Reformed theology is diametrically opposed to social justice ideology. But many Reformed people today are mostly just 5 point Calvinists who do not embrace our confessions or the implications of the solas.
Many young Christians didn’t learn how to understand justice from Scripture. So in college, they learned how to understand justice from culture.
And now, they think injustice is justice. And they interpret Scripture through culture, not culture through Scripture.
That’s why many professing Christians are more committed to Black Lives Matter than Biblical theology.
But our culture’s understanding of justice—or social justice ideology—hasn’t only infiltrated colleges, it’s also infiltrated churches. Professors are influencing Christians to adopt an unbiblical view of justice, and pastors are encouraging them to embrace it—especially Reformed pastors.
I’ve received hundreds of emails from people over the last couple months. And they’re almost entirely from people who feel pressured to adopt social justice ideology or critical theory from their Reformed pastors.
Social justice has become so widely accepted in mainstream Reformed circles it might be considered their sixth point of Calvinism. Some influential leaders and organizations look like they identify with social justice just as much as they identify with the five points of Calvinism and the five solas.
At this rate, social justice is probably going to be one of the major legacies and pitfalls of the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement—and it’s precisely what John MacArthur warned us about that almost a decade ago.
In 2011, John MacArthur said:
“The [Young, Restless, and Reformed] movement as it is shaping up also needs to face up to some fairly serious problems and potential pitfalls.
As the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement has taken shape, some of the best-selling books and leading figures in the movement have been completely uncritical (and in some cases openly supportive) of seeker-sensitive-style pragmatism.
And one cannot be genuinely “Reformed” and deliberately worldly at the same time. The two things are inconsistent and incompatible. To embrace the world’s fashions and values—even under the guise of being “missional”—is to make oneself God’s enemy (James 4:4). Many supposed reformations have faltered on that rock.”
John MacArthur was severely criticized for those words, but he was right.
The Young, Restless, and Reformed movement—or New Calvinism—was born as an alternative to the seeker-sensitive movement, but it’ll die as its own version of the seeker-sensitive movement.
Like the seeker-sensitive movement, the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement embraced a celebrity culture and naturally, an elitist model that sometimes prioritizes tribalism over truth, compromise over courage.
