The Reformed Parish is primarily an outreach to our perishing community.  But if you’re visiting and are not only evangelical, but Calvinistic, we’ve included some resources that you might find helpful. 

Confessions & Confessionalism

Many Christians have said, ‘We have no creed but the Bible.’  Reformational thinking, of course, holds the Bible up above every other authority.  That is ‘the final word.’  But at the same time, the Reformers and their followers were ardently confessional.  They wrote, adopted, and endorsed written statements of faith.   Samuel Miller of Princeton explains the reasons why in The Utility and Importance of Creeds and Confessions (1839).  Click here.

Church & the Means of Grace

[material forthcoming]

Reformed Worship

(1) The Regulative Principle of Worship

How do Reformed churches worship and why?  In The Puritan Principle of Worship, Dr. William Young, addresses this crucial question.  Reformed worship is radically distinctive, largely on account of its adherence to the ’Regulative Principle of Worship.’  What God requires in worship is alone to be done, and what He has not required is therefore forbidden.  Yet, is this biblical?   Click here.

(2) The Lord’s Day

Is there anything special about Sunday?  What is its relationship to the Sabbath day?  Are Christians obliged to keep the Fourth Commandment, or has this duty passed away with the coming of Christ?  R. L. Dabney, a Southern Presbyterian who served during the Civil War, responds to these and related questions in The Christian Sabbath: Its Nature, Design, & Proper Observance.  Click here.

Piety & Biblical Experience

Calvinists have sometimes been called ‘the frozen chosen.’  No doubt this title has sometimes been well-earned!  But warm, vibrant piety and deep – even mystical – experience have been defining featuers of the Reformed legacy.  The issue is not whether experience is right or wrong, but what kind of experience?  And what informs, guides, and controls it, and how do we distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate religious experiences?  Archibald Alexander, founder of Princeton Seminary, wrote a classic work on this subject, Thoughts on Religious Experience (1844).  By far one of our favorite books ever.  Tolle lege - take up and read!  Click here.

Another classic serves as an illustration of this experiential, Reformed legacy.  It is John Kennedy’s The Days of the Fathers in Ross-Shire (1861).  This one is heart-warming and soul-stirring.  Click here.  And for more of the same, consider The Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Halyburton (1714).  Click here.  Of course, no course in the study of Reformed devotion would be complete without a reading of Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections (1746), or John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666).