Stealing a Tradition and Calling it Your Own

Those who upset with my “churchless evangelicals” series might want to read this from Zrim. They might also consider who or what gets to define the adjective “Reformed.”

    Post authored by:

  • R. Scott Clark
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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

    More by R. Scott Clark ›

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5 comments

  1. …But what I really want to know if how my linked post generated a “possibly related” one about, ahem, postpartum relations.

  2. Jackson,

    Clearly, your tradition, acknowledged by you or not, is the Radical Reformation.

    I am wondering if what you have in common with so many on this side of the table (i.e. those who would claim the mainstream Reformation) is a self-loathing that goes so way down you don’t know which way is up.

    If Darryl Hart’s anecdote from Mother Kirk, in which a Presbyterian in the crowd of a lecture wanted desperately to know if he was an evangelical, is any measure, whatever else we don’t have in common, confusion surely brings us together.

  3. Who said anything about “owning” anything but the Proper Noun, Jackie.

    If we get a few followers for ya, we can call ’em “Jacksonians.” Sorry, but Calvin didn’t get to stifle people borrowing his name. So neither do you. You can’t write your own history or plant your own family tree.

    We can merge the rustic pragmatism of PrezidentAndrew, and the theological penetration of Jackie.
    voila
    “The Jackson Five”

  4. The Reformation went back to the Word of God. You can’t own the Word of God. You can’t own apostolic biblical doctrine.

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