A private Christian school holds what it considers a biblical view of marriage. It welcomes all students, but insists that they adhere to certain beliefs and abstain from conduct that violates those beliefs. Few doubt the sincerity of those beliefs. The school's leaders are seen as strange and offensive to the world, but then again, they know that they will find themselves as aliens and strangers in the world.

This description fits a number of Christian schools confronted today with rapidly changing sexual norms. But the description also would have fit Bob Jones University, a school that barred interracial dating until 2000. And in 1983, that ban cost Bob Jones its tax exemption, in a decision upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Even for a relatively small school of a few thousand students, that meant losing millions of dollars. And the government's removal of tax-exempt status had a purpose: one Supreme Court justice described it as "elementary economics: when something becomes more expensive, less of it will be purchased."

The comparison between Bob Jones in 1983 and Christian schools today will strike some as unwarranted. Indeed, there are historical reasons to reject it. The discriminatory practices in Bob Jones were linked to the slavery of African Americans and the Jim Crow South. The 1983 Court decision came within a generation of Brown v. Board of Education, and its legal principles extended to private secondary schools (including "segregationist academies") that resisted racial integration.

The mention of Calvinism may provoke revulsion or comfort—but it rarely produces apathy.

"Calvinism," journalist H.L. Mencken opined in 1937, "occupies a place in my cabinet of private horrors but little removed from that of cannibalism." Mencken included these words in his obituary for J. Gresham Machen, a Presbyterian theologian who whispered on his deathbed, "Isn't the Reformed faith grand?" The same doctrines that elicited exultations from the lips of one man incited comparisons to sautéing your next-door neighbor in another. Perhaps it shouldn't surprise us, then, that the most recent surge of interest in Reformed theology has ignited joy in some hearts and panic in others.

Over the past several years, an overabundance of possible names for this movement has also sparked no small measure of confusion. "Young, restless, Reformed" was the nomenclature thatCollin Hansen selected for an article and book about his journey with "the new Calvinists"—a group that's also been dubbed "neo-Reformed," "neo-Calvinist," and even "neo-Puritan."

Regardless of where you stand or where you land on the issue of Reformed theology, this multiplicity of labels is probably not helpful. With that in mind, let's take a look at a few of these labels and consider, at the very least, which ones might be the least problematic.

I should probably confess from the outset that I'm a Reformed Baptist who has never willingly embraced the epithet "Calvinist." I served nearly two decades on pastoral staffs in three different churches, and—as far as I can recall—I used the word "Calvinism" a grand total of three times in my teaching: twice when leading church history classes, and once in a sermon to describe how George Whitefield was able to work with the Wesley brothers for the sake of the gospel. A variety of Reformed and non-Reformed perspectives mingled together in all of these congregations, and church members consistently cooperated with charity on this issue. And still, I avoided the word "Calvinism" whenever possible. One reason for this deliberate omission was because I was never quite certain that what I meant by "Calvinism" was what my congregants understood when they heard the word—and this semantic confusion isn't limited to laypeople! R.A. Muller, a preeminent scholar of the Reformation and post-Reformation eras, lists no fewer than three possible functionsfor the word "Calvinism":

(1) Calvinism is what John Calvin himself taught—in which case Calvin himself could very well have been the only Calvinist;

They gathered in the little chapel at St. Ignatius of Antioch, lit by stained-glass abstracts capturing the setting sun, ready to experience something outside the bounds of Mass.

Some strummed guitars; others grabbed maracas and tambourines from a basket and joined in; still others quietly paged through Bibles brought from home. After each song came shouts of "We praise you! We glorify your holy name!" One man dropped to his knees, palms facing upward, whispering "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus" over and over.

None of that would look unusual in Middle Tennessee's Pentecostal-leaning congregations, but these charismatics are challenging the notion of Catholicism as a buttoned-up faith. They're also claiming a powerful ally in Pope Francis, who in interviews and speeches has joked that he first regarded the animated charismatics as "samba school" students but now endorses them as a great force — possibly because Pentecostal denominations are converting millions of South American Catholics.

In the Nashville area, charismatics have been meeting for decades. There are regular prayer meetings at St. Ignatius plus St. Luke in Smyrna and Our Lady of the Lake in Hendersonville. And today, more than 200 will gather for a regional conference at St. Ignatius.

Local charismatic Catholics say they've been irrevocably changed for the better by their experience, which for some includes healing, spontaneous utterances of prophecy and praying in tongues. But they admit it's not for everyone.

"Deep down, some know that it requires a much bigger commitment to their spirituality and to the Lord, and I think that they're not sure they want to do that," said Bob Schwartz, one of the conference planners. "One thing about the renewal is you have to let God into your emotions as well as your brain."