What I found while investigating youth trends and Calvinism may shock my college professors. It may even surprise a number of evangelicals who don’t see the appeal of this difficult theology with a bad reputation. Based on conversations about my previous writing, I know this book will surprise many young Calvinists themselves. As I experienced with our small movement at Northwestern, few have ever viewed these trends from a wider scope. Many who heard Piper speak at Passion and bought Desiring God probably never realized they are traveling down a path trod by many of their peers. But they may recognize themselves in these stories of conversion—born again by the power of God, then transformed by the mystery of grace.

1John Piper, Desiring God (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1996), 238.
2For a fuller explanation, see Chapter Two of this book, “Out of Bethlehem.”
3Piper, Desiring God, 64.
4Ibid., 296.
5Ibid., 302.
6Richard J. Mouw, Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004),
114–115.
7Ibid., 14.
8Collin Hansen, “Young, Restless, Reformed,” Christianity Today, September 2006, 32; http://
www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/september/42.32.html.
9Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual
Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press USA, 2005), 165.
10Ibid., 171.
11Ibid., 44.
12Ibid., 74.
13Ibid., 154.
14Ibid., 268.
15Ibid., 266.

Young, Restless, Reformed 
Copyright © 2008 by Collin Hansen
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