Comments on the Barna survey report "Is there a 'Reformed' movement….?"

I’ve been asked by a number of people to comment on the newly released Barna Group report of a survey conducted of Protestant pastors and churches regarding whether they consider their church “Calvinist or Reformed” or “Wesleyan or Arminian.”  You can read the report simply by googling key words.  It is dated November 15, 2010.

My initial response is that I’m suspicious of the results because the surveyors did not clarify for the respondents what are meant by these labels and categories. With all due respect to pastors, my experience is many of them do not understand these categories historically.  For example, I know many Pentecostals who think they are “Reformed” because they do not accept the Wesleyan doctrine of entire sanctification.  I was taught that in a Pentecostal Bible college!  But they DON’T mean what “Reformed” normally means in its wider, historical and theological contexts.

I’m also not confident about pastors who self-identify as “Wesleyan or Arminian” understanding those terms theologically.  Many, I suspect, are really semi-Pelagian! 

Also, what about Lutherans?  Lutherans are Protestants (!) but neither Reformed nor Arminian.  Apparently, from the report posted on line, pastors were not offered the option of self-identifying as Lutheran.

The thrust of the report seems to belittle claims that a Reformed movement is growing in American Protestantism.  But I would argue that movement is not growing (yet) among pastors and churches.  It is growing among largely unchurched young people–especially college and university students.  Ask any youth or college pastor of any Baptist church in America and he or she will tell you that many of the older youths are steeped in the writings of John Piper and the podcasts of Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, et al.  The “new Calvinism” is a grassroots movement bound eventually to transform churches and denominations; it is not yet a widespread movement of pastors and churches.  Many pastors I have talked with hardly know anything about it (except youth and college pastors).

So, I’m skeptical of the report.