Paul Owen on What’s What’s Wrong with the YRR Crowd

Over at SBC Tomorrow, there is a scintillating piece by Paul Owen (Montreat College, NC) about What is Wrong with the Young Restless and Reformed Movement? An Interpretive Essay. Owen himself is a Calvinistic Anglican (huzzah!) but he notes something about the psychological profile of the YRR:

Calvinism today seems to appeal mostly to a certain sort of personality, and that personality is not always healthy. I have discovered that the person who really spends a lot of time talking about the “doctrines of grace,” tends to fit a typical profile. They tend to be male (rarely do you find women sitting around arguing about the details of TULIP), intellectually arrogant, argumentative, insecure (and therefore intolerant), and prone to constructing straw-man arguments. In order for the typical Calvinist’s faith to remain secure, he seems to feel the need to imagine all others outside his theological box as evil, uninformed, or just plain stupid. I have seen this in men of all ages, some Baptist, some Presbyterian, some laymen, some ordained ministers.

Ouch! What do you think? True, partially true, or overstated?

It is a very interesting critique and it has me wondering if we need a “Big Tent Calvinism” (see Dan Kirk on this). I’m talking about a kind of Timothy George Calvinism … you know what I mean?

I had my own post on this subject back in 2008 for those who care to read it.