Beards, Beer, & Baristas (Or, how the Reformed Faith is about EVERYTHING)
by Darren Moore
Are we over stating the point, I mean everything? We had a laugh that some of our early videos got more comments about our beards (or Andy’s lack thereof), the coffee and the bottles of bear in the background. One comment was: "To the man belongs the strength of physical prowess, the wide chest, the commanding eye, the full beard, the powerful voice" (Herman Bavinck), the only reply I could think of was, “thank you”. Of course, we don’t take ourselves too seriously, although we do take the big ideas we’re talking about very seriously.
In one video Andy, correctly, tormented insipid American coffee, to which Michael’s response was, “hang on, we don’t even have instant coffee in the US”. This made me think of, the reason Andy and I are so intolerant of poor coffee, is that we were brought up on instant before tasting the real thing and now there is no going back. Americans are the same about beer. American beer was terrible. Now, however it is amazing with the emergence of microbreweries using English recipes (in particular IPAs, the hipster tipple of choice). Compared to the UK, America is doing it better. It’s created a positive feedback loop where English microbreweries are trying to outdo the Americans and so on (a German friend didn’t like it when I said this is why Anglo-American beers are now objectively better than German ones).
Did you know that the reformation actually directly changed how beer is made and brought about the drink as we know it? Specifically Martin Luther did and you can read about it here. The Roman Catholic’s church hold on certain ingredients meant that Luther looked to hops. The rest, as they say, is history.
Yeah, but faith doesn’t impact everything, I mean what about sport? Actually, no church no Premier league according to Thank God for Football (one of those teams, Southampton, was responsible for football reaching Brazil). OK, not all are rooted in Reformed Churches, but the Reformed claim is that faith impacts everything and those churches would trace back, eventually, to Reformed roots. We could go on, but let Abraham Kuyper (or frequently attributed to him) summarise: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!'
*Ed. Kuyper was Dutch. Wouldn’t he use metric?
*GR-UK doesn’t do quality control or necessarily endorse external links
