From Geneva to Las Vegas: Calvin at 500

Published in the Catalyst, Vol. 32, No. 2 - Spring 2009

Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport: making connections in today’s world
By Richard J. Mouw
Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004

Reviewed by Jack McLaughlin

Richard Mouw is a serious scholar with a skilled journalist’s pen. His startling title is ‘a hook’ grabbing those who “want to see how it is possible to draw on the strengths of Calvinism as they make their way through the complexities of contemporary life.”

Mouw’s bridge from Calvinism to the seemingly incongruous Las Vegas airport is the ‘racy’ 1979 movie Hardcore directed by a Calvin College alumnus who jettisoned his faith and derides his Calvinist heritage. The airport is the scene of an encounter between Jake, an unbending Calvinist father searching for his runaway daughter, and Niki, one of his daughter’s friends of the night.

Killing time, Niki asks Jake what he believes. He responds by outlining “the TULIP doctrines” of his Calvinist upbringing — thus satisfying the Biblical injunction “to provide a reason for his Christian hope.” Niki is not impressed and bluntly tells him so!

Where did Jake’s attempt at evangelism go wrong? Mouw, who does not “recommend Hardcore for people seeking spiritual edification,” ponders this troubling scene—asking how best can we maintain our integrity as Calvinists (a term Mouw embraces, rather than ‘Reformed’) while graciously and clearly sharing the Christian gospel to a broken world?

TULIP, while true and essential, offers “a complicated answer to the basic question how does a human being get right with God?” Jake would have been better advised, Mouw concludes, to have shared the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, which speaks to our common human need for comfort in life and death. Mouw argues that TULIP expresses a theological “mere Calvinism” but there is “more”— much more.

After guiding us through TULIP’s systematic points, Mouw turns to “the more” — identifying himself as a “Kuyperian Calvinist.” One example of this is his treatment of the “U” of TULIP — unconditional election is TO something. We are lovingly chosen by God to serve and this mandates our loving response of service in every aspect of life.

The Las Vegas of the title is not merely a disposable hook; Mouw makes some thought-provoking theological connections as he concludes. Vegas and the “new Jerusalem” have some parallels; both are “glittering, opulent, bustling center[s] of never-ending festivity.” Vegas, however, allures with a “counterfeit vision of human fulfillment” that “does not [nor can it] quiet the profound restlessness of our hearts.”

Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport is a great read for this 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth. The Calvinism of Mouw’s grandmother, finding expression in Dordt and Heidelberg, has traveled from the Netherlands, to Alberta, Grand Rapids and Los Angeles. It still travels well, even to ‘Sin City’— making connections and offering sound direction to all the Nikis who desperately need to hear ‘Good News.’

Jack McLaughlin is the Chair of the Priscilla and Stanford Reid Trust for Presbyterian and Reformed Theological Education in Canada, and did graduate work in history with Professor W. Stanford Reid at the University of Guelph.