My public school was, for a community in the middle of rural Illinois, a virtual hotbed of ecumenicity, with all the major and many of the minor denominations represented. All this made for some interesting tensions, especially in a family with an ethos of discernment rather than rules.