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Mayer describes a "quiet revival" that has overtaken the Twin Cities, with more than 1,000 new churches since 1996. Even in an area that wears its Scandinavian heritage on its sleeve, nearly 60 percent of those churches are not predominantly white. The trend reflects the changing nature of the area, which has become a leading destination for refugees. The changing service sector makes downtown Minneapolis look more like Little Somalia than Little Norway. During the last election, local voters chose the nation's first Muslim congressman.

But changing demographics are just one major challenge for Twin Cities evangelicals. The Minnesota pastors I interviewed don't just represent different feudal camps claiming a share of the evangelical pie. They lead them. Perhaps never before have so many dynamically different church leaders ministered in the same urban area.

Like many of their counterparts across America, evangelical churches in Minneapolis and St. Paul have grown by attracting disaffected mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics with European lineages. It has been decades since Bethlehem Baptist Church was known as First Swedish Baptist Church. And it might have gone the way of many Swedish churches, into long-term decline, if the church had not called a fiery Southerner, John Piper, to be the pastor in 1980.

The outspoken Piper has developed an international reputation and a committed local following. Even on a summer Saturday night, the sanctuary is nearly full. Undaunted by the heat, Piper wears a suit and tie. He announces an upcoming outreach event, "Hoops, Hip-Hop, and the Gospel," describing it as a "culturally relevant way to reach this city"—noting that you can pack a lot of theology into rap lyrics. Piper then promotes a six-week beginner's Greek course. Piper enjoys paradox. The church celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January the week before it laments abortion on Sanctity of Life Sunday.

The limits of Piper's flexibility, however, were evident in a meeting with his neighbors Jones and Pagitt. Jones invited Piper to lunch after he saw the promotional material for Piper's 2006 Desiring God National Conference, "The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World." Jones rightly guessed that conference speakers would criticize emergent theology. "My e-mail was an olive branch: an invitation to lunch and an assurance that we both share a commitment to proclaiming Christ," Jones wrote in The New Christians. But the Christ they preach looks quite different. Dining at Olive Garden, Piper struggled to understand how Jones and Pagitt think.

"There are profound epistemological differences—ways of processing reality—that make conversation almost impossible, as if we were just kind of going by each other," Piper explained at the conference. He pressed them to explain their views on Christ's atonement. Jones pressed back, questioning whether the Atonement should be understood as a substitutionary sacrifice. He asked, "What do you tell your congregation about how Christians understood the Atonement for the thousand years prior to Anselm?"

"You should never preach," Jones re-membered Piper saying in response.

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October 2008, Vol. 52, No. 10